Guanaja - General Info
Description:
Guanaja is one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, approximately 70 km off the north coast of Honduras, and 12 km from the island of Roatan.
Guanaja town is located on Bonacca, one of the small cays off Guanaja, the main island. This is where the majority of the population of 4000 lives. It has no roads or cars and is jam-packed with houses and businesses on stilts, canals and fishing boats. The other two main settlements on Guanaja are Mangrove Bight and Savannah Bight. Smaller settlements include East End and North East Bight.
Cruiser Highlights:
The unique town has a variety of small bars and restaurants, a bank, shopping and fuel. On the main island, there is hiking and a variety of dive resorts which offer restaurant options and dive excursions.
Entrance Notes or Cautions:
The most sheltered anchorage at El Bight may be entered either from town (keep a visual lookout for obstacles); or from inside the reefs through a channel between Dunbar island to port (a 5 story hotel built on a single rock) and visibly marked reefs extending from the headland. Cruisers report Cmap and Navionics to be confusing, inaccurate and actually misleading as to depths—though hazards appear to be accurate.
Position: 16° 26.44’N, 85° 53.33’W (off Bonnaca)
Last updated: February 2019
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Related to following destinations: Bay Islands, Guanaja, Honduras
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Checked out of Guanaja today. Immigration was quick and easy and we were told no fees. When we get to the Port Captain’s office he tells us it will be $75 for the Zarpe. After waiting for an hour and questioning why we were told there was no fee and we knew people who checked out with none he finally said “ok no problem” and let us go without a fee. So I guess I can only say to question authority. If he had demanded it we would have asked for a receipt. That may have worked too?
Jan 11, 2019 12:08 AM
Corruption alert Guanaja!
Immigration:
We checked in to Roatan, easy and free of charge!
However when we tried to check out of Guanaja, a guy on the street came running to us asking if we were checking out, I said – naive as I am, “Yes we are.” He then run to the Immigration office and entered before us. Shook the officers hand, and took the job as our translator, Which we did not need. But we could not just throw him out of the office, Afterwards he wanted a little something for the “job” of course… This seemed to be a deal between them, sometimes it seemed the immigration officer was faking his lack of English knowledge.
The Immigration officer claimed he could not stamp out my crewmember, because he has been in Colombia 6 months before (stamp in his passport), and it is required to have a yellow fever card if you have been there. (To be clear- that is not the case. My crew checked with his doctor in Norway, and he did not have to have a Yellow fever card to go to Colombia, it is only recommended in certain areas.) He said my guy had to get a flight to la Ceiba to get a yellow fever shot for (he specified) $160 USD, then fly back to Guanaja and then get the stamped passport back. We had to sit there with hat in hand and ask if there was any other way. And of course he could “help” us out if we gave him something for “refurbishing the office”. We ended up giving him 1000 Limpiri ($40 USD got it down from 160…) and we had to give the Translator 100 Limpiri.
Our friend in another boat also had similar issues. He did not have a receipt for the check-in fee in Utila, and had to pay that again ($4 USD? there is no receipt for this fee as far as I know).
Another family tried to check out after that and were told they needed to have a Zarpe for leaving Roatan, and he demanded a fee, He got none.
Port Captain:
He was not corrupt (to my knowledge) but he was rather grumpy, and did not give us (or the other two boats) a Zarpe until after 16:00. At 16:00 we went to his office and we were refused a Zarpe as we were planning to leave the next day. We had to go to him 2 hours before leaving to get the Zarpe he said.
The next day we learned that there was recently 2 boats overstaying for about a month each after checking out, as they were waiting for the weather. This might explain why he refused to give us the Zarpe.
Yellow fever vaccine is a requirement for entering Honduras from Colombia and Panama (and several other countries) They are cracking down on it.