Springtime, summer or fall

Guess who is late again with their blog entry. This is about a month overdue and a lot of the credit, especially photos, goes to Brett, Mike and Rach.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost May here. It is now actually summer and it is really hot during the day, but at night we still have nice cool weather. The last couple days have been crazy windy and the wind has kicked up all the dust that has been around since it hasn’t rained in a month. In March we had some friends visit from Boston and we had an awesome time showing them around here and then heading out to the coast. It was so nice having them here, as close friends and family are the only two big things we feel are missing from our life here. We were with them for five days and it went by like a flash.

 

They came in on Wednesday the 18^th and by the time they got here they had already had a travel adventure. We went down to town after school to meet them (at a hot gas station on the highway) and Melanie checked email and found out their flight was delayed for four hours. This meant they got to do almost all of the drive to Gracias in the dark. They got into Gracias a little after 9, and then we had a quick dinner before piling six people and six people’s things into the car. Our neighbor was out of town for a while and so we were able to use his house for a couple people to sleep in, which made things much more doable with just four in our little place. We woke up the next day, headed to school, and left them to discover Villa Verde on their own. They had a great time at the restaurant up in the park and stayed long enough that she was ready to serve them the next meal. 

Dona Alejandrina roasting some coffee.
Some of Dona's tortillas:

They took a little trip to La Campa, but I don’t think that other people are as taken with it as we are.  After a dinner at the house, we hit up the hot springs which were popular with everyone.

Melanie with Irma, one of her smartest and most needy kids.

Friday the whole gang came to school and helped out with classes and made quite a splash with the kids. It’s amazing how much smoother everything can go with more than one teacher in the class.  Rachel and Brian were awesome helping with our first research project and Mike helped out a lot with adding some volume to the songs we were singing and showing off some crazy Frisbee throws. Brett did a guest reading of the spelling words and made quick friends with one of my students who drew a picture of a baseball game for him before we left. The school also made a hard pitch for all of them to come back to teach next year.

Melanie's class, the way they usually are

As soon as school was finished we made a mad dash for the coast in the jam-packed Mitsubishi Nativa. Mike was a natural Honduran driver, dodging potholes and gunning it past tractor trailers. We made it to San Pedro, grabbed a little food at the mostly-closed bus station and then went on to Ceiba. It was a fun ride with all sorts of good discussion and as the night went on, more and more Disney sing a longs. It’s really interesting to me that that is one of the common bonds of our generation, whereas for the current generation I’m guessing it will be High School Musical that they crank out 15 years down the road. After going through Ceiba, we turned off on a dirt road to head up to the “Jungle River Lodge” which would be our base for white water rafting and ziplining. The road wasn’t that bad but it was a single lane road with no railing 50-75 feet above the river, and we were glad when we finally saw the kayak that the lodge used as a sign. We got settled in our camp cabin-like accommodations and had a tarantula sighting and a few classic card games before we all climbed into our bunks.

Mike's shades definitely give him the edge in this pic

We woke up the next morning excited for rafting, grabbed a quick breakfast and got all our gear and headed up the river. Melanie and I were the most “experienced” rafters and had been telling the others how we were going to be floating down the river with a little bit of paddling now and then on the 3-4 rapids. We found out very quickly that this was not the case. Probably half of the rafting trip was what I would call a river adventure. First, our guide casually explained that we were supposed to swim across the river and meet him on the other side. It’s not a crazy request in words but think about it, this was a whitewater river, usually things go down it not across it. So we had to swim straight up the river really hard and let the current carry us across. About half of us made it across without needing the rescue rope, and by now, we were already exhausted at 8:30 in the morning. We continued to walk and swim upriver for the next half hour until we got to an impassable waterfall and I think we all had a bad feeling about what might be asked of us next.  The guide jumped off of a 20 ft rock into a rushing whirlpool, across to the other side, and then scaled a 40-50 ft inverted rock face and then proceeded to do a flip off the cliff back into the whirlpool. He survived, luckily, but none of us wanted to challenge fate or the failure of our muscles. We were still having a hard time wrapping our minds around jumping off the 20 ft rock. The rock wasn’t a straight cliff but a gentle slope so you had to run for a good 20 ft before you came to the point where you could jump off so besides the drop there was the real chance you could fall on the slick rock, break some body part and fall limply into the rushing whirlpool. We all made it across with a lot of cheering and relief and then started back down the river. I thought this was going to be the scariest part, floating back down over rapids, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I had thought. The water shoots your body right over the rapids and besides being shoved under every now and then by the falling water it was a pleasant ride down. When we made it back down to where we had started, we finally got into the rafts and headed down the river with no explanation or instruction. The rapids were awesome, lots of class 4s and a couple 4.5s that were pretty much just 7-8 ft waterfalls that we went over in our boat. Melanie and I, the “experienced” ones, were the only ones who got dumped in the river and our guide would be getting a group high five going while I was floundering to get back into the boat. Our guide was really good though, and we stopped a couple times along the river for him to show us things like a plant that was a natural soap and some big iguanas sunning on some rocks. Although we weren’t really prepared for the first part of the trip it was an amazing rafting trip and surpassed all of our expectations.

 Rach on the first zipline heading across the Rio Cangrejal

When we finished rafting we went back to the lodge and they had a huge fruit buffet and we gorged ourselves on fresh cantalope, watermelon, pineapple, and bananas. After a little more formal lunch, we lounged on the rocks next to the river and waited for the second half of our adventure day. Our guide picked us up and we got geared up for riding the wires. We had a brief introduction to ziplining with basic safety tips and a short practice wire to get our “form” right. I kept on thinking that sometime I was going to accidentally put my hands in front of the pulley and get them chopped off. Like the rafting trip, there was a lot of bonus material on top of just riding the wires. After our first big wire across the river, we walked a little while through the jungle checking out different kinds of medicinal and poisonous plants, endangered trees and the highlight of the trip probably, a big termite nest. Our guide showed us the nest and told us that if you get lost in the jungle with no food that termites make a great source of protein. We all thought “Oh interesting” and then he proceeded to share that they tasted just like carrots. At this point I think we were all a little skeptical but then he plunged he hand into the nest and pulled out a handful of live crawling termites.  He chomped a few, and sure enough, we could smell some carrots. After a lot of prodding and peer pressure, we all put some live termites in our mouth, chomped down, and sure enough, they were a high-protein carroty treat. The wires were really cool too, ranging from short ones from one platform to another to flying through the branches of trees in the jungle. The last wire was breathtaking, almost 600 feet across a river at a pretty steep angle. You started out in the woods and then came flying out across the river. There was a little bit of miscommunication with the guide though. He was talking to us beforehand and we took it to mean, “This is a long wire and you can take your brake hand off because you will have time to put it back on.” What he really said as we later found out was, “Don’t take your brake hand off the wire because you won’t be able to put it back on and you will crash into a tree.” This we found out through direct experience. It was pretty exhilarating flying across the river spinning around but pretty frightening when I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to stop and came into the platform at 20 mph. 

Chilling on the rocks next to the river:

Big Bad Brian focused on the wire

We all made it pretty much unscathed and partook of the fruit buffet one more time before we packed up and headed towards Tela. On our way we made a couple pitstops in La Ceiba to enjoy the outposts of American fast food. At Dunkin Donuts we got a dozen donuts and one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. One of the dozen that we got happened to be a Boston Crème and Brett, trying to be friendly, told the cashier “Soy de Boston” or “I’m from Boston” and she gave him one of the best “Like I care” looks I have ever seen.

 

After getting a good laugh out of that we made it to Tela and drove around looking for the hotel we were going to stay at. After getting some good yelling at for driving down one ways the wrong way, we made it to the Maya Vista, a beautiful hotel way up on a hill looking over Tela Bay. We took all our stuff inside and were going to head to our room when I found out that I had made a huge travel planning mistake. Because of some early planning and changing plans I had booked the hotel for the wrong nights, and after we didn’t show up the first night, they had taken our deposit and given the room to someone else. I felt so stupid and was just tired from traveling and rafting and ziplining, but eventually the owner helped us find another place that he said was good. He did find us another place, but we soon found out that it wasn’t “good.” There were six of us and we wanted a place we could all stay together, and after looking at the possible rooms, we chose the one that didn’t smell like they had used enough air freshener to cover up a dead body. Was it a good choice? Hard to tell. As soon as we sat down in our new room we saw a huge roach crawl out of the sofa and head towards our Dunkin Donuts. Our first reaction to this was, “Crap, he’s going to try and eat our donuts” and so we had to keep the donuts in the car. Mike tried to hit another roach with his shoe, and although we all swore that he hit it, when he lifted his shoe it wasn’t there, adding to the mystique of these superintelligent disappearing creatures. 

Ahh, roach motel

After calming down a little bit we headed out for some dinner and found a really nice place with good Caribbean rice and beans and some fried fish that came entero with their eyes looking right at you. Mike did a good Big Mouth Billy Bass impression. We also had a traveling mariachi (I think) band come by and play a few songs and their first one was really good, but when we tried a request (it ended up being La Bamba) they flopped.

Honduran Caribbean Typical Food:

Mike with his old disappearing fish trick. As you can tell Rach is thoroughly "impressed."

After making it through the night in the literal roach motel we were glad to pack up and move back to the hotel we had originally wanted to stay. In the morning we went and explored the Tela market. In my mind it wasn’t quite as good as the Gracias market, but they did have a lot more fish. We found some good snacks like quesadillas with a piece of fried chicken in it, and then some fresh squeezed orange juice. 

Tela is home to the second largest tropical botanical gardens in the world, so we thought that would be a good way to spend the morning. The gardens used to be private gardens of one of the banana barons but now it is public. There were lots of nice paths to walk on, and the first part of the walk was through the densest bamboo tunnel I had ever seen. Although there wasn’t too much information about the individual plants, it was educational to see several different types of one family of plants growing together. There were probably 10 different kinds of palm trees and some really beautiful giant eucalyptus trees. 

Never would have even thought of it but yes, there are red pineapples.

Some of the bamboo

They also had an exhibit on the first man:

Our afternoon goal was to make it to Miami, a Garifuna beach a little smaller than its American counterpart. We had seen some pictures of it and it looked like it was just a big barrier sandbar with palm trees and a few huts on it. Although it was only 5 or 6 miles away, we soon discovered that we probably weren’t going to make it, since the road was even worse than our road up the mountain. Although the beach we settled for may not have been quite as idyllic as Miami, it had clean sand and warm water and that was all we wanted. We went to the beach at this beach club that we assumed would just kick us out, but we swam, lounged on the beach, and had some fierce volleyball games and they didn’t seem to mind at all. At this point, Melanie and I were getting a little jealous that everybody else was going to get to stay and hang out at the beach and we had to go to work the next day. We headed back towards Tela, got settled at our hotel and had a nice dinner looking out at the ocean.

 

We had seen that there was a fair in town, and although we had seen the less than splendid fairs in Gracias, this one looked like it might have more to offer. After walking through all the fried chicken vendors to get there, we were pleasantly surprised to find out there was no entrance fee, you just buy tickets for the games or food at will. The first thing that caught our attention were the bumper cars. I’m a huge fan of bumper cars and was really excited to get in on the action, but I couldn’t figure out how the system worked. I could tell you had to buy a ticket, but I had no idea what you were supposed to do next. There was no line, no one collecting tickets, but after a while we sort of figured out what was going on. The ticket you bought was actually a plastic token; when a buzzer went off all the cars stopped everyone started running around like crazy. This is because although all the cars stopped at the same time everyone was trying to run from the side to one of the cars before someone who had lots of tokens put another in their car and started aiming for knocking peoples’ knees off. It added a whole other degree of difficulty to everything. After feeling like we had conquered the bumper car circuit, we headed over to the spider arm spinny thing. This is another classic, with a little more stomach churning and although it was the exact same ride they have in the States, it lasted at least twice as long. Mike and Rach were lucky and got the crazy car that was spinning a couple of times a second and somehow they both kept their supper in. 

Do they put a mix of owl and dog in these delicacies?

This is before the Puk-0-matic 3000 gets going
You might say I'm a little competitive with the bumper cars

We walked around the fair a little while longer and skipped some of the scarier rides. I think the scariest looking ride of all was the Ferris wheel. I’ve always thought of the Ferris wheel as this kind of leisurely “let’s admire the view” kind of ride, but in Honduras they have a different take on it. The huge wheel probably does a revolution every three seconds with everyone on it shrieking and then after 30 seconds or so they brake it and spin it the other way. For anyone who has read Devil in the White City that’s sort of how I imagine people felt when they rode the first Ferris wheel at in 1893. We were looking for some good carnival food but couldn’t find anything other than the normal fried chicken and French fries. We headed back to the hotel and got all packed up to head back towards Gracias the next day.

The next morning we all woke up, got some good fruit at the market, and partook of the great coastal baleadas one last time. We went out to the highway and said our goodbyes, really sad to leave everyone, and not exactly excited about our full day bus trip back. We feel so lucky to have such good friends and even luckier that they would come to Honduras and see our world here. If they’re reading: Thanks guys for being such a great group to travel with and hopefully we can do it again soon!