Bay Islands Department

That's where they do the jump in the pool, guys.

On November 3rd, we're going to be in Cox and Hole, Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras.

Okay.

On November 4th, we're going to be in Harvest Cave, Belize.

Next place is called Guanaha.

One of three main Bay Islands, Guanaha is also a place to go visit.

Place of great beauty.

I'll show you a picture of the water surrounding these islands.

There are restaurants and bars there.

La Ceiba, enclosed by a lush forest and waterfalls, there are countless opportunities to enjoy outdoor adventure here.

You can take a ferry to one of the Bay Islands from La Ceiba as well.

Just really, really beautiful.

The French buccaneers were perhaps a little less squeamish, while the Dutch and the Spanish apparently preyed on friend and foe alike.

But no matter what their nationality or origin, all left certain places free from molestation, and among these the favorites were the Virgin Isles, the island of Tortuga off Haiti, the islets about Santo Domingo, Abe's Island off Venezuela, the Caymans south of Jamaica, Jamaica itself, and the Bay Islands off Honduras.

These islands, especially the Virgins, became known far and wide as lairs of the reckless sea rovers, whither none dared to follow and where they could, for a space, cast aside all fear of shipwreck, murder, and sudden death, and live in peace.

Callous, case-hardened, and ruffianly as they were, yet they knew well which side their bread was buttered on, and they made and enforced strict laws and discipline in their retreats.

The pirates depended more upon seamanship and marksmanship than mere weight of metal or thundering broadsides, although on some of their later and larger enterprises they used ships carrying forty guns or more.

When we consider the heterogeneous character of their crews and the varied antecedents and training of those who made up their number, it is not surprising that the corsairs succeeded against tremendous odds.

In addition to the true Tortugan hunters and buccaneers, there were logwood cutters from the Central American coast and the Bay Islands, ex-soldiers and sailors, Indians, criminals from prisons and jails, outlaws and bandits, all men who were trained in the use of arms, of immense physical strength and endurance, with an extraordinary power to undergo hunger, thirst, and other hardships, and with an utter disregard for death or bodily suffering.

The strangest part of it was that this riffraff of adventurers was amenable to discipline.

And in forecasting the future with the close of the millennium or Y2K impending, my stepfather actually got involved with a shortwave radio operation based out of central Honduras.

In the spring of 1998, and with some end-time concerns being present, my family sold its major assets and sent two containers with all of our possessions to the island of Roatan in the Bay Islands of Honduras.

It was my stepfather's plan in 1998 to go back and forth between Roatan and the mainland, doing work for the shortwave radio venture and some real estate consulting in the Bay Islands.

We would then see what the global prophetic situation in the world would be.

None of this came to pass.

Is it a Third World nation, would you say?

Well, Honduras is, but the Bay Islands used to be an English colony, and their level of, uh, life has, uh, always been s- somewhat of a step above.

Because of the organizational skills of the Brits.

And yeah, and I just think the culture and being offshore from the rest of Honduras, and at l- at least in the '80s and '90s, kept the Bay Islands free from a lot of the violence and drug trafficking that was going-

Is it humid?

It's just like here.

Exactly.

Today's date is Thursday, August 27, 2026, and the mission of today's deep dive is an absolute no stone left unturned audit of Utila.

Which is the smallest and famously the cheapest of Honduras' Bay Islands.

It's this place that aggressively markets itself as the world's most affordable scuba certification destination.

But before we get into the weeds, here is your instruction for today.

Yeah, of course.

Like, how is a traveler supposed to balance those unbeatable prices against that level three reconsider travel advisory? Because it's really tough to look at that price tag and not wonder if the cost is low purely because the physical risk is high.

Well, to contextualize the State Department advisory based purely on the data, the Bay Islands, which includes Utila and its neighbor, Roatan, are statistically much safer than the Honduran mainland.

And that's sort of happening all along the coast of Honduras.

It's not specific to just Tela Bay where this one particular conflict is going on, where five Garifuna have been criminalized, but it's happening in many different hotel, resort, golf course, cruise ship terminal projects that are basically promoted both in the Bay Islands, which is off the north coast of Honduras, and then also across the Caribbean coast on maina, mainland Honduras.

Yeah.

And, um, the Rosenthal family also, um, were, like a lot of the elites in Honduras, you know, have their tentacles everywhere, right? Banking, land, um, other natural resources and the media as well, right? I see the parallel then there with what's happening in the US, right, just this concentration of power.

And they're Bay Island Secret Sauce.

So if you're familiar with that area, the Bay Islands, like Roytan, Guanaha, off the coast of Honduras, they're called the Bay Islands.

Yeah.

And that's where these ingredients grow.