Story and Photos by Solomon Baksh
A tiny island hardly known in the Bay Islands, awaits discovery. Just a few miles away from Roatán, The Green Island of Guanaja, is a sensory overload of natural beauty. Boating is a way of life here and there is no bustling traffic on land, since there is only one road! The underwater world, offers the same serenity with even more excitement.
It was almost a year ago when the Mayor of Guanaja, Spurgeon Miller, invited me to experience this piece of Honduran paradise.
Many divers visiting the Bay Islands, mostly go to either Utila or Roatán but very few make it all the way out to Guanaja and those who do, never regret it. The underwater landscape is just as dynamic as the one above water. With deep pinnacles, lava tunnels, vertical walls and mountainous reefs, what you will not find here, are crowded dive sites. With over forty sites to choose from and only three dive operators, you are almost guaranteed to be the only boat on any site. Almost all of the dive sites are marked with a buoy that dive boats can use as a mooring.
Don’t expect to find huge schools of fish life but do expect to find a very healthy reef system with every imaginable Caribbean marine species—from passing whales, to enormous hawksbill turtles, stingrays, eagle rays, reef sharks, brightly colored reef fishes and a variety of macro subjects.
Exploring The Green Island
Story and Photos by Sandra Baksh
“Buenas!” This was the first and everlasting greeting from my bubbly guide, Kenrick Elwin. In previous travels, I have had drivers and tour guides, who took me around on a variety of roads in so many countries, but this was the first time I had a dedicated boat driver and our “roads” would be the ocean around the serene and verdant island of Guanaja.
It was also a first experience to land on a quiet airstrip and be greeted by a group of friendly women, which included the Mayor’s wife and employees from the Municipality Office of Guanaja. After a simple but memorable greeting with flowers and beautiful smiles, it was straight to the dock, facing a mass of water, behind the airport…but no car and where was the road?
Off we all went to the final destination and again a first for me…a posh hotel located out at sea and literally on a rock…the Villa on Dunbar Rock!
Fabulous Fiji
Story and Photos by Wayne B, Brown
BULA! (an informal greeting in Fijian). You hear this a lot from the very friendly locals in this south pacific island nation.
As we were pulling away from the dock, One of the guests had asked me if we ever see hammerhead sharks in Fiji. I told them we do but only occasionally.
It is always the unexpected that excites us divers so much. On our first day aboard the Aggressor Island Dancer II, we saw the rare winged pipefish and…a hammerhead shark! “Occasionally” that week, turned into every day and a real bonus for the divers on the charter who had never seen one!
As the “soft coral capital” of the world, Fiji lives up to that name at dive sites like Mellow Yellow, Hi-8 and Chimneys. It is like seeing vertical fields of colorful flowers, as you slowly pass along the walls. It is here, that you come upon the most photographed soft coral gathering in the world. This archway has a rainbow of soft corals hanging down every inch of its surface and with the resident longfin bannerfish hanging out in the middle of the arch, it is even more stunning in reality.
