The Bay Islands

We had sailed into Isla de Guanaja without raising our yellow quarantine flag in order not to announce to inmigration that we needed to clear in, this meant that we could spend our first day relaxing and catch up on some much needed rest. For Guy this translated as cleaning out all the cupboards down below and throwing out a few years of accumulated crap, then tackling the fuel problem and the other various bits of machinery which had stopped working. Whereas I spent the whole day sitting on deck keeping out of the way reading a book!
The following day we took the dingy on the long ride over to the settlement of Guanaja which was a cluster of wooden pastel painted buildings on stilts all crammed on to what I guess used to be a rock or shallow reef but which had long disappeared under the jumble of houses. We were met by a chatty guy with a sack trolley and an american accent who told us that he had been raised in New Jersey but had come back to his birthplace to help out with the rebuilding efforts after the island was more or less wiped out by Hurricane Mitch. He very efficiently delt with all our needs; rubbish, laundry, internet and so on, leading us through the maze of narrow alleyways which passed for streets on the island. We completed all our other chores but failed to get our inmigration stamps as the officer had gone to the mainland a week ago for a carnival and hadn't been seen since. We then we had a very choppy ride on the way back to the boat in a well laden dingy, arriving completely soaked to hang our newly aquired Honduran lempira notes out to dry! It was a crazy little island, with a lovely laidback carribbean feel to it, the people spoke a hectic mixture of spanish, english and creole and swapped between all three in one sentence and Me and Guy were like kids in a sweetshop going round the supermarket finding unexpected things like cheddar cheese and baked beans after so long in Colombia. These islands have been ruled by a real hotch-potch of nations including the British who seem to have left the strongest mark.
The weather report we had picked up implied that there were another few tropical weather systems heading our way shortly and so we scrapped plans to sail around and see the other side of Guanaja in favour for sailing straight to Roatan, the next island in line, where we knew we could get cleared in with inmigration and I could go diving. I was also aware of the time pressures for me in order to get to mexico for my flight and, as frustrating as it was to be so close and yet not get to explore all these little places, I knew that every place we found would be like that and I had to see this as just a taster so that I would already know where the interesting spots were when I come back to Central America.
So on to Roatan, a beautiful days sail and a hairy moment on the way in. We only had one detailed photocopied chart of the island which looked like a hand drawn pirates map and wasnt really intended for navigational purposes. All the charts for these waters were produced in something like 1928 and havent been updated since so there are often warnings like .... Caution incomplete survey, numerous shoals and coral heads could exist in this area....
Anyway we knew there was a small reef which we needed to avoid just off the end of a sand spit which had an old light tower on it. The chart said it was visible from the discolored water but we couldnt see it untill we were literaly on top of it. Guy and I were arguing over where it was, with me telling him to go one way to be sure of clearing it but him, having not studied the charts so much, saying he thought we could go more to the left as we could see a yellow marker over to that side. In the end the depthsounder jumped quickly from 10 feet to only 3 and I yelled that I could see the rocks under us so we did a hurried 180 turn. The yellow marker we saw did in fact mark the reef but only the far end of it and there was nothing marking the end we had just nearly sailed over. We finally got in without any more problems and even got greeted by a police boat who we thought were going to ask to inspect the boat but instead just lead us to and anchorage and then disappeared.
We completed the check in formalities and took a wander down the lively main street of Coxens Hole but soon discovered that the reason there were no other boats in the anchorage was that all the beaches and dive centres were located on other parts of the island. The main resort, as it were, was called West End and the next day I caught a bus over there to check out the diving. West End was really just a sandy street at the waters edge lined with restaurants and dive shops but continue further down and it turned into a long sandy beach with the posher resorts and hotels on. I got myself a dive that afternoon and got a taste of the fantastic visibility that divers come to the Bay Islands to experience. What a difference to the murky brown of British waters.
I am constantly amazed by the changing colors of the water here, while we are sailing it can go from pale blue to turquoise and dark grey in bad weather, but the best is the most amazing indigo, almost purple, color over really deep water. Its a colour that you just dont see anywhere else in life, I have tried to capture it on camera lots of times but of course failed miserably.
Is fairly difficult when you are at anchor to organise to do things separately which I guess contributes to the claustrophobia of living on a boat with someone. You only have one way to get on and off the boat and if one person takes the dingy the other is stuck, so we had to devise a scheme where I could get back on the boat after I got back from a days diving. We had a hand held radio but I was afraid someone might steal it from the beach while I was snorkelling (it also relied on the person on borad remebering to turn the radio on) so instead I took a whistle with me and we agreed that as the boat was close to shore I would signal Guy from the shore with it when I wanted him to pick me up in the dingy.
The first evening I returned I walked down to the waters edge at the end of a car park and blew my whistle. It was pretty dark and at first I didnt notice there was another figure just to the right of me on the sand. When I spotted him I did think... Ohh dear, here I am with my camera and dive computer in my bag in a deserted car park by the docks, what a great spot to get robbed. I didnt have much choice but to brave it out though and I could see Guy was on deck so I thought he would be on his way over very shortly. After a few attempts though he didnt seem to have heard me and the bloke I had seen had sidled over for a chat of course. It turns out he was a nice chap and told me that our boat had just come in from over there pointing out to the channel. Obviously our anchor had been dragging as there was no reason for Guy to have been going anywhere, and sure enough when Guy had finished resetting the anchor chain he heard my next whistle and came ond over to get me. The next time we tried the same system after my night dive, I arrived to find the wind had picked up in the evening and was blowing towards me taking the sound of my whistle away from the boat. No matter how hard I blew, Guy just couldnt hear me. My only options were to swim over with my bag on my head, or walk all the way around the small bay so that the wind would be in my favour and try again. I discounted the swimming as I was worried about my camera and I didnt fancy wading into the sludge of the fishing harbour and so I set off round the other side. With a few strange looks, I managed to get out onto another pontoon in amongst all the fishing boats and this time Guys head popped up on deck as soon as I whistled so then I had to leg it back around to meet him before he decided he had heard wrongly and left again. This would have been fine except that I think I broke my toe on the jetty just before the dive that evening, I must have looked an odd sight but I guess they just shrugged it off as more crazy gringo behaviour.
Over the next few days I did a few more nice dives with lovely coral gardens, and in particular one fantastic type of luminous pale purple coral, although not much in the way of impressive fish life (I guess I am getting to the point where I have been spoiled having done some very exciting diving in the Galapagos anbd other countries). But by far the best was a night dive where we saw a gorgeous green and purple octopus along with lots of other night creatures like squid and brittle stars. At the end we all turned off our lights to jiggle around like glowing epileptic gymnasts in the phosphoresence. After getting our fill of that, we sat still on the bottom and waited till our eyes adjusted to the dark again so that we could see the string of pearl effects from bioluminescent organisms which spawn and create little chains of light beads which hang suspended in the dark. Beautiful.
Guy and I also hired a scooter for one day and went for a ride around the island, although in reality there wasnt much to see other than resort complexes. When we reached the end of the road we were expecting to find a village but instead there were a few guys standing at a dock with water taxis selling us a tour round the village of Oak Ridge which was built on stilts out over the reef, through a mangrove tunnel used to cut through to another village and to a restaurant called which was only accessible by boat.
Our taxi guy was very enthusiastic at first, although he struggled to come up with anything more enticing than....its the most interestingest thing to do on the island......as a sales pitch, so when he had repeated that phrase three times we put him out of his misery and hopped in his boat. From that point on he slowly sank into what seemed like a sulk, until by the time lunch arrived he was sitting in silence and we were trying our best to pretend he wasnt there, although maybe he just got bored of listening to Guy and another ancient boater at the restaurant talk US politics. These sailors dont half talk a lot of mierda sometimes!
So we left Roatan with a fridge full of the best Thai curry I have ever had, from the beachfront restaurant we discovered in West End, having decided to skip the island of Utila and head straight for Belize.

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