(<-- View from my cabin porch)Guanaja was a welcome surprise along my trail of travels. The island is the lesser known and least-celebrated stop in the Bay Islands. I arrived on Thursday with my standard itinerary and gut-clenching nervousness that something would go wrong and foil my calculated plans. In the end, however, I left wishing that I had accidentally allotted 5 nights here instead of two. Not that I could stand another second of the sand flies, but let me wax romantic for a second.
After I’d successfully crossed off my list for La Ceiba, I woke up early to pack and grab a “busito” to the airport. Walking up to the airline counter and purchasing my ticket on the spot was slightly horrifying, as I’ve become accustomed to buying plane tickets two months in advance and considering that last minute. I grabbed one of the remaining spots on a 15-passenger propeller plane to Guanaja, and as I waited in the lobby, I eyed the strange man in the neatly pressed khakis, cowboy belt buckle, Panama hat, slick leather shoes and a button-up black linen shirt that looked like it was worn for the purpose of unbuttoning to the navel. In Mexico, I automatically judge anyone dressed like this to be some kind of drug runner, and I didn’t make an exception for him. Naturally I glowered at him when he came near as I waited in the Guanaja terminal after a 30-minute flight. Finally he approached me and, as it turned out, explained that he was my ride. He’s the close friend of the hotel owner whose place I stayed at, and he’d come from La Ceiba to fish for three weeks. His strong English and tycoon-esque outfit I assume are the results of 30 years spent working in the Louisiana oil business. His crazy Caribbean English-Creole whatever-it-is, however, I give to Guanaja.
When our boat docked at the hotel, which is actually a private cay off the mainland, I approached the owner with a hurried hello and explained that I’d like to put my stuff down, see the place and leave immediately for the island to explore its accommodations. He didn’t understand a word of what I said, and when I spoke again slowly, he laughed at me and explained that I could see New York City in that amount of time. He said I didn’t need to hire a water taxi, that my new friend would whisk me around tomorrow at my whim. Finally, nothing to do!
I walked to my 3-bed cottage facing the calmer side of the cay and starting cheering to myself with excitement - turquoise, deep blue, seaweed green waters all outside my bedroom window. After a monstrous plate of breaded wahoo and french fries, I went for an awkward breaststroke just five steps outside my room…the water was only a foot deep in some places, but spiky bits of shell were too much for my princess feet to handle, so I just kind of bobbed until the wind picked up and I was too lazy to put up a fight. I walked to the other side of the cay along a path of dried black coral bits, then turned down a two-plank dock that lead to a thatched roof shelter with two fishnet hammocks facing more turbulent waters. I took a nap, and once the sand flies got a little too friendly, I headed back to my cottage to take a nap on the porch swing. When that fetal position got a little too cramped, I went inside and sprawled out onto one of three beds, taking another nap and retreating from those damn bugs.
Dinner was again a monstrous plate of seafood and pasta, and I polished off two Salva Vida-brand beers while the bartender and I watched Mexican telenovelas together. When he told me he was 20 the next day, it all made sense.
In the morning, my tycoon friend and I set off around the island. First we stopped in Bonacca, a city that is as densely populated as Hong Kong. What tour guides once deemed “Little Venice” for the charming canals that cut through the island city has now become a series of narrow concrete alleyways that zigzag like a labyrinth with little rhyme or reason. Far less quaint than little gondolas traversing through waterways, but I’m sure the city residents were like ‘Man, do I really have to get in this stupid boat again?’ and decided to pave them over. Like every place I’ve been here, there are no street addresses or numbers anywhere, just the main street, which is really a glorified alleyway.
Next we zipped by several shuttered dive resorts. When Hurricane Mitch ripped through the Caribbean a few years ago, it destroyed millions of dollars of tourism infrastructure in its path. With the financial crash and coup in Tegucigalpa essentially erasing all tourism to the area last year, many people couldn’t or decided not to rebuild.
We had a Port Royal-brand beer at a beach resort on the other side of the island at 11 a.m. It made me pretty sleepy, but hey, I wasn’t driving the boat. We stopped by a couple of places that turned out to be closed, then we headed to a bar-restaurant run by a German couple. And there we stayed for 5 hours, while I sampled tasty Franziskaner beer and wine fermented from a local fruit whose name I didn’t write down, plus homemade split pea soup. I chatted about Utila with a young fellow who I convinced myself to be a heroin fiend – mysterious black stuff under his finger nails, a nervous, shifty way of speaking and that one time he told me how he smuggles California weed into Honduras by way of peanut butter jars.
The German man who provided the local wine also brought along dried mangoes that he’d made at his nearby organic, self-sustaining farm. And my escort, predictably, unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time with every glass of that special wine he had. He made me play him in pool and, after cleaning the table before I took a turn, confessed that he used to do this for a living. Of course. Me and heroin fiend played darts for a while until it was evident that I would never come close to the bullseye.
By the time 5 p.m. rolled around, it appeared that for the second time I would miss out on some of Honduras’ best snorkeling. We had brought a mask and tube along in the boat, but something told me I might drown at that point. Back at the private cay, I had another hearty plate of pan-fried grouper and baked potato. A millionaire couple that owns a nearby cay, helicopter and charter plane had stopped by for a drink with the owner, and we looked at proud pictures of when Jimmy Carter and his wife had swung by Guanaja last April for a fishing trip. The woman explained that he had brought a 23-man Secret Service detail along with him. Before I could give a generic, “Wow, that many?” response, she threw up her hands in exasperation and cried, “And that’s with our money!” And then I immediately became very bored at the prospect of talking taxes and scratched my bubbling sand fly bites instead.
A 10-hour night’s sleep helped wear off that devilish Guanaja wine, and I got up early to watch Germany play Argentina in the quarterfinals with a bunch of enthusiastic Germans who stared at the TV like boys playing a video game. I was sad to go when it came time to leave, but didn’t have much time to dwell. After my 3-person flight touched down in La Ceiba, I took a collective cab to the bus “station,” a single concrete room with a man behind a computer and watching reggaeton music videos. From there, it was a 3-hour ride to Trujillo, and a very expensive cab ride out to my resort painfully outside of town.
The Canadian owners at the place I’m staying only come down a few times a year, so I’m mostly in the hands of the Honduran family who looks after the place. Tonight at dinner, while my new 6-year-old friend showed me pictures of the pet monkey on her mom’s cell phone, the mother explained that she had bought tickets to see famed Catholic missionary Salvador Gómez speak on Sunday, but that she couldn’t go since she had to look after me. It wasn’t as passive aggressive as it sounds, and it took a little while to convince her that I wouldn’t even be here during the day. Tomorrow is my day to run around like a crazed gringo scribbling in my soggy notebook with a dried up pen. So they’re dropping me off in town on their way to the community center, and then we’re all going to have a big 4th of July barbeque and set off sparklers. Not.
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