Laura Zera

Stories to Connect Cultures

The Weather Arrives in Honduras

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Roatan Honduras in the rainThe thing about the generally resplendent weather in the tropics is that when a storm does roll in, it’s usually a pretty good one. For my first five days on Roatan, there would be an hour or two of rain in the early morning or late afternoon, but the rest of the day would be lovely. On my last day, however (which was Feb.13), the elements really kicked up a fuss.

It poured rain all morning, the kind where if you stand in it for even five seconds you’re pretty drenched. I had planned on going for a stroll to take photos of the West End village as I hadn’t really done that yet, but ended up stuck on the porch at the lodge (having checked out at 10:30 am) until I left to catch the ferry back to La Ceiba.

My travel plan, down to the spending of my last lempiras, had been carefully mapped out. I was going to catch the 2 pm ferry from Roatan to La Ceiba, then get a bus that was heading for San Pedro Sula and just get off in El Progreso as the airport is exactly half way in between the two. I decided that I’d spend my last night there instead of SPS because a) I could get off the bus an hour earlier, b) hotels cost less, and c) it’s a smaller town. “Ha!” said Mother Nature.

If there’s one thing that I have shit luck with, it’s getting favorable weather conditions when I’m trying to depart from someplace. Mike, the lodge owner, drove me to the ferry pier, and quickly noticed that most everybody was getting into a taxi, not out of one. The afternoon ferry was cancelled (and the next morning’s ferry/bus combo would not get me to the SPS airport in time for my flight home).

Roatan Honduras airportOff to the Roatan airport we went, getting well soaked in the five-second dash from the van to the terminal. I was surprised to find out that planes were still flying when the ferry wasn’t sailing, but Mike explained that the Rio Cangrejal dumps out into the sea right near the La Ceiba ferry terminal, and when things really get rocking boulders the size of Volkswagens have come flying down the river. At any rate, I forfeited my $28 ferry ticket and bought a $90 seat on the 5 p.m. flight straight into San Pedro Sula. “Ha!” Mother Nature said again, even louder. She can be so haughty sometimes, that one.


Flight from Roatan HondurasThe plane was a 19-seater Central American Airways Let L-410, made by a Czech company and in the prettiest shade of turquoise. I snapped some photos of the captain and his co-pilot as they squeezed themselves down the aisle and chatted with the passengers. Luckily, there was a break in the rain at the low levels, but it was still pretty poor visibility and I had a few stomach-in-my-throat moments. We landed after 40 minutes, and the Honduran woman across from me, in perfectly unaccented English, said “That was freaky.”

After a non-descript night in a non-descript hotel room, I was back at the SPS airport by 9:30 in the morning. While lining up to go through the first checkpoint, I observed several clusters of people, tightly huddled together as if getting ready for a football kick-off. Around them was a TV crew, extending microphones over their heads. I asked the woman in front of me if she knew what was going on, and she replied that a Central American Airways flight from SPS to Tegucigalpa had crashed that morning, and there were no survivors. The reason was poor visibility, combined with Tegucigalpa’s notoriously difficult runway approach.

Quickly overtaking my thoughts of sadness for the passengers and their families was the cognition that I’d been on the same model of plane, flown by the same airline, in the same crappy weather just 16 hours earlier.

In my 25 years of travel, there have been very few risk factors that have given me pause for thought with regards to my own mortality. I have weathered some pretty extreme situations over the decades and either ignorantly or courageously (depending on how you look at it) soldiered on. This is the second time, however, that a plane crash has forced me to consider some of the less desirable aviation situations that I have been party to, and to give thanks and love to my guardian angels (a group that has only grown in strength with the 2009 addition of my dad). They carry me safely from place to place, and this month, they got me all the way home to Francis, Yolanda Pug, and Sushi Cat on Valentine’s Day. I am immensely grateful that they have stuck with me for all these years. I’m not always an easy travel companion.

Swimming with the Fishies in Roatan, Honduras

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My six nights in the West End village of Roatan (Feb.7 to Feb.13) were pretty low key, but then again, ‘tis what I desired out of the experience. I’m not one to hang out in bars by myself anyway. Not anymore, at least.

Low key meant that I also didn’t move my butt around the island very much. Snorkeling gear rentals were done on a 24-hour basis, so one afternoon I paid my five bucks (and $20 US deposit) and took a water taxi over to West Bay, about a ten-minute boat ride away. It was a lovely beach, as the books had all promised, however it was apparently a cruise-ship day, and was absolutely teeming with people wearing orange, turquoise or yellow wristbands. And then, at about 3 o’clock, poof, they vanished, and the beach was empty. It cleared out so quickly that I actually had a fright for a moment. Was there some impending storm or disaster that everyone knew about except me?
Although the coral was pretty trashed in West Bay, there were loads of fish and the water was calm, clear and shallow. This blog post will hence be devoted to fishy photos from there and my next-day’s snorkel in Half Moon Bay (West End). The slightly blurry barracuda photo taken at the end was done using a zoom; although incidents of barracudas biting humans are relatively low, I certainly didn’t want to get in his face!
For the remainder of my time on Roatan, I wandered back and forth between my porch at the Mariposa Lodge, and the West End village and beach. The village had a good selection of restaurants, but I usually opted for some version of street food, either baleadas at a wooden stand, or gringas (which, in addition to ‘white woman’ also means taco) with grilled meat and cheese inside, eaten at a picnic table. One night I dined at one of the higher-end restaurants in town, the Lighthouse, so that I could try their conch soup. Since I got the appetizer size, it only set me back three dollars. They had a primo location right over the water, so it was a nice place to take in a sunset.

A consistent theme that I heard from the locals was that the West End had become really built up in the last 12-15 years. Indeed, there were boutiques, restaurants and gift shops along the main road that would have fit perfectly in Southern California or parts of Florida. It was only about five years ago that electricity became available throughout Roatan, according to the owner of the Mariposa Lodge. Somehow, though, the West End has kept its Caribbean village charm. The main road through the West End was still dirt, and heavily potholed dirt, at that. The demographic of visitors to the beach was higher for Hondurans than foreigners, and there were enough local institutions mixed in with the tourist shops to provide glimpses into everyday Roatanian’s lives. I was a bit put off by the touristy nature of the West End when I first arrived, but after a couple of days, I slipped into the groove and realized that it was far from overdone.

I like to call this one the ‘fish of my youth,’ as its colors reflect exactly how I dressed in 1986. Good times. 

 Somebody there might have thought that he was going to get fed… . Not from me, dude!

 

 

That last one had some pretty bulgy eyeballs, don’tcha think?

 

 

 Free Willy! Alright, not really.

 

 

Rawr!

 

Bay Islands, Honduras

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I like islands. They usually have fewer cars and more beaches than a mainland. I made the decision early on in my trip to cap it off on a Bay Island in Honduras, but I just had to choose which one.
Of Utila and Roatan, Utila was the early frontrunner. It had the following pros going for it: cheaper, smaller, and less built-up. I was all set to go there until about 12:30 in the afternoon when a couple of different people gave me their comparison of Utila and Roatan, and noted that ‘given my age,’ I might prefer Roatan. Utila’s street (singular) is pretty much lined with drunken twenty-somethings, and god knows that after my last night at the Jungle River Lodge, I don’t fit in with that scene. Unfortunately, I didn’t really fit in with Roatan’s scene either, but there were other pluses that made it a better choice for me.
Roatan has good right-off-the-beach snorkeling (and good beaches), whereas Utila lacks in both of those areas. Apparently Utila is also lousy with sand flies – the woman that told me this pointed to all the scars on her legs as evidence. Seeing as I’m still carrying sand-fly scars from last year’s trip to Fiji, that factoid mattered to me! Finally, I heard that Utila was more humid, really dirty, and that the accommodations didn’t deliver. Two of the women I talked to had stayed in the same Lonely Planet “mid-range” hotel that I’d been contemplating, called Rubi’s Inn, and they complained of water shortages and toilets that didn’t flush.
So, off to Roatan I went. I knew that restaurants were the source of a significant cost differential from Utila or the mainland, and so I planned on trying a place called the Mariposa Lodge as it has fully-stocked kitchenettes. Lucky me, the owner was already at the ferry terminal picking up other guests, and he had one room left.
Four out of five of us in the minivan were Canadian, including the owner, Mike. It took me until the next day to realize that the name of the lodge, Mariposa, was distinctly Canadian, too. I learned that it’s the name of a fictional Ontario town (thought to be Orillia) in a Stephen Leacock novel; I had only known it to be the name of the figure skating club from which Brian Orser and Elvis Stojko came.

The lodge was higher in price than my backpacking budget boundaries, but I reaaaaaally wanted someplace comfortable for my last handful of nights. For $40 USD, I started in their one small air-conditioned room, but then moved into an apartment unit (they have five) as soon as it became available. It was perfect: about 100 meters from the main street and beach, hot water showers, three cats, a dog, hammocks, breezy porches, and lots of lizards. I stocked my fridge with beer, milk, and Jamaica flower-flavored Tang (does Jamaica have Honduras-flavored Tang?) and I was content. Here’s to flopping out for a week!

 

 

 

Zip Line Fun, Jungle Lodge Hell in Honduras

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Okay, how is it that I washed my hair this afternoon and yet still have sand in it?!
Anyway, back to Feb.6th and waking up in Tela with no set plan of where to go. Part of my indecision was based on the fact that I’d sent a query email to the Jungle River Lodge the morning before, but no one had replied. I wanted to see if I could fit in a jungle zip line tour with them and then still manage to get the desired six nights on a Bay Island at the end of my trip. My options were to bus it to La Ceiba, then just head straight to the ferry terminal and go to an island, or to take a taxi to Jungle River’s guesthouse in La Ceiba (called Banana Republic) and try to sort out the zip line from there. I’d developed a sudden urge to go sailing through the tree tops at high speed and it would be my last chance before I went home, so I decided to try the latter option.
Ask me how annoyed I was when I arrived at the guesthouse in La Ceiba at 1 p.m. and had Spicer, the staffer on duty, tell me that the jeep transport to the jungle lodge (and subsequent zip line tour) had just pulled away as I was getting out of the cab? Pretty dang annoyed, especially since I had emailed more than 24 hours prior with those very questions. I was also interested in going the next morning, but the free night’s stay that is thrown in with the tour only applied to the jungle lodge, not the guesthouse, so I’d lose that bonus. Plus, I’d be staying a night in a city as opposed to in the jungle, which was half of the whole point of doing the tour.
Spicer’s idea was to stand on the street and try to flag down a cab that could then race along and catch up with the jeep. After about two minutes of that, I said, “You know, that’s just not gonna happen.” He said that he could arrange a taxi hire to take me there for 250 lempiras ($13 USD), so I said, “Super, let’s do it.” He also radioed to the lodge and so that they’d wait to start the tour until I got there. The taxi came within five minutes. I was still pissed off, but I was on my way.
The Jungle River Lodge is only about 30 minutes outside of La Ceiba, but it felt like it was a world away. Built along the banks of the Rio Cangrejal, it backs up against the hills of the Pico Bonito National Park. It is a fantastically beautiful setting. From the restaurant, you look down on a natural rock swimming pool (its sides augmented by cement in just a couple of places), and beyond that, the rushing river. 
Our group of five got kitted out with harnesses (very binding, I might add), helmets and a glove, and off we went. The first stop was Canopy Tour School, a short zip line so that the guide could demonstrate the technique – legs out in front, one hand on the harness, gloved hand lightly resting overhead on the zip line for braking – and we could all do a test run. Our guide Denis and his assistant were very diligent in their instruction, and then, off we went to start on the first of the eight lines.
I loved it from the first launch. Up high in the air, flying across the river, I squealed like a little piggy. Denis told us that you can get going up to 50 miles per hour on the fastest lines. Perfect, I thought. 
We did half of the runs, and then stopped for a tour through the jungle. Denis found a termite hive and gave it a tap. Out crawled hundreds of termites, up and onto his hand, as well. “They are full of carotene, and taste like carrots!” he said. Offering them around for a taste, I declined. “Squish it first so that it’s dead when you put it in your mouth,” one woman advised. Nyet thanks. I almost tried them, but just wasn’t in an experimental mood. 
 
Walking a little further, we came upon a family home. The owners were involved in aquaculture; in this instance, they had tilapia ponds. While we walked around their property, Denis’ assistant peeled and chopped up some sugar cane for us to suck on. We ventured upon a hill of gigantic leaf-cutter ants, and lots of native plants that Denis explained did things such as lower blood pressure and ward off mosquitos. There are so many natural remedies out in the world that I don’t even know about!
After that lovely little break in the adrenaline rush, we got back on the lines. The last ride was 660-feet long. It started in the jungle and then swept back out over the Rio Cangrejal. I was relaxed enough on the line that I could really take it all in as I zipped along – the dense and verdant vegetation, the subtle tints of color reflected in the rocks, the feeling of soaring high above other mere mortals. This time my soundtrack turned into the kind of whoops you shout to get a concert encore – affirmation that the euphoria coursing through my body felt really, really good.
The rest of the afternoon was just about chilling out at the lodge. I sat and chatted with two other women “of my age category” (they were 55) and a 22-year old named Liz with whom I was sharing a dorm room. When I decided to turn in at 9 pm and do some reading before bed, Liz suggested that we latch the door from outside rather than inside as she didn’t want to have to wake me when she came to bed.
Little did I know that the owners weren’t staying at the lodge that night. When a group of six or seven twenty-somethings, some of them staff, gathered in the restaurant to drink rum, I figured that the party would wind itself down at a reasonable hour. Most establishments have a lights-out policy, after all. Silly, trusting, naïve me.
The music started to get louder at 10 p.m. I’d fallen asleep just 10 or 15 minutes earlier, but a booming bass beat put an end to that. At 11 p.m., I was expectant. At midnight, I was annoyed. At one a.m., the music was pounding so loud that I wanted to claw my eyeballs out. Best of all, I was locked in the dorm room, with just mosquito screens for windows.
I sat up waiting for someone to appear outside the restaurant, and at first sighting, yelled “Hey, turn the music down, please!” The volume decreased for about an hour but was still loud enough to keep me up. At 2 a.m., I got up and wrote a blog post. At 3:30 a.m., I let out a loud string of expletives that were heard by no one. Again, sitting up, I waited so that I could catch someone’s attention. When I heard someone in the toilet, I called out, “Hey, could you get Liz for me, please?” “Huh?” was the reply. “Hey, you in the toilet, get Liz for me. I’m locked in the dorm room.” A minute later, I heard a woman’s voice call “Hello?”
“Liz?” I asked. “No, who’s Liz?” This not-Liz person asked me if Liz had long brown hair. “How many other women are down there besides you?” I asked. “One,” was her reply. The condescension oozed when I said, “Well then, it’s probably her!”
Once let out of my dorm prison, I was one pissed off lodge guest. I stormed into the restaurant and told the gang of drunks to shut the music off and break up the party. It was 4 a.m. Liz passed out in about 2.7 minutes, not even hearing the series of knocks that started on our dorm room door at 4:15. It took me a couple of minutes to register that the person was knocking on our door. When I finally got up and threw it open, I was facing one of the drunken Honduran partygoers. “Do you work here?” I asked. He said yes. “Are you sleeping here tonight?” Again, I got a yes.
He lasted about twenty minutes in our dorm room before I kicked him out. He was pacing, going in and out of the bathroom and the outside, and at one point, even sitting on the bed facing me, creeping me out. Was he going to sexually assault me, steal my iPhone, or just puke on me? Those were all thoughts circling through my head. I eventually escorted him to the door and turned him loose. I was finally able to fall asleep to the sound of the river, as I had originally planned, at 5 a.m.
The next morning I wasted no time in relaying my story to Oscar, the lodge owner. After I finished, he was largely silent. “That’s not good,” he said. No apology, though. He summoned one of the staff workers that had been on site the night before, and then resumed his silence. I drifted over to a table and sat down, as our conversation was apparently over. We didn’t speak again until it was time to pay the bill. When he presented me with the full amount, I asked that he deduct a portion. “What, you don’t want to pay?” he asked. I told him that I felt that a 250 lempira ($13 USD) deduction would be fair, which was about 20% of my bill. “I’m going to charge the guys this amount,” he said, referring to his staffers. I told him to go for it. Ten minutes later, as I walked out the door, he offered a quick “Sorry for the trouble you had last night.”
Needless to say, I won’t be recommending the Jungle River Lodge to other travelers. While the incident itself was probably isolated, I wasn’t at all impressed with the owner’s handling of it. I’ve since heard from others that Omega Tours are the company to go with in those parts, although I don’t think that Omega offers the zip line. I’d like to make sure to say that I thought our guides were really great. Denis showed us a lot of interesting stuff, and they got us through the treetops and back to home base safely.

A Day Spent in Tela, Honduras

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It’s always amazing to me how much brighter my outlook on life is on the day after a transit day. After a long day on the road (and usually arriving at my destination at night), hotel rooms always seem to look a little grungy, people a little shifty, streets somewhat inhospitable. It was like that when I arrived in Tela. When I got up on February 5th, though, with the sunshine coming through my window my hotel room looked pretty decent. Outside, children played. The streets were alive with the bustle and noise of daily commerce. It was a whole new place.

Originally I had thought that I might take a boat tour over to the nearby Parque Nacional Jeannette Kawas or maybe rent a bike and ride to a nearby botanical garden, but when I woke up, I didn’t feel like going anywhere quickly. Instead, I used the day to stroll around Tela, drink a lot of coffee, do some people watching, and take in sunset on the beach.

I’d heard mixed reviews about Tela from other travelers, but I quite enjoyed it. I only saw about six other tourists throughout the day, and the rest of the people hanging out on the boardwalk or having a picnic on the beach were Honduran. Like Dangriga in Belize, Tela felt very authentic to me. The wares for sale along the main street weren’t oriented to tourists; there were Dora the Explorer backpacks, a lot of kitchen items, and a lotta lotta colorful plastic – China has been here, too!

Everywhere I went, I found political graffiti spray painted on building exteriors. I’m going to have to do some searching on the interwebs to see what that’s all about when I have some time.

There were several banks around the Parque Central hub. The one in which I changed some money also doubled as a furniture store. There were several sofa and loveseat sets, some major appliances, apparently a BIG sale going on, and then a couple of teller windows off to one side.

I had an early dinner that night. I’d found the restaurant where I wanted to dine — it had conch on the menu – while walking around in the afternoon and then mistakenly asked them “At what hour it’s open?” instead of “Until what hour it’s open?” When the waitress said six, I thought it very odd, but didn’t question it. I came back for dinner at 5:45 p.m. and then realized my Spanish stupidity as more and more people arrived the later it got. Doh!

The beach didn’t have stunning blue Caribbean water, but I could see it just off in the distance! What a tease. Closer to shore, it was pretty brown. I noted that there were lots of garbage bins tied to palm trees on the beach – always a good sign. More importantly, people seemed to be using them!

There was a good smattering of restaurants and bars along the boardwalk, although the only one that I found that had Wi-Fi was César Mariscos. Of course, it was also the most expensive restaurant. I self-sacrificed by buying a strawberry daiquiri while I was having a Skype chat with my hubby.

The Sinai hotel had cable TV (still no hot showers, but there was a TV).  At home I average about three hours of TV per week, most of it while on the treadmill at the gym, but with the dark streets of Tela being so uninviting, I zombied out on three consecutive episodes of House. Those writers really need to shake up the formula a bit – it is so predictable! What’s not predictable is my schedule. I haven’t decided where I’m going tomorrow, and I love that about this trip.

From Belize to Honduras by Water Taxi

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And a big ol’ taxi it was: there must have been about 20 people onboard! But again, I sat down and found myself facing the ever-present sign, “In God We Trust.” I wanted to say, “Yo Captain, I’m trusting in you, okay, to get this dang boat to the other shore. Show me what you’ve got.”

Argh, it was a long travel day on Feb.4th.  This blog post is full of practical details for other travelers doing the same route, though.
The available verbal, written and online information on the departure time of the Nesymein Neydy varied between 9, 9:30 and 10 a.m. I showed up at 8:30 to get a ticket and hand in my passport for immigration. The boat, however, didn’t leave until 11:30. Apparently, that’s a normal delay.
One passenger attempted to take an eight-week old pit bull puppy with him. “You allowed to do that?” I asked, as his puppy’s head popped out between the top flaps of the cardboard box in which he was being transported. “I think so,” was the answer I got. The pit bull never made it on to the boat. I’m still not sure if that was a good thing or not: stay with clueless owner that keeps you in a box, or stay with unknown person for unknown length of time until clueless owner can retrieve you. If I was the puppy, I would have made a break for it.  
We pulled up to Puerto Cortes, Honduras at around 2:45 that afternoon, and a good chunk of the passengers went over the bridge and around the corner to the bus stop. The downer about wanting to travel the northern coastline of Honduras is that you can’t! There is no road. (Same with trying to get from San Pedro Sula straight to the Guatemala border: must go through Puerto Cortes).
And hence the bus portion of the day began. I got a collectivo to San Pedro Sula (SPS), but despite many attempts at asking, it was still unclear to me from which terminal the bus to Tela left – I think there are a couple. Finally, the man sitting next to me jumped up and said, “Here!” He escorted me off the bus and two blocks down the street to the correct bus station. I really don’t know if my stop was his stop, but he sure helped when I needed it!
Unfortunately, at that time of day (about 5 p.m.), there were no more direct buses to Tela, so I had to get one bus to El Progreso, and then another to Tela. Bear in mind that these are the repurposed Blue Bird school buses, packed to the gills, and I had to stand for a long while on the last bus. I also hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so was getting a little bit weary.

Following about 100 paces behind me and my gentleman escort (who eventually went on his way) was another Canadian, a fellow named Curtis that had started out from Dangriga that day as well. Once he caught up to me, we rode the rest of the way to Tela together, arriving at about 7:30 p.m.

Our first two attempts to find a hotel room were a fail. It was Friday night, and Tela is the place where Hondurans from SPS get away for their beach weekends. On our third attempt (at the Hotel Sinai, based on our taxi driver’s suggestion), we got lucky. My room was cramped, mostly clean, and $15 USD. The rooms without private bathrooms were $12.
Curtis decided to shower and hit the sack, so I went out for a little wander to find some food. Tela has a reputation for being a little dodgy at night, so I only took a couple of dollars in my pocket and my room key, and off I went. The streets were so empty that it was a bit unnerving, and almost no businesses were open. I felt better when I reached the Central Square area and saw a group of people practicing Honduran folk dancing in the lobby of the City Hall building.
After going a couple of blocks further I found three or four basic restaurants. I bought a deep-fried thingy (have yet to find a name or description for it online) from the front counter of one and ate it as I walked back to watch more folk dancing. I was thus far underwhelmed with Tela, though, and hoped that it would look a lot more inviting during the day.