Wow! Where has the time gone? After a very cool few days relaxing, canyoning, and river rafting up in the Rio Cangrejal outside of La Ceiba, we arrived on Roatan last Monday after a rough ferry ride from La Ceiba—it made the 12-seat plane ride into El Porvenir in Panama 18 mos. ago seem breezy. The complimentary sea-sickness bags were well-used by several of the passengers—a new ferry experience for us—I really can't see Washington State Ferries staff responding with the same nonchalance if/when being handed a full bag! Yikes. Thankfully, we got off the boat feeling a bit beat-up and not too green. After some minor provisioning and a bank run for more lemps, we made our way to Astarte—it was good to be back aboard and our first rum punches tasted quite refreshing.
Contrary to our Panama experience, which lacked vegetables and was long on rain, we started out with lots of fruits and veggies and plenty of sunshine! We did a nice couple of snorkels before leaving French Cay Harbor and got our first taste of Honduran reefs. We saw some nice sponges and plenty of colorful fish, all signs of a good time. We made our way east from FCH toward the island of Guanaja. Mark and I were hoping we'd make it there, as it's a bit more off the beaten path and is someplace a bit harder to get to for non-boaters than Roatan. After a stop partway down Roatan in Old Port Royal (which we determined is not where they brew the beer—the coordinates didn't match those on the bottle), we made the passage to Guanaja. Once again, we managed to keep the joyless fishing streak alive, despite the purchase of some new lures before we came.
We anchored up at Michael's Rock—Michael has a damn fine rock, we'd say! A beautiful spot with some lovely little beaches (albeit they suffer from the same jejene problem as most of the others in the area) and a sweet little place to snorkel right from the boat! The rocks were full of sponges and there were plenty of lionfish hiding around too. We took a nice (sweaty) walk to a nearby waterfall, where we all rinsed the salt off and enjoyed the fresh water cascade. The bugs weren't too bad either, which was nice, but made the sweaty long pants and shirt seem like overkill! We checked in with Bo Bush at his Green Flash Bar and had a delicious lunch of tasty fish and chicken, a few cold beers, and also got the scoop on diving. It must have been good luck, because we capped off the evening with a great Green Flash while eating our dinner of chocolate cake!
After a little relocation, we tried out the reef on the other side of Bo's which was a pretty nice little swim. We saw a Hawksbill Turtle and a few good sized sting rays, along with lots of bright blue reef fish! Blue seems to be the predominant color of the fishes here, which is kind of cool. We've seen plenty of red soldier and squirrel fish and various other things, but even the trumpet fish are blue here, which we haven't seen before. To cap off the night we carbo-loaded on delicious lasagna before our big diving day!
We decided to hang around Michael's Rock long enough to dive with Bo on the local reef. It's always great when it's just your party and the dive master, and that was the set-up for Mark and I this morning. Bo even managed to find some wetsuits for us so we wouldn't get too chilly, which was pretty nice. Once his guy loaded the gear, we headed out to the first of the dive sites. We saw tons of fish and some other interesting things, but it wasn't until the second dive that things got really cool! The second dive was a series of pinnacles and swim-throughs, which tested our buoyancy control but had high reward! We got to one little corner and out swam a 2 meter nurse shark—we watched it glide right by us with such ease. It was really impressive, but I did have to remind myself to breathe as I contemplated how it must feel to have 3 divers blowing bubbles in its face! Before I recovered from that, Bo swam us into a cave (where I was sure 5 of the shark's friends were hiding). I gathered myself (and made Mark go second) as we swam into this cave, only at the far end of which did a little bit of light trickle down from the surface—very magical. We had a cold beer back at Bo's and rehashed the highlights of some very cool dives.
While we were out having fun, Barbara and Michael were slaving away on projects—one of which included feeding us. We loaded up on hot dogs and homemade baked beans and coleslaw before taking a bit of a rest. Soon enough we'll be off to gather some mangoes—a local homeowner paid us a visit and invited us to come on by and fill a bag! Yum.
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