While anchored in French Harbor on the Bay Island of Roatan we took a break from snorkeling and took a stroll and came across a "few" iguanas.
Actually they were on an iguana farm that a local guy has, he is very friendly to cruiser and has a dock that you can land your dinghy on!!
No trip to Jonesville can be complete without a stop at the Hole in the Wall café. So we headed over there for a burger and a cold beer. While there we met some great couples and could not resist the cigar shots, Cigars are free to all customers, for all our friends (Ernie) who enjoy a stogie from time to time!!
We spent almost a week in Jonesville waiting out a cold front. While it is nice and easy to get sidetracked there you can’t really swim off the boat as this is where the main dump is for the surrounding area.
We made one stop along the coastline of Honduras in a place called Porto Escondido.
Porto Escondido is part of a Honduran national park, there is nothing there but a beautiful lagoon with palm trees and sandy beach. In the morning while you are having your coffee in your cockpit you can listen to the Howler monkeys, parrots, and watch the Toucan's fly overhead. We tried to get the admiral to “howl” like the monkeys but she was having none of it.
Actually they were on an iguana farm that a local guy has, he is very friendly to cruiser and has a dock that you can land your dinghy on!!
After saying goodbye, for now, to Sam the Skull as they had to boogie up to Belize to meet up with Family, we decided to back track 5 miles to Jonesville. Jonesville is so different from French Harbor we thought we went to another island!! There is only a very limited road into Jonesville and the road actually ends just the other side of town. Because of this everything works by water. The water taxis abound and all the kids go to school via a pango.
That said we decided to take a dinghy tour from Jonesville to Calabash Bight which is about 3 to 5 miles up the coast but the cool thing is you can make this run with out having to go outside the reef as there is a series of canals that connect after a fashion, we had a great time and got a few thumbs up for the dinghy!!
We had so much fun that the following day we decided on the Mango dinghy tour which runs about 2 miles the other direction through a mango lined canal. You end up in a beautiful bight with crystal clear water for a nice swim.
No trip to Jonesville can be complete without a stop at the Hole in the Wall café. So we headed over there for a burger and a cold beer. While there we met some great couples and could not resist the cigar shots, Cigars are free to all customers, for all our friends (Ernie) who enjoy a stogie from time to time!!
We spent almost a week in Jonesville waiting out a cold front. While it is nice and easy to get sidetracked there you can’t really swim off the boat as this is where the main dump is for the surrounding area.
We didn’t get any adverse smells as the wind was in the right direction but we could see that at times this might not be a pleasant anchorage!! So we decided it was time to head to West End which of course is on the west end of Roatan.
Let me just say a quick word about navigation here. The guide books and charts for this area are few and far between and when you do get information on the anchorages from the guide books or charts they tend to be a “little” out of date or a “bit” off on their GPS coordinates. For the most part we are using the Pavladis guide to the Northwest Caribbean and while we have found most of his information to be accurate there has been some discrepancies. For example heading to Jonesville the book says head between the red and green markers…no problem except that the waypoint puts you just beyond the red marker (which someone moved on top of the reef) and there is no longer a green marker just some Clorox bottles tied together approximately where the green should be. So a word of warning to all that may traverse this way as Pavladis is fond of saying “navigation by eye is necessary at all times“. I would also like to give a shout out to all the cruisers that stand by on their radios and are always pleased to offer advice and assistance to boats entering the various harbors!! Once again we were surprised by West End as this harbor was so different from the other two we again wondered if we may be on another island!!
West End is definitely the Tourist end, with a dive shop every 100 steps in any direction. A restaurant every 50 steps!! We enjoyed our stop here as it is a Marine Park and you must take a mooring (free) and of course you can not fish or take shells from the reef. Speaking of all you had to do was dive off your boat and swim 50 yards or so and you were able to snorkel the reef!! We did some great swimming and snorkeling here. We also hiked up (twice) the hill and were able to take some great pictures of the harbor with both echo and the reef in the background. Look hard as it was farther up the “hill” than we expected!!
We hung out here for about a week before deciding to move onto to Utila the western most Bay Island. We had a great sail over to Utila about 25 miles. Our friends Larry and Vely on “Lady in Red” a steel 40 footish Colvin designed schooner went also.
Utila is a wild island. I’m sure this where all the spring breakers must go as it is one wild place after another at a fair price. Everyone here spoke English as almost everyone here is a displaced American, Canadian or Brit. The water was not quite as spectacular as Roatan but pretty none the less. We did not spend much time here as we had a weather window towards the Rio Dulce and we were hoping to catch up with our friends on Sam the Skull so we could say hi to their family. After a day or so of picking up some necessities and saying goodbye ( for now) to our friends on Lady in Red - it was great to get to know them as Larry has spent quite a lot of time in the Rio and Vely is Guatemalan so we were able to practicar our Spanish with her and she could work on her English with us!! We checked out of Honduras and headed off to the Rio.
On our sail over, about 45 miles from Utila, we were visited by these playful dolphins. The captain got these great shots!!
Let me just say a quick word about navigation here. The guide books and charts for this area are few and far between and when you do get information on the anchorages from the guide books or charts they tend to be a “little” out of date or a “bit” off on their GPS coordinates. For the most part we are using the Pavladis guide to the Northwest Caribbean and while we have found most of his information to be accurate there has been some discrepancies. For example heading to Jonesville the book says head between the red and green markers…no problem except that the waypoint puts you just beyond the red marker (which someone moved on top of the reef) and there is no longer a green marker just some Clorox bottles tied together approximately where the green should be. So a word of warning to all that may traverse this way as Pavladis is fond of saying “navigation by eye is necessary at all times“. I would also like to give a shout out to all the cruisers that stand by on their radios and are always pleased to offer advice and assistance to boats entering the various harbors!! Once again we were surprised by West End as this harbor was so different from the other two we again wondered if we may be on another island!!
West End is definitely the Tourist end, with a dive shop every 100 steps in any direction. A restaurant every 50 steps!! We enjoyed our stop here as it is a Marine Park and you must take a mooring (free) and of course you can not fish or take shells from the reef. Speaking of all you had to do was dive off your boat and swim 50 yards or so and you were able to snorkel the reef!! We did some great swimming and snorkeling here. We also hiked up (twice) the hill and were able to take some great pictures of the harbor with both echo and the reef in the background. Look hard as it was farther up the “hill” than we expected!!
We hung out here for about a week before deciding to move onto to Utila the western most Bay Island. We had a great sail over to Utila about 25 miles. Our friends Larry and Vely on “Lady in Red” a steel 40 footish Colvin designed schooner went also.
Utila is a wild island. I’m sure this where all the spring breakers must go as it is one wild place after another at a fair price. Everyone here spoke English as almost everyone here is a displaced American, Canadian or Brit. The water was not quite as spectacular as Roatan but pretty none the less. We did not spend much time here as we had a weather window towards the Rio Dulce and we were hoping to catch up with our friends on Sam the Skull so we could say hi to their family. After a day or so of picking up some necessities and saying goodbye ( for now) to our friends on Lady in Red - it was great to get to know them as Larry has spent quite a lot of time in the Rio and Vely is Guatemalan so we were able to practicar our Spanish with her and she could work on her English with us!! We checked out of Honduras and headed off to the Rio.
On our sail over, about 45 miles from Utila, we were visited by these playful dolphins. The captain got these great shots!!
We made one stop along the coastline of Honduras in a place called Porto Escondido.
Porto Escondido is part of a Honduran national park, there is nothing there but a beautiful lagoon with palm trees and sandy beach. In the morning while you are having your coffee in your cockpit you can listen to the Howler monkeys, parrots, and watch the Toucan's fly overhead. We tried to get the admiral to “howl” like the monkeys but she was having none of it.
From here we will head to Tres Puntas which is about a 60 mile run. The gateway to the Rio Dulce - Sweet River! Here we will await the right tide to cross the infamous Rio Dulce Sand Bar - we won't have to wait too long as Echo draws less than 5' and there is reported 5.5' depth at MLW.
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