Guanaja, Honduras

Sadly, El bight was the only anchorage we visited in Honduras. It’s the time of year when Brian is anxious to move on and make sure he is in the USA and away from hurricanes. We tried to check-in in Guanaja but they were having some political issues, and immigration was shut down on the island. We were told that we would have to check in at Roatan.
We had thought about going there and looked a marinas, as we were still concerned about the rudder sound.
On our first day we decided to drop our laundry off at Jessica’s and hike the highest peak on the island, Michel’s Rock. Brian stopped at the 2/3 point and I continued to 7/8th. The trail was difficult to see and we needed to us the All Trails app, but it was burning through our phone power. We both wore pants, but my solo expedition to the top had my arms covered in scratches, my pants throughly stained green and two ticks (one I only found days later).
We went snorkelling on the reef beside the ostentatious Dunbar Hotel. It was clear and felt like snorkelling in an aquarium — saw porcupine puffer fish, squid, angel fish and more. Our snorkelling attempt two days later was cloudy.
We went into the town, twice. The first time we walked around, picked up a few groceries, although not much fresh food. We walked around the town and landed on a large pool that had several nurse sharks, turtles, rays and other fish. We meant a boy named Edwin who was curious about where we were from and the traveling we’ve done. Our second time we came, hoping that the fruit and veggie freighter had arrived. We went to DeBella Cafe and waited, but decided we needed to get going. However, we did by 3lbs of red snapper and a few mangos. There was a lot of police and military presence, which was uncomfortable. We found out that the party that lost the elections had tried to take over again, and a school was burnt down. The main town is an island…. And beside the island are houses on stilts… a fascinating world!
The night before we left, we went to Jessica’s Restaurant (the same women who did our laundry, runs a restaurant). It was on a different part of the cove and once we found it the view was great. The food options were to risky, but we both had a drink and sat with Belgium cruisers from FOX (Carlos and Cathy).
Sadly we didn’t get to ceonnect with Pierre and Laura, although we messaged and saw them working on their forestay. They had problems with it enroute from Providencia and also had this occur:
“Apart this problem in the middle of the trip, we had some emotions when meeting some boats : most of them were fishermen or cargo, but at some point we saw a group of 5 small boats, not really moving, maybe half a mile away.
We continued on our way when one of this boat started moving in our direction. It took him maybe 15 or 30 minutes to reach us.
We kept on our way. The boat was strange with 5 or 6 peoples inside, and one standing on the proa and making signs. He asked us if we had something to give them, food or anything else.
We answered we had nothing.
He asked about cigarettes…
We don’t have. Finally he said good bye, have a safe trip and they went back to where they came.
So no problem but some emotions. We still think that we were far enough from the coast !
That is the story about our trip, not completely simple but interesting 🤔
Hope to see you again. Enjoy Belize
Laura & Pierre”
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Our last foray was to get gas before leaving for Belize. The current was strong, but Brian managed it well. We got 130 gallons ($6usd/gallon), earlier in the day, on the dinghy, we topped up the gas and our propane. By 4:30 we were on our way.’Read more