Just before our return to Canada we spent two nights on Utila, one
of the islands in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. This reef, the longest in the
Western Hemisphere, extends from the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula
along the Mayan Riviera, past Belize and Guatemala to the Bay Islands of
Honduras. Utila is the smallest of these islands.
The first painting I started on Utila
focused entirely on what I could see of the coral beds looking down into the
shallow water close to the shore (augmented by what I could remember of the
underwater view I’d had during an inept couple of minutes of snorkeling.)
It wasn’t until the second morning we were
on the island that I discovered this stunning view looking back toward the
Nombre de Dios mountains on the mainland of Honduras. They’d had a fair bit of
rain on the mainland, (we knew that) so none of this was visible when we first
arrived. Pico Bonito, on the right, is the tallest peak in this part of the
range.
