Honduras

It is 7:30 in the morning and I’m on my personal veranda on a small hill looking out over green trees and beyond them to blue water and a bright orange sun emerging from it. My feet are up on the rail and there’s a cup of coffee in my hand. I snap a photo for Instagram—#itdoesntgetany­­better­than­this. And the day’s diving hasn’t even started yet.

The Cayos Cochinos is a group of small islands located just between the mainland of Honduras and Roatán. Within this group are two small islands—Cayo Menor and Cayo Grande—and 13 more small coral cays situated 30km (19mi) northeast of La Ceiba on the northern shores of Honduras.

Following six flights, two nights and a 30-hour boat trip, I found myself approaching a relatively uncharted group of small coral cays about 60km off the northeast coast of Honduras, not far from the Nicaraguan border.

First off, a confession. I love diving in Roatan. Why? For a couple of reasons. Number one—the reefs around the island are still in superb shape. Not a lot of ocean-going pelagics, it’s true. But I’ve been diving the reefs of the Caribbean for more than ten years, and I would rank Roatan in the top two. (Bonaire would be my other choice.)

“If you’ve been to South East Asia, don’t bother with the Caribbean” is a phrase I’ve encountered many times over the last decade. Having done virtually all of my diving in Asia-Pacific, the region’s legendary diversity tends to leave one a tad spoilt. When you’ve dived exclusively in the world’s biodiversity hotspot, it’s all-too-easy to assume that other areas will suffer by comparison.

The attorney strokes the white belly of an eight-foot-long reef shark. This is not a lawyer joke. I’m 70 feet (23 m) deep in the clear blue Caribbean water off Roatan Island with a half dozen scuba divers from Anthony’s Key Resort. We’re at a dive site called “Cara a cara,” which in Spanish means “face-to-face.”

Utila is the smallest of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras, where divers go in search of whalesharks, but find much more. Being the Executive Director of The Manta Network, a global conservation organization, I was very interested in the local efforts to protect whalesharks. Patric Douglas, Director of SharkDiver.com, invited us to stay in Utila and write about his dive group’s whaleshark experiences.