Guanaja at Last!

Guanaja is just a short, depending on the weather, ferry ride away from the coastline of Honduras. We had to search everywhere for information on this elusive "yacht", but finally the local connection prevailed and we found out that the ferry travels from Trujillo to Guanaja on Thursdays and Sundays and leaves the dock at 1:00pm ...... most of the time, after all, this is Honduras!

Excited to be heading to our final destination we got there early, loaded all our gear, cooler with cold beer (a real must!) and fishing poles. There was already some freight aboard. I guess just about anything goes, even pigs and chickens! We noticed that there weren't very many passengers. I guess THEY knew that the boat wouldn't be leaving until 2:15pm! A local woman selling coconut bread meandered through the aisles selling her bakery goods and soon the boat literally became alive with people. Two cold beers into our wait the horn tooted a few times and slowly we backed away from the pier! Bye-bye Trujillo.

The ferry boat, or yacht, as the islanders call her has seen better days. She looks to be some kind of a large lake boat, refitted with seats taken from an airliner. The seat in front of me cautioned to keep my tray table in an upright position and to fasten my seat belt during take off. At this point I am ready for anything!


The locals that take this ferry all the time know the drill, get on board just in time, grab an extra seat cushion for a head rest and camp out in the center aisle for a three hour siesta. Next time we will know all the rules! For those of us who decided to stay awake there was entertainment on board. A few minutes out, the mate started up a movie on a flat screen TV up front. This would have kept me occupied except that the kung-fu movie they chose to play was in Chinese with Spanish sub-titles. YIKES!!!!

The seas were calm, but with a bit of a roll, just enough to be interesting. I think that was why the locals try to sleep on the voyage.

Three and a half hours later we docked at the municipal pier in Guanaja Honduras. Small boats were jockeying for position around the ferry to pick up passengers and freight and kept things interesting. I swear, I think that everyone must have a cousin in Guanaja. There must have been a hundred people waiting on the dock! For being in the nowhere, in Central America, on a Sunday afternoon, there was a lot of activity.


The Castaways Resort sent their driver, Arturo, to pick us up in his boat, so once again we moved our stuff. We arrived at the resort just as the sun was going down ... a beautiful time ... the restaurant was hopping with people and it was good to be on land again. What better plan than a cold beer?

Guanaja Honduras, our adventure begins once again!