Into Honduras
Trip Start
Sep 18, 2007
1
21
30
Trip End
Ongoing
San Pedro Sula,
Honduras
Thursday, January 17, 2008
As you´ve probably noticed by the entry, I´m now in Honduras, just left the little house in the jungle this morning after spending a couple of nights there, completely cut off from the world, and realising that it was getting a bit boring. I´ll start from a few days (or was it a week) ago and then work forward, a logical solution eh!
After doing the cave hike we also decided that checking out the private island that Donna and Co own (well lease for 35 years) would be a good idea, so we payed our dosh and hopped on the truck and headed down to the harbour in Punta Gorda, a 20 minute drive and 2 and a half hour walk (more on that later). Unfortunately the promise of a clear and sunny day quickly shifted to extremely heavy rain about half way to the boat so i made an executive decision and cut the trip short, saying that we´d have another go the next day. The next day we made it to the boat and only had to suffer a couple of small rain storms on the way over, but after a 2 hours we made it to the island and the weather was looking a lot better. The first thing that struck me was how SMALL the island really was. It´s tiny! You can literally walk around it in a couple of minutes, i tried to do just that but then my sandal broke (the white ones mum! they had a good run though!) and i ended up stranded on coral trying to catch small lizards with only one sandal, a hard task at the best of times, but still i managed to get one of the little buggers and kept him in the room for a while, he eventually found the door and left, obviously preferring sharp rocks for a home instead of the nice big suite and king size bed that we had. Lizards hey, when will they learn! So i never actually walked around the island in the end but you could stand in the middle and take about 20 steps to the edge in any direction, so very small.
The first thing we did was head out fishing in the hope of catching something for tea. Charlie was our boat driver and he took us for a little mission around the reefs as we dragged our lures behind the boat. It was a nice peaceful drive until Charlie smashed the boat onto a shallow patch of reef, nothing to bad, the boat was fine. I got one bite and didn´t realise till half an hour later when i reeled in my line that the fish had bitten the lure clean off the line, so i was just dragging a piece of string behind the boat for ages. Idiot! Then charlie crashed the boat into some more reef, again not to serious, but i started wondering if this guy really knew where and what he was doing, and if running aground on reef was a normal occurrence. I then attached a bigger lure which got hooked on the reef again and again.... and again, because it was heavier and the boat wasn´t very fast, also because it was quite shallow. So after hitting some more reef, then getting into deeper water and still not catching anything until sunset we headed back and had beans and potatoes for tea, which was still pretty sweet actually as Donna a good cook, (and she always makes LOADS!) and that was the first night.
The second day on the island was a scorcher and was filled with much snorkeling and Canoing, and just generally drifting around the island and exploring the other, (even smaller) island next to it. We fed the big green eels after breakfast which was a good laugh. They call them the trolls because they live under a bridge that Donna and co made in the wall of they´re lagoon/harbour, the big one is 5ft! Morey eels i think they were, and ugly looking things as well, but not without a bit of style- the big one was swallowing fish heads whole! I was going to swim under that bridge as well and i´m glad i didn´t now!
I also went out hunting for lobster for about 3 hours with a little hook on a stick. Of course the mission started off with me in high hopes, visualising myself coming back with a load of nice fat lobsters for lunch, but what actually happened was totally the opposite. After 3 hours i gave up and then on the way back luckily spotted the feelers of a lobster sticking out from under under a rock, so i dived down and managed to hook him after a little bit of ruff and tumble but when i finally got a look at him on the hook he was tiny,¨"Maybe they´re all this big" i thought. His feelers had looked pretty big sticking out from that rock anyway. So i took him back to the island and as i strode up to the kitchen area, feeling all manly and proud of my catch, everyone broke out into fits of laughter! After checking my fly was done up and that nothing was hanging out that shouldn´t have been i realised they were laughing at my lobster! The cheek! Charlie then came up and informed me if the authorities had seen that lobster i´d spend 5 years in jail because it was too small. Nice. Well we ate it anyway. It turns out i hooked it wrong so it was dead and your not about to let it go to waste in that situation are ya? I think it gave us 4 small bites.
Leaving the island was a hard thing to do and we wanted to stay another night or 2 but the only option we had was 8 nights or nothing (due to the distance and the fact they only had one boat) - and i had to get back and do some business stuff so couldn't really vanish for a full week, shame. So we spent a few days hanging around in the jungle. We decided to take a walk into town one day for something to do, and instantly regretted it. The walk took almost 3 hours and was a total mission! I also had a couple of interesting games of football and volleyball with the locals who live around the village, the kids are funny as hell! Then the time came today to leave the jungle and head south...... for me anyway. Jo has gone north, so we´ve parted ways.
I really should have planned my trip a bit better but just jumped on the boat and headed off towards Guatemala, then jumped on a bus into Honduras and then another bus to the place I'm in now, San Pedro Sula´, a big city with chaos everywhere and not much that i really want to hang around and see - i didn`t even know where about it was on the map until just now and it turns out Ive accidentally started heading inland and west instead of the direction i want to go (and the direction of surf) SOUTH. I´m not sure if i could have avoided that but it´ll teach me for not researching the country and all before going there, and also just jumping on random buses because they´re hanging around and about to go somewhere soon.
So now I'm going to head out and grab some food and crash early. Tomorrow i´ll either head south and try to cross Nicaragua or maybe even head west some more and head down the coast that side. It all depends on the surf forecast, which I'm about to check :)
Bye for now
xxx
