Cabañas on Clark’s Cay, Guanaja, Honduras: Undercurrent 04/2020

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Dear Fellow Diver,

Sometimes the adventure in going to less-traveled dive locations starts with the travel. On this trip in February, the adventure began with a 15-minute flight in a four-seater chartered Cessna from the island of Roatán to the island of Guanaja. I enjoyed the great view, but for one friend, it was a white-knuckle flight all the way. Upon arrival, no worries about TSA lines, just walk a few steps to the dock, where Clark's Cay's boat crew whisked us to the resort's private isle. (The Guanaja airport is accessed only by boat.) By 1.00 p.m., I had a Salva Vida beer in hand, while I listened to the welcome briefing from one of the owners and manager Lee Gano, who is also developing condos and a marina on Guanaja, near Clark's Cay.

Clark's Cay Cabaña After overnight travel from San Francisco, I was fine with chilling for the afternoon and circumambulating the lovely eight-acre island. My partner looked for birds, and tried out the "circular river" around the pool, powered by Jacuzzi jets. At 4:30 p.m., I settled into the outdoor bar-restaurant for drinks and happy hour snacks -- I ate too many shrimp fritters, but no worries, they brought out more. As I often do, I brought some CDs to pass to the bartender to enhance their music library, but I'm behind times. Here you just ask to use the bartender's phone to makes selections on Spotify.

The next morning, my first dive was at "Spires," typical of the good Caribbean diving found here. (Code word: "Caribbean diving:" calm waters, pleasant, somewhat monochromatic corals, plenty of tropicals, many critters, few larger fish.) We descended to the shallow bottom, cleared our masks and took out our regulators, and passed the checkout. Kennet, our divemaster, slowly led our group -- the four of us who came together and an American couple, both experienced divers -- through a sand channel between patch reefs, where I spotted razorfish, tilefish, yellow-headed jawfish, a tiny sand diver, striped goatfish nosing through the sand and spreading tidbits for wrasses, and a bar jack shadowing them. Kennet found a shortfin pipefish, my partner pointed out a pike blenny peering from its hole, and Kennet got a Peterson shrimp to tickle his finger. (Why does that never work for me?) After 55 minutes, I was at the safety stop, getting a close-up of comb jellies....

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