(no subject)
OK Mom and Papa i know that you want to hear from me and gain my perspective on the trip but instead i give you Raad's. He has laid out a long and detailed description of our resont travels and I hope that this satisfies your longing to know how things are going.
To add, we are curently in Utila, a small island two hours off the shore of Honduras. we have signed up for a scuba program and it looks promising. Many people have said that it is easy to get stuck here for a few years and i can see why. It is very relaxed, nice people, and a nice atmusphere. we start the training tomarow. until then we plan to spend the day relaxing on the beach.
Now on to Raad's summery of the trip...
We just arrived here yesterday after a long and grueling 3 day journey from Las Marias, deep in the heart of La Mosquitia, Honduras. La Mosquitia is the biggest patch of virgin tropical rainforest in Honduras, and rivals the Amazon for its diversity of wildlife and isolation from the outside world. Indeed, this is quite obvious by the fact that there are no roads into or out of the large area; there are only boats and airplanes (and horses) for transportation.
About a week or so ago, we left from Trujillo and made our way by bus to a small town just off the coast. It was an interesting busride, as we passed into the villages neighboring La Mosquitia and saw lots of Garifuna families and culture. (The Garifuna are a mix between African slaves left by the Spanish and Carribean races). Anyway, after about five hours on the bus, we arrived in a hole of a town called Iriona, which consisted of a small comedor (eatery) and thats about it. Fortunately, a boatman offered to take us to a nearby village to stay the night before making another long boatride into La Mosquitia. We accepted and had our first wonderful experience travelling through mirror-still waters in a small canoe surrounded by dense jungle and meadow. The scenery and the situation was stunning - I was immediately struck by how far away from home and from everything else I really was... but what an adventure!
We arrived in a small village just outside of Sangrelaya and found a nice old man with a place to stay. He offered us a great dinner and told us of the region and the area by candle light (by this time, we were far away from any electricity). Even napkins were a prized posession here, according to him. After a night, we awoke ready to make our trip into the edge of the rainforest. I wanted to explore the town with my camera while we waited for a pickup, so I departed out looking for subjects and people to engage. The place reminded me of what I might imagine in an African village rather than a Honduran one; everyone acted as if they rarely (if ever) were exposed to outsiders. A small boy came up and asked me if I would take his picture, which broke the ice. I happily agreed, and then moved closer to the small gathering of children and adults, who welcomed me warmly and absolutely loved to have me taking pictures of them. Once again, my camera proved to be the tool for me to come to converse and interact with the people. I showed them the photos of my journey, and they were all very interested to have their faces included in my collection.
Finally, a pickup arrived and we hopped in the back, thinking we'd take a nice joyride to the nearby town of Batalla, a stop off point before taking our boat into another town...Man, we had no idea what we were getting into! The pickup shot out of the village and quickly onto the beach, where we proceeded to go 30+ mph through sand and into thick brush. This was serious offroading. We were all holding on very tightly and dodging and darting our heads to avoid the branches and bushes flying by as we caught air over large bumps and dunes. It was totally insane, and quite dangerous, but really really fun, in its own special way. We finally arrived at Batalla's small shoreline (with very white and clenched hands) and immediately found us a boatman ready to take us to another stop off town where we would eventually take another boat into Las Marias. We hopped in and began down the river - this was another wonderful opportunity for exotic travel - the sun beating down on us while we drifted through the Honduran waters in such a remote region.
After about an hour, and onto a lake, a total downpour started. The guy quickly said that there were better places to stay and nicer scenery in a nearby town of Jerusalem (that's right, like Israel). We were planning on staying in Belen, but, unfortunately, we took his advice. It turns out he wasn't trying to help us find a nicer place, but just wanted to go home and strand us in his hometown. He lives in Jerusalem, and is the only boatman that could take us to Las Marias the next day. We found that out that night, and he was asking a ridiculously high price for the boatride, so we said we would have him take us to the mouth of the Rio Platano (which goes to Las Marias) to search for another boat driver. He was upset and unhappy about our choice, but took us there the next day anyway. Unfortunately, all the captains there are his buddies, and he deemed himself our "helper", following us around and making sure nobody would offer us a lower price than him. "You can pay more because you're Americans", we were told. Well, it was all out war now for a good price, and we said we'd just rather spend the night than pay any of them 6000 lemps. They weren't expecting that kind of resolve, and eventually, we asked our "Best Friend" (as we called him) to just leave us alone.
I later realized this was a moment of a power shift, because as soon as we said we didn't need anymore help, another guy came up to us and told us he could take us to a comedor for food. We accepted, and he immediately became our new "helper", showing us around and helping us find what we needed. He eventually found a boatman who would do the trip for 4600 lemps that day, and we happily accepted. We swam in the river for about an hour or two and then left for Las Marias down the Rio Platano. This was another beautiful journey (a 5 hour one at that) through virgin, dense tropical rainforest that surrounded us on all sides. About 4 hours into the trip, we penetrated right into the center of an intensely powerful thunderstorm. Lightning was striking left and right around us, very very close. I would see the bolts hit the grass about a mile or less away, and one bolt actually shot across the sky right above us. I've never been that close to a lightning strike (except maybe at Osiris' house that one night in El Salvador), and the thunder that followed immediately after was nearly deafening - a crack and boom that shook our ribcages.
Anyway, we finally arrived at a nice hospedaje in Las Marias and arranged our 3 day hike to Pico Dama that we would be taking a day later (we needed a day of rest after the travels). After a day of swimming in the fast moving river, we slept hard and awoke early to depart on this grueling journey to the top of Peak Dama. I was apprehensive, as we had met a very cool biological researcher who had been around the region for 3 months who had said that it was a difficult hike (and he walks 15-20KM a day, so...).
We departed with our guide, buying cooking supplies before we got to a beach with two pipantes, which are little man-powered canoes. We would be travelling on these for about two hours upstream to another beachhead where we started our hike. It was a nice boatride, through another downpour...but we finally arrived (drenched) at the beachhead and ate some lunch before starting the long journey. The first part of the hike was through very dense and thick longgrass (much taller than I) and palm-like ferns. This slowly transitioned into more open, but still very thick jungle/rainforest. We crossed many streams and creeks, hopping and climbing over rocks and logs. I was enjoying the even ground, although the terrain and trail itself was of a pretty challenging difficulty for a novice such as myself. After some careful maneuvering, we finally made it to a big stream, where the guides let us rest and freshen up a bit before doing the largely uphill last leg of the first day's hike. For some reason, this part of the hike was extremely difficult for me - I was gasping for breath and my whole body was shuddering in exertion. Very very grueling, and I attribute much of the extra difficulty to my faulty leg. Elliot and Kevin (and of course the guides) were doing it at a very fast pace without nearly as much difficulty as I was having. Eventually, near the cabana, Kevin carried by backpack (as well as his! how impressive) the rest of the way while I struggled and finally made it to the cabin in the middle of the forest.
I immediately collapsed into one of the beds and passed out for a couple of hours. The rest of the night was up and down for me, but I finally made it to sleep and awoke to a nice breakfast of rice, beans, and bread (what else?). I asked for the second leg of the journey (which was supposedly even more uphill and harder than the previous day) to be done at a slower pace, with a guide specifically hanging out with me while the guys went up to the top fast. I took my own slow pace up the challenging, steep hillsides (falling a good number of times), and about 40% of the way to the top, I just said it wouldn't be possible for me to continue, so me and my guide left back to the cabana. I was disappointed in myself for not pushing to the top, but I was also proud that I had even attempted the hike. On the way back, we stopped and watched a monkey in a tree that yelled and shook branches at us - supposedly they only show up when gringos are around, and he certainly seemed very interested in me.
After a short nap, the guys came back from the top and we began cooking dinner. The guides and Elliot talked politics and worldly affairs (which was really interesting to hear about), and it turned out one of our guides is a representative of the indigenous peoples of La Mosquitia to the Honduran government. Very cool! All our guides were Miskito Indians. "The Miskito are a Native American people in Central America" who occupy the La Mosquitia region. The guides all spoke their native tongue (and spanish, of course), which was very cool to hear. We enjoyed talking to them, and I think they enjoyed seeing a little bit of the gringos perspectives of things, too.
That night, after dinner, we spotted a large spider above my bed. When I say large, I mean large, as big as a closed fist, with fangs about an eighth or a quarter of an inch long. I asked one of the guides to remove it, and thankfully so, as it turned out it was a poisonous spider that, when bites, causes severe pain and then unconsciousness. Needless to say, I was a little wary of sleeping in the bed that night. After a couple of hours (and paranoid moments of searching the walls with my headlamp), I spotted more spiders, a huge cockaroach, and a scorpion crawling next to my bed, so I grabbed my stuff and went outside to the tent with Kev and Elliot. It was unbearably hot in there, so I decided to tough it out with the bugs, and made it through the night without incident. The next day (after the heavy rains the previous night), we hiked down the steep hills (slipping often, falling frequently) and through the enlarged and deepened streams and waterways. It was a longer hike than I had remembered it, and I shot ahead of Kev and Elliot with the guide in front, right behind his footsteps. We emerged into the thick grassy brush before the end (which was excessively hot), and finally broke into the small beach where the canoes were. Without hesitation, I dropped by bag and ran straight into the cool river - let me say it was perhaps the most refreshing and nearly ecstatic moment of my relationship with any volume of water. Unbelievable - I sighed looong and hard and shook off all the sweat, heat, and struggles of the previous two days. We floated quickly back to the other beach in the pipantes (with the current this time) and then floated in the river back to our hospedaje. We spent the rest of the day relaxing away the long three days of hiking and camping, and got ready for our early departure the next day.
Our intention was to take the entire day to travel and hopefully (after many many hours), make it all the way back to Trujillo. This would take a good bit of luck and a lot of effort and well-managed time to pull off (2 days of travelling in one, so to speak). We left Las Marias in the boat at 5 AM ( beautiful trip back through the jungle as the sun was rising!) and made it to the mouth at about 8 AM, and then immediately made our way through the lake and backtracked the same route as we had come many days previously back to Batalla. At about 10 AM, we finally arrived at Batalla (man were my legs sore!) and expected to hop into a pickup that would supposedly be leaving to Tocoa at noon. Unfortunately (and smashing my hopes), all the drivers said the only truck leaving would be leaving the next morning. I was so disappointed and frustrated at this setback, and really could not accept the fact that we were going to be stuck in the crappy little town of Batalla. After a lunch that we spent brainstorming and trying to barter a driver to take us that day, we finally gave up and found a spot to put up camp for the night. Just as I was giving up all hope, our luck gave us something very important - a pickup driver shot past and stopped at the boat dock for a bit. I ran up to him and asked where he was going, and of course, he said Tocoa. We were THRILLED! We hopped on (I was in the front seat this time), and retraced our steps back the way we had come originally when we offroaded in the other pickup. This driver was much more paced and skilled, not taking bumps at 30+ mph and keeping good control over the car. I had a blast bouncing and shaking all around the sand dunes and brush.
We came to the second lagoon/river crossing (the cars are put onto rafts and sent across) and while waiting for the raft to come over, the driver gathered a couple of guys and dumped all our stuff out of the truck, quickly driving back and yelling he would return in 15-30 minutes. We weren't thrilled, but that wouldn't be too much of a setback, so we swam in the water for a while waiting. Unfortunately, 15-30 minutes turned into nearly 2+ hours. My optimism was shot down after 1.5 hours, and we all became quite upset and irritated (as well as concerned, as our wallets were still in the pickup). Finally, just as we were giving up hope, he shot around the bend. We got in, crossed (with renewed joy, flavored with some disappointment and disenchantment toward the driver), and offroaded our way through the beach to a large gravel road. We took a path that was similar to the busroute for a while, crossing through more Garifuna villages and then continued onward along the beachline gravel road. The setting tropical sun behind the hills and the palm orchards was a beautiful sight to see, set against our uplifted spirits in the progression of getting to Corocito, and presumably our final destination of Trujillo.
After a long and very bumpy drive, we finally arrived at Corocito, and caught a bus to Trujillo. Altogether, we found that we had been travelling for 15 hours straight - 12 of those spent actually in the process of moving along the path. We were all exhausted, but amazed that we had gone from the totally isolated and remote region of La Mosquitia, to the moderately upscale town of Trujillo in one day. I honestly believe it was one of our best successes as independent and relatively new travelers during the duration of this trip, as everything was off the books and by our own luck and attentive personalities.
Well, it's been a little while since then. We spent the night at Trujillo and then took a bus the next day to La Cieba, "Honduras' girlfriend". It's a large beachfront city that we had to spend the night in to make it to Utila. We hung out, found a nice room for cheap, and went to a gas station quckimart. I went to an internet cafe and began to write this email there, but the internet went out during it, so I lost most of what I had written...(that's why this is so long!).
Finally, the next morning, we woke up early and tried to found out where to find tickets and get off to the boat to Utila. Nobody could tell us what time it was - everyone had 7 or 8 AM, and we couldn't get a consensus on when the real time actually was. Very strange...what time IS IT in Honduras?! Turns out, that was the day of the clock switch for them, so not everyone had that in mind... After a lot of running around La Cieba with no luck for tickets, we finally found a taxi cab driver who drove us to the correct dock and we were off on the Utila Princess to the beautiful Carribean island of Utila.
Let me tell you, I've been waiting a long time to get to the beach, and I'm totally satisfied by our location. Utila is a little hidden paradise, with crystal clear waters and a feeling of being detatched from the rest of the world. Everyone here speaks English, everything is very funky and slightly upscale (in its own little way), and everyone here is ridiculously chilled out. It's as if "pirates got lost and stranded here only decades ago rather than centuries ago".
We're here not just for the vibes and the crystal clear Carribean waters, we're here to scuba dive. As the guide book says, "if there's any complaint to be leveled toward Utila, it's that all that anyone ever talks about is scuba diving". This place is centered around that activity only, it seems. We've got our accomodations at the Utila Watersports dive shop where we will pay $230 per person for 5 nights here - that includes three days of three hour instruction for our PADI certification (for 60-100ft dives) and two "fun dives" of 45-60 minutes each. That also includes as many days snorkeling and/or sea kayaking as we want - we just go out with the boat whenever they go out to dive. Yesterday we went out to the dive sites with them and snorkeled while 6-8 people went off on their fun dives. Supposedly this has some of the best dive sites in the world, and it is rumored to be the cheapest place to scuba dive as well. It's $45 for a single dive anywhere around the island, and that includes exploring hidden underwater coral caves and sunken ships...Unbelievable!!! This is exactly where I want to be for the past big portion of our trip. This is seriously paradise, and almost everyone we've talked to has said you get totally sucked into the place. The girls who work at the dive shop said they came a year and a half ago for "two weeks on vacation" and now live and work there, diving nearly everyday.
We're going to go through our certification and training for the next three days (after today, today is our leisure day) and then do our fun dives on the day before our last day here. I think we might spend our last day shopping and maybe even kayaking around the island (for free!). Snorkeling was great yesterday, and that only upped my anticipation for what we're going to experience in our scuba dives...
So that's about all I should share for now, it's too bloody long and there are so many details that I should just tell all of you about firsthand. It's not too long until I'm back home, to a place that will seem nearly as foreign and incomprehensible as the places I've been to in the last 8 weeks. This trip will never be forgotten, and I hope to return to these places once again in the near future. I would love to go to a cooking school in Antigua, open my own restaurant there, revisit Osiris, and spend a month or two getting advanced certification in scuba diving up here. Beautiful!!!
--
Raad Fadaak
To add, we are curently in Utila, a small island two hours off the shore of Honduras. we have signed up for a scuba program and it looks promising. Many people have said that it is easy to get stuck here for a few years and i can see why. It is very relaxed, nice people, and a nice atmusphere. we start the training tomarow. until then we plan to spend the day relaxing on the beach.
Now on to Raad's summery of the trip...
We just arrived here yesterday after a long and grueling 3 day journey from Las Marias, deep in the heart of La Mosquitia, Honduras. La Mosquitia is the biggest patch of virgin tropical rainforest in Honduras, and rivals the Amazon for its diversity of wildlife and isolation from the outside world. Indeed, this is quite obvious by the fact that there are no roads into or out of the large area; there are only boats and airplanes (and horses) for transportation.
About a week or so ago, we left from Trujillo and made our way by bus to a small town just off the coast. It was an interesting busride, as we passed into the villages neighboring La Mosquitia and saw lots of Garifuna families and culture. (The Garifuna are a mix between African slaves left by the Spanish and Carribean races). Anyway, after about five hours on the bus, we arrived in a hole of a town called Iriona, which consisted of a small comedor (eatery) and thats about it. Fortunately, a boatman offered to take us to a nearby village to stay the night before making another long boatride into La Mosquitia. We accepted and had our first wonderful experience travelling through mirror-still waters in a small canoe surrounded by dense jungle and meadow. The scenery and the situation was stunning - I was immediately struck by how far away from home and from everything else I really was... but what an adventure!
We arrived in a small village just outside of Sangrelaya and found a nice old man with a place to stay. He offered us a great dinner and told us of the region and the area by candle light (by this time, we were far away from any electricity). Even napkins were a prized posession here, according to him. After a night, we awoke ready to make our trip into the edge of the rainforest. I wanted to explore the town with my camera while we waited for a pickup, so I departed out looking for subjects and people to engage. The place reminded me of what I might imagine in an African village rather than a Honduran one; everyone acted as if they rarely (if ever) were exposed to outsiders. A small boy came up and asked me if I would take his picture, which broke the ice. I happily agreed, and then moved closer to the small gathering of children and adults, who welcomed me warmly and absolutely loved to have me taking pictures of them. Once again, my camera proved to be the tool for me to come to converse and interact with the people. I showed them the photos of my journey, and they were all very interested to have their faces included in my collection.
Finally, a pickup arrived and we hopped in the back, thinking we'd take a nice joyride to the nearby town of Batalla, a stop off point before taking our boat into another town...Man, we had no idea what we were getting into! The pickup shot out of the village and quickly onto the beach, where we proceeded to go 30+ mph through sand and into thick brush. This was serious offroading. We were all holding on very tightly and dodging and darting our heads to avoid the branches and bushes flying by as we caught air over large bumps and dunes. It was totally insane, and quite dangerous, but really really fun, in its own special way. We finally arrived at Batalla's small shoreline (with very white and clenched hands) and immediately found us a boatman ready to take us to another stop off town where we would eventually take another boat into Las Marias. We hopped in and began down the river - this was another wonderful opportunity for exotic travel - the sun beating down on us while we drifted through the Honduran waters in such a remote region.
After about an hour, and onto a lake, a total downpour started. The guy quickly said that there were better places to stay and nicer scenery in a nearby town of Jerusalem (that's right, like Israel). We were planning on staying in Belen, but, unfortunately, we took his advice. It turns out he wasn't trying to help us find a nicer place, but just wanted to go home and strand us in his hometown. He lives in Jerusalem, and is the only boatman that could take us to Las Marias the next day. We found that out that night, and he was asking a ridiculously high price for the boatride, so we said we would have him take us to the mouth of the Rio Platano (which goes to Las Marias) to search for another boat driver. He was upset and unhappy about our choice, but took us there the next day anyway. Unfortunately, all the captains there are his buddies, and he deemed himself our "helper", following us around and making sure nobody would offer us a lower price than him. "You can pay more because you're Americans", we were told. Well, it was all out war now for a good price, and we said we'd just rather spend the night than pay any of them 6000 lemps. They weren't expecting that kind of resolve, and eventually, we asked our "Best Friend" (as we called him) to just leave us alone.
I later realized this was a moment of a power shift, because as soon as we said we didn't need anymore help, another guy came up to us and told us he could take us to a comedor for food. We accepted, and he immediately became our new "helper", showing us around and helping us find what we needed. He eventually found a boatman who would do the trip for 4600 lemps that day, and we happily accepted. We swam in the river for about an hour or two and then left for Las Marias down the Rio Platano. This was another beautiful journey (a 5 hour one at that) through virgin, dense tropical rainforest that surrounded us on all sides. About 4 hours into the trip, we penetrated right into the center of an intensely powerful thunderstorm. Lightning was striking left and right around us, very very close. I would see the bolts hit the grass about a mile or less away, and one bolt actually shot across the sky right above us. I've never been that close to a lightning strike (except maybe at Osiris' house that one night in El Salvador), and the thunder that followed immediately after was nearly deafening - a crack and boom that shook our ribcages.
Anyway, we finally arrived at a nice hospedaje in Las Marias and arranged our 3 day hike to Pico Dama that we would be taking a day later (we needed a day of rest after the travels). After a day of swimming in the fast moving river, we slept hard and awoke early to depart on this grueling journey to the top of Peak Dama. I was apprehensive, as we had met a very cool biological researcher who had been around the region for 3 months who had said that it was a difficult hike (and he walks 15-20KM a day, so...).
We departed with our guide, buying cooking supplies before we got to a beach with two pipantes, which are little man-powered canoes. We would be travelling on these for about two hours upstream to another beachhead where we started our hike. It was a nice boatride, through another downpour...but we finally arrived (drenched) at the beachhead and ate some lunch before starting the long journey. The first part of the hike was through very dense and thick longgrass (much taller than I) and palm-like ferns. This slowly transitioned into more open, but still very thick jungle/rainforest. We crossed many streams and creeks, hopping and climbing over rocks and logs. I was enjoying the even ground, although the terrain and trail itself was of a pretty challenging difficulty for a novice such as myself. After some careful maneuvering, we finally made it to a big stream, where the guides let us rest and freshen up a bit before doing the largely uphill last leg of the first day's hike. For some reason, this part of the hike was extremely difficult for me - I was gasping for breath and my whole body was shuddering in exertion. Very very grueling, and I attribute much of the extra difficulty to my faulty leg. Elliot and Kevin (and of course the guides) were doing it at a very fast pace without nearly as much difficulty as I was having. Eventually, near the cabana, Kevin carried by backpack (as well as his! how impressive) the rest of the way while I struggled and finally made it to the cabin in the middle of the forest.
I immediately collapsed into one of the beds and passed out for a couple of hours. The rest of the night was up and down for me, but I finally made it to sleep and awoke to a nice breakfast of rice, beans, and bread (what else?). I asked for the second leg of the journey (which was supposedly even more uphill and harder than the previous day) to be done at a slower pace, with a guide specifically hanging out with me while the guys went up to the top fast. I took my own slow pace up the challenging, steep hillsides (falling a good number of times), and about 40% of the way to the top, I just said it wouldn't be possible for me to continue, so me and my guide left back to the cabana. I was disappointed in myself for not pushing to the top, but I was also proud that I had even attempted the hike. On the way back, we stopped and watched a monkey in a tree that yelled and shook branches at us - supposedly they only show up when gringos are around, and he certainly seemed very interested in me.
After a short nap, the guys came back from the top and we began cooking dinner. The guides and Elliot talked politics and worldly affairs (which was really interesting to hear about), and it turned out one of our guides is a representative of the indigenous peoples of La Mosquitia to the Honduran government. Very cool! All our guides were Miskito Indians. "The Miskito are a Native American people in Central America" who occupy the La Mosquitia region. The guides all spoke their native tongue (and spanish, of course), which was very cool to hear. We enjoyed talking to them, and I think they enjoyed seeing a little bit of the gringos perspectives of things, too.
That night, after dinner, we spotted a large spider above my bed. When I say large, I mean large, as big as a closed fist, with fangs about an eighth or a quarter of an inch long. I asked one of the guides to remove it, and thankfully so, as it turned out it was a poisonous spider that, when bites, causes severe pain and then unconsciousness. Needless to say, I was a little wary of sleeping in the bed that night. After a couple of hours (and paranoid moments of searching the walls with my headlamp), I spotted more spiders, a huge cockaroach, and a scorpion crawling next to my bed, so I grabbed my stuff and went outside to the tent with Kev and Elliot. It was unbearably hot in there, so I decided to tough it out with the bugs, and made it through the night without incident. The next day (after the heavy rains the previous night), we hiked down the steep hills (slipping often, falling frequently) and through the enlarged and deepened streams and waterways. It was a longer hike than I had remembered it, and I shot ahead of Kev and Elliot with the guide in front, right behind his footsteps. We emerged into the thick grassy brush before the end (which was excessively hot), and finally broke into the small beach where the canoes were. Without hesitation, I dropped by bag and ran straight into the cool river - let me say it was perhaps the most refreshing and nearly ecstatic moment of my relationship with any volume of water. Unbelievable - I sighed looong and hard and shook off all the sweat, heat, and struggles of the previous two days. We floated quickly back to the other beach in the pipantes (with the current this time) and then floated in the river back to our hospedaje. We spent the rest of the day relaxing away the long three days of hiking and camping, and got ready for our early departure the next day.
Our intention was to take the entire day to travel and hopefully (after many many hours), make it all the way back to Trujillo. This would take a good bit of luck and a lot of effort and well-managed time to pull off (2 days of travelling in one, so to speak). We left Las Marias in the boat at 5 AM ( beautiful trip back through the jungle as the sun was rising!) and made it to the mouth at about 8 AM, and then immediately made our way through the lake and backtracked the same route as we had come many days previously back to Batalla. At about 10 AM, we finally arrived at Batalla (man were my legs sore!) and expected to hop into a pickup that would supposedly be leaving to Tocoa at noon. Unfortunately (and smashing my hopes), all the drivers said the only truck leaving would be leaving the next morning. I was so disappointed and frustrated at this setback, and really could not accept the fact that we were going to be stuck in the crappy little town of Batalla. After a lunch that we spent brainstorming and trying to barter a driver to take us that day, we finally gave up and found a spot to put up camp for the night. Just as I was giving up all hope, our luck gave us something very important - a pickup driver shot past and stopped at the boat dock for a bit. I ran up to him and asked where he was going, and of course, he said Tocoa. We were THRILLED! We hopped on (I was in the front seat this time), and retraced our steps back the way we had come originally when we offroaded in the other pickup. This driver was much more paced and skilled, not taking bumps at 30+ mph and keeping good control over the car. I had a blast bouncing and shaking all around the sand dunes and brush.
We came to the second lagoon/river crossing (the cars are put onto rafts and sent across) and while waiting for the raft to come over, the driver gathered a couple of guys and dumped all our stuff out of the truck, quickly driving back and yelling he would return in 15-30 minutes. We weren't thrilled, but that wouldn't be too much of a setback, so we swam in the water for a while waiting. Unfortunately, 15-30 minutes turned into nearly 2+ hours. My optimism was shot down after 1.5 hours, and we all became quite upset and irritated (as well as concerned, as our wallets were still in the pickup). Finally, just as we were giving up hope, he shot around the bend. We got in, crossed (with renewed joy, flavored with some disappointment and disenchantment toward the driver), and offroaded our way through the beach to a large gravel road. We took a path that was similar to the busroute for a while, crossing through more Garifuna villages and then continued onward along the beachline gravel road. The setting tropical sun behind the hills and the palm orchards was a beautiful sight to see, set against our uplifted spirits in the progression of getting to Corocito, and presumably our final destination of Trujillo.
After a long and very bumpy drive, we finally arrived at Corocito, and caught a bus to Trujillo. Altogether, we found that we had been travelling for 15 hours straight - 12 of those spent actually in the process of moving along the path. We were all exhausted, but amazed that we had gone from the totally isolated and remote region of La Mosquitia, to the moderately upscale town of Trujillo in one day. I honestly believe it was one of our best successes as independent and relatively new travelers during the duration of this trip, as everything was off the books and by our own luck and attentive personalities.
Well, it's been a little while since then. We spent the night at Trujillo and then took a bus the next day to La Cieba, "Honduras' girlfriend". It's a large beachfront city that we had to spend the night in to make it to Utila. We hung out, found a nice room for cheap, and went to a gas station quckimart. I went to an internet cafe and began to write this email there, but the internet went out during it, so I lost most of what I had written...(that's why this is so long!).
Finally, the next morning, we woke up early and tried to found out where to find tickets and get off to the boat to Utila. Nobody could tell us what time it was - everyone had 7 or 8 AM, and we couldn't get a consensus on when the real time actually was. Very strange...what time IS IT in Honduras?! Turns out, that was the day of the clock switch for them, so not everyone had that in mind... After a lot of running around La Cieba with no luck for tickets, we finally found a taxi cab driver who drove us to the correct dock and we were off on the Utila Princess to the beautiful Carribean island of Utila.
Let me tell you, I've been waiting a long time to get to the beach, and I'm totally satisfied by our location. Utila is a little hidden paradise, with crystal clear waters and a feeling of being detatched from the rest of the world. Everyone here speaks English, everything is very funky and slightly upscale (in its own little way), and everyone here is ridiculously chilled out. It's as if "pirates got lost and stranded here only decades ago rather than centuries ago".
We're here not just for the vibes and the crystal clear Carribean waters, we're here to scuba dive. As the guide book says, "if there's any complaint to be leveled toward Utila, it's that all that anyone ever talks about is scuba diving". This place is centered around that activity only, it seems. We've got our accomodations at the Utila Watersports dive shop where we will pay $230 per person for 5 nights here - that includes three days of three hour instruction for our PADI certification (for 60-100ft dives) and two "fun dives" of 45-60 minutes each. That also includes as many days snorkeling and/or sea kayaking as we want - we just go out with the boat whenever they go out to dive. Yesterday we went out to the dive sites with them and snorkeled while 6-8 people went off on their fun dives. Supposedly this has some of the best dive sites in the world, and it is rumored to be the cheapest place to scuba dive as well. It's $45 for a single dive anywhere around the island, and that includes exploring hidden underwater coral caves and sunken ships...Unbelievable!!! This is exactly where I want to be for the past big portion of our trip. This is seriously paradise, and almost everyone we've talked to has said you get totally sucked into the place. The girls who work at the dive shop said they came a year and a half ago for "two weeks on vacation" and now live and work there, diving nearly everyday.
We're going to go through our certification and training for the next three days (after today, today is our leisure day) and then do our fun dives on the day before our last day here. I think we might spend our last day shopping and maybe even kayaking around the island (for free!). Snorkeling was great yesterday, and that only upped my anticipation for what we're going to experience in our scuba dives...
So that's about all I should share for now, it's too bloody long and there are so many details that I should just tell all of you about firsthand. It's not too long until I'm back home, to a place that will seem nearly as foreign and incomprehensible as the places I've been to in the last 8 weeks. This trip will never be forgotten, and I hope to return to these places once again in the near future. I would love to go to a cooking school in Antigua, open my own restaurant there, revisit Osiris, and spend a month or two getting advanced certification in scuba diving up here. Beautiful!!!
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Raad Fadaak