4/29/02 | Enjoying Guanaja

After a few days of fixing boat problems, we were more than ready for some recreation. Guanaja seems to be tailor-made for us, offering the three things we enjoy the most in the places we visit: snorkeling, hiking, and socializing.

Friends who had been here before told us not to miss the Italian restaurant on the beach near the anchorage, so we headed over with "the Serenities", Lisa and Giuliano, for dinner one night. As you might guess from his name, Giuliano is Italian; although he looks like an aging California surfer dude and talks like a New Yawker, he grew up in Italy -- only an hour away from the hometown of Giovanni, the restaurant's owner. When two Italians get together -- especially two Italians who don't get much of a chance to speak Italian -- watch out! They spent the whole evening gabbing, embracing, and laughing, not to mention drinking. Every once in a while they would switch into English for the benefit of the rest of us, or Giovanni's wife Laura (also Italian) would translate a little. We ate great pizza, Giovanni brought out one of his own bottles of sparkling wine for us (not supermarket Spumanti, the good stuff), and we chatted into the night.

We also spent some time with Jack and his wife Elizabeth, who have a dramatic and beautiful house on the hillside above the restaurant. Jack has VHF and SSB radios in the house and frequently checks in to the cruiser's net as "Lighthouse"; he comes through the anchorage in his skiff, meeting the boaters and inviting them up for drinks and talk. Jack is a native Honduran (although you couldn't tell from either his European Spanish complexion or his educated-in-America accent), and somehow he's caught the cruising bug; he recently bought an older CSY 44 which is currently in the Rio Dulce (Guatemala), and he's got plans to bring it over, fix it up, and do a little sailing. (So we cruisers don't feel too bad blathering on about boatie stuff in front of him!) They are both warm and delightful people, intent on making a positive difference both in their community here and among all their cruising visitors.

We had a great dinner together with Jack and Elizabeth, hosted by David and Henriette on Galatea, British cruisers who are heading south toward Panama. That's one of the tough things about this life -- we meet lots of great people who are going in other directions. We form intense relationships and then lose them, or at least they get relegated to an occasional email or radio contact. But we had a super time, not least because our contribution to the dinner party was to catch the fish to be served; we love having an excuse to go spear fishies!

Michael Rock

The snorkeling in Guanaja stunned us, not least because it was so unexpected. We have gotten resigned to the fact that reefs near populated places are fished-out and abused, devoid of game fish, the coral dead. But the reef on the southeast side of Guanaja has quite a few nice spots. We found a lovely section of shallow coral along a steep wall, with countless snappers, groupers, jacks, and other delicious game fish. A nurse shark wiggled down a crevice as we swam by, and we spotted several of the pretty indigo hamlets that are only found in this area of the Caribbean. The most unusual sight we were treated to was that of a six-foot-long moray eel, swimming out in the open, its body undulating and rippling like a ribbon caught in the wind.

Another day we dinghied through the Soldado Canal which cuts Guanaja in half, so we could explore the north side, which is surrounded by almost continuous reef with only a few narrow and deep passes. That was a tremendous trip, both in terms of mileage and fun! We took a picnic lunch, and ate on a narrow strip of beach which connects a small, steep headland, called Michael Rock, to the rest of the island. After a hike along the long, curving beach to the east, we returned to our dinghy for some snorkeling. The fish life and coral right under Michael Rock was superb. Then we dinked out to some of the diving buoys along the outer reef; the coral was not as colorful, but the formations were fantastic, tunnels and canyons to swim through and drop-offs to peer over. It was a serious workout to do this all free-diving (and get a few fish, too!) and we were exhausted but happy by the time we headed home.

El Soldado bay on Guanaja's north shore

Guanaja is a good place to go hiking, too, not least because of the destruction from Hurricane Mitch. The ridge-tops are all empty of trees other than widely-spaced snags, so there's nothing to bushwhack through or to get in the way of the magnificent view. (Clearly, Guanaja hasn't always been this way -- the notation on the nautical chart says, "Densely Wooded".) The hurricane-cleared land looked quite a bit like the above-treeline tundra in Colorado's mountains, an illusion enhanced by the luminous translucent white quartz dikes that cut through the granite ridges. We could almost convince ourselves that we were on a high Colorado peak, were it not for the deep blue water sparkling below -- and, of course, the thick, oxygen-rich air! The island's only a few miles wide, so it didn't take us long to get up to the highest point, Michael Rock Peak, at 415 meters high. From there we had an aerial view of our picnic spot and the reefs we'd snorkeled the previous day.

Even just doing boat chores in the anchorage is a treat, as we're sharing it with a pair of dolphins. Jack and Elizabeth say that one is two and one three years old; we invariably see them together, lazily drifting around the boat, chuffing a blast of air every so often. I couldn't resist jumping in once, and they let me get within about ten feet of them. Usually, though, we just sit in the cockpit or on deck and watch them watch us. I wonder if they think, "Oh, let's go over to the boat and see if we can get those bipeds to wiggle their appendages at us! Aren't they the wildest creatures!"

We've really enjoyed our week here, but we've got to start thinking about moving northward. The upcoming hurricane season, and our own plans for the summer, impose a real time budget upon us. So we've got to pick and choose where and how we spend what we have left. We've heard great things about the Rio Dulce, for example, but we just don't have the time; Belize looks like it could occupy an entire cruising season all by itself, and then we're going to have to spend some time in Mexico's Isla Mujeres waiting for just the right conditions for the passage to Florida. We really hate to shortchange the Northwest Caribbean. But if we can, we'll be back some day.