Luxury Honduras Voyages

Columbus named this the Isle of Pines, and its main settlement, Bonacca Town, is built almost entirely on a tiny cay of its own, canals standing in for streets and boats for cars, a nickname of Little Venice well earned. The main island itself is virtually car-free, laced with waterfalls and dense pine forest running down to a barrier reef, some of the healthiest coral in the western Caribbean. Garifuna drumming and fresh conch fritters wait in the villages along the shore. One of the least-known Bay Islands, and one of the most rewarding.

The smallest and least developed of Honduras's Bay Islands is also its biggest draw for one reason: whale sharks feed in these waters more reliably than almost anywhere else on earth. Dive the wall sites that made Utila a diver's rite of passage, then look for the endemic Utila spiny-tailed iguana, found nowhere else on the planet, in the mangrove swamp behind town. A castaway, flip-flops-only atmosphere and some of the cheapest, best reef diving in the hemisphere.