Moon over Guanaja!

Like two little kids waiting for Santa to come down the chimney, we were up at 4:00am sitting on the deck enjoying the moon over Guanaja! The performance was better than any academy award winning movie. The warm breezes, the rustle of the palm trees and the great expanse of the universe ... WOW ... does it get any better? We stayed there until the sun started to poke its head up and our second day in Guanaja Honduras began.

Tina and Lela were moving about in the kitchen and the smell of coffee beckoned us to begin our day...... after all, this was Friday and everyone knows that the supply boat from the Honduran mainland comes to Bonacca Town, the small cay where the majority of the Guanajan's live.

From the picture you can see the small cay of Bonacca ... we stayed on the "large" island ( 3 miles by 11 miles) just behind Guanaja Rock, about a five minute ride from the small island of Bonacca.

Guermo picked us up at 9:00am and we went by Pango over to the cay ... he introduced us to Jim and Kathy Springer, two expats that are retired from Georgia, and they have called Guanaja home for the last 15 years........next we met Gar, also from the US. He sailed his boat here many years ago and just never left! He keeps his boat on anchor in the bay in front of the Manati Bar...... we also ran into our friend Jim Jones on the street finishing up his weekly shopping.

Friday is not only the day that all the fresh vegetables come in, but it is the time that all the Gringo's boat over to the small cay and catch up with all the news from the other expats....it seems that everyone meets at this one cafe and orders Baleadas. They are are thick tortillas filled with eggs, beans, cheese and sometimes pico de gallo or meat or avocado and are delicious!
I guess, for the local Gringo's, this goes on every Friday...the men eat and drink and the women wait for the produce to get unpacked so they can make their purchases......everyone enjoys the Friday festivities!

Of course, we only have a limited time to experience this Bay Island paradise, so we cut our visit short to Bonacca and headed back to the resort to get our fishing poles and try our luck.

The guys are readying the poles and they actually make their own lures. It seems that the locals do not use rods, but do what is called hand lining ... meaning they simply throw out the line from a spool held in their hand and when they feel the tug they pull it back in by hand. Daniel, shown in the picture here with my husband, told us how they "chum" the hot areas with packed conch shells. They mash up fish remains with sand and then stuff them in an old conch shell .... as the shell floats down to the bottom it releases bits of "fish enticing" food, then as the shell sits on the bottom, the fish gather around trying, without luck, to get the remaining chum out. He and his brothers have caught over one hundred pounds of yellow tail snapper at a time using this method. Unfortunately, they call this sport "fishing", and not "catching" and we were a little late in the day for the catching part! A good thing we were planning on heading over to Graham's Place, another local resort and eatery for lunch, but more of that later!

Guanaja Honduras has a magic all its own ... right now we are under its spell ....... !