Guanaja Island

Guanaja is the easternmost of Honduras's Bay Islands, the most isolated, and the least visited by package tourism. The island is almost entirely jungle — steep, forested ridges running to the water's edge, with no beach-resort strip. The main settlement, Bonacca, sits on a small cay just offshore, its wooden houses raised on stilts above the water, connected by boardwalks rather than roads. The island took the most direct hit from Hurricane Mitch in October 1998, and the recovery shaped a quieter, more self-reliant character than Roatán or Utila. The reef system off Guanaja's north and east coasts holds excellent wall diving: the drop-off starts shallow and falls to several hundred metres, with strong Caribbean current that periodically pushes nutrient-rich water up the wall and concentrates pelagic species. The tidal regime is Caribbean microtidal, spring range 0.3 to 0.5 m, with the same mixed semidiurnal pattern as the rest of the Bay Islands. Weather windows between fronts define the usable diving, snorkelling, and fishing calendar here more than the tide does. Predictions come from Open-Meteo Marine, accuracy class ±45 min / ±0.2–0.3 m.