Honduras sits in Central America, Spanish-speaking and facing the Pacific on one side and the Caribbean on the other. The Caribbean side is a different world. That northern coast, and the islands off it, are the part that belongs to the Caribbean.
The real draw is offshore, they sit right on the Mesoamerican Reef, the same one that runs up through Belize to Cozumel.
- the Bay Islands,
- Roatán,
- Utila,
- Guanaja.
Utila is one of the cheapest places on earth to learn to scuba dive, and whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea, pass through these waters.
The islands were settled by English-speaking Creoles, so out here you hear English, not Spanish, just like the rest of the western Caribbean.
This coast is also where the Garifuna story begins. In 1797 the British deported them from the island of St. Vincent and dumped them on Roatán, and from there they spread along the Central American coast all the way to Belize. They're an Afro-Indigenous people with their own language, food, and drumming, and Honduras is where they first landed.
Inland from the shore lies La Mosquitia, the Mosquito Coast, a huge stretch of rainforest and wetland and home to the Miskito people, one of the wildest corners of Central America.
So the country is Central American, but its north coast and islands are pure Caribbean. Honduras touches the same sea, the same reef, and the same culture as everywhere else along this shore.
Video about Roatan, the Honduras caribbean
