Preparations

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  La Ceiba, Honduras
Tuesday, September 4, 2007

I am staying at Quinta Real, a hotel located directly on the beach in La Ceiba. The hotel is my splurge for the trip. I figure if I am going to hang out in La Ceiba, it mights as well be on the beach. It is also the only hotel that is on the beach in the entire city, everything else is in the city. When I had originally checked into the hotel there wasnīt a hurricane coming towards the town. However, things changed and I found myself scared and wanting to go inland a little more. My options were (A) Stay in a hotel that was not on the beach, but was in a building that was fairly old and predominately made out of wood or (B) Stay in a hotel that opened in 2005 that was more structurally sound and made out of concrete. I went with option B. It was by far the more expensive option. But at this stage of the trip, a few added comforts during a time when I was starting to get scared would make all the difference.

Last night the hotel was getting boarded up and tape was being applied to the windows. The hotel staff was very nice and made me feel a little bit more at ease. Throughout the entire evening lounge chairs were brought off the beach, tables were stacked in a protected corner and the hotel staff was busy with preparations for the hurricane.

The hurricane was still a Class 5 and La Ceiba was still directly in its path. I have to admit that for the first time during the trip I cried in the comfort of my room. I was alone, nobody to pass the time with. I ended up making a $2 per minute phone call to Christopher help calm my nerves.

Continuing to get the hotel ready

It helped...sort of. I was still alone and directly in the path of a Class 5 hurricane in a country that didnīt have the infrastructure to handle huge catastrophes. What frightened me the most was that the country didn't have the emergency staff and equipment to handle a full blown disaster.

Also earlier in the evening, before the rain had started, a building 4 blocks from the hotel caught on fire! The building went up in flames within minutes because it was one giant wooden box. The smoke enveloped the hotel and sitting outside it became a little difficult to breathe. And this is before the scary hurricane!

I meet a mother and son who were traveling from New York together at the bar and ended up talking with them for a few hours. It was nice to speak English and get some reassuring words from the 70 year old woman. She had lived in La Ceiba 47 years earlier and had returned for the first time since she left. She promised me that every bone in her body was good and thus, that obviously indicated that we would be fine :) After two heaping glasses of wine, I said goodnight and went up to my room where I quickly fell asleep.

This morning I awoke paranoid and restless. Between the hours of 3 AM and 6 AM I had startled every time the windows rattled in the wind. At breakfast, the hotel looked like a giant fort. Plywood was nailed across windows and tape was applied to every exposed windows.

CNN and other news stations had filed into the hotel the night before and were setting up shop in the hotel lobby or in the bar.

Drinks with people i meet

Every now and then you would see them venture near the ocean for a live report. The hurricane made landfall on the Nicaragua- Honduras boarder and a few hours later it became a Class 4 hurricane. I was happy with the news that it was no longer a Class 5. With a little bit of luck it would become a Class 3 or less when it finally hit us. The rain started at 11 AM this morning. The clouds got darker and things were eerily quite before the rain poured down. La Ceiba became flooded within an hour.

By lunch time, news reports indicated that the hurricane had changed course ever so slightly and was going to be further south than previously indicated. That was good for La Ceiba, because it meant the city was no longer in the middle of the hurricanes path. We would avoid the heavy winds, but would still get plenty of rain.

It rained on and off throughout the afternoon and I watch as the pool in the hotel slowly filled. It was almost overflowing by dinner. The rain became much heavier as the day progressed, but the city was not feeling the giant red swirl that you see on television. Thank goodness! The hurricane stayed over Nicaragua longer than people had originally thought and the Honduras mountains dissipated the force of the hurricane significantly. Dinner time was the only time when winds started to pick up significantly. The tress outside hotel were being whipped around and some leaves where being torn off.

People are breathing a huge sigh of relief in the city of La Ceiba...other parts of the country are not as lucky

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Tape on windows 1

Tape on windows 2

Tape on windows 3

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