North to Tikal

[Note: Sorry I'm so far behind, I will get caught up soon, and will add some photos to this post as soon as I get to a better internet connection.]

We left Utila on the 6am ferry, took a cab to the bus station and hopped on a bus to San Pedro Sula.  Three hours later we were on a colectivo to Puerto Cortez, where we transferred to a chicken bus going to Omoa, our destination for the night.  We stayed at Roli´s Place, which is a nice little hotel run by a Swiss expat with a habit of posting lists of rules on every conceivable surface.  None of the rules were particularly unusual (Don´t light candles, Don´t be loud at night, Don´t pick the fruit on my fruit trees), but the sheer number of them was a little intimidating.

Here is a little experiment.  We visited an old fort.  Sounds kind of boring, huh?  Now try this.  We visited an old fort used for fighting pirates.  Just add pirates and suddenly everything gets more exciting.  My biggest disorientation of the day though came that evening as we walked up to the beach, which faces the Caribbean Sea, and the sun was setting quite nicely out over the watery horizon.  Suddenly my entire frame of reference was off, watching the sun set in the East.  Or, obviously, what I thought was the East.  It is so easy to forget that the Honduran coast is actually to the North, not the east, and I guess the bay we were on was particularly curvy towards the West.  But it totally threw me for a moment, high school did not prepare me for the intricacies of Central American geography.

The next day we chicken bussed it to the Guatemalan border, where my mind was blown and neither the Honduran or the Guatemalan officials asked for a "border fee".  First and last time, I am sure.  Another shuttle and boat taxi later and we were in the little town of Livingston, which was memorable only for its very distinct Caribbean culture.  We only stayed for breakfast, and then were on another boat up the river to the Finca Tatin, a secluded jungle lodge.

The lodge is up a small fork off the main river, sitting back in the jungle with a bunch of individual cabins of varying degrees of fanciness, but all with a rustic charm.  The main hall was open to the elements on all sides, with a thick thatch roof.  The thick wooden beams were strewn with hammocks, which we quickly got acquainted with.  Nothing like a relaxing swing in a hammock listening to the sounds of the jungle.  There was also a large dining hall, where everyone gathered to eat a communal family-style dinner every night.  This was the best part, and we met and talked with many of the other travelers over simple but filling food.  Out front there was always a group swimming off the dock.  The water was just cool enough to be refreshing from the heat of the day, and the mix of fresh with the salt water provided an extra boost to your buoyancy so you could float around with ease.

The first day we took out a kayak and went paddling up the river, and through some of the mangrove thickets along the rivers edge.  We also, for the first time, got sunburned.  This could have sucked, except it gave us the excuse to stay at the lodge a few extra days while we "recovered".

We saw plenty of wildlife, a bunch of kinds of crabs, spiders, some cool grasshoppers.  David ran across a six foot long snake on a pathway, and we saw what we think is called a paya, a rabbit-sized jungle rodent.  (It was cute, more squirrel/rabbit than rat.)  Somewhere along the way David had even learned to identify the call of the toucan, which sounds nothing like a bird and totally like a frog.  I kept teasing him, but early one morning (we were almost always up with the sunrise) we spotted four toucans in the trees across the river from us, clearly making their weird frog call.

Easter Week is called Santa Semana here, and is when just about every local goes on vacation.  This has the effect of pushing a lot of backpackers out of the cities and into the jungle lodges, so everything gets crowded for the week.  The lodge was full while we were there, and though they found room for us we had to change rooms three times in the four nights we were there.  Our first night was the best, a very fancy room with a private deck and fancy glass shower, all up on stilts.  Though, surprisingly, bugs weren´t a problem for most (except a few girls who were bitten by a horsefly which caused a lot of swelling, poor things) all the beds were decked out with mosquito netting which was great for atmosphere.  Our last room was in the dorms, and with eight beds with mosquito netting, the place looked like a malaria ward.

We are now in the town of Flores, which is a gorgeous tiny town on a small island in a lake up in northern Guatemala.  Everything is brightly painted, and the roofs are all a rusty red.  Though it cools down at night, it is pretty hot during the day, which  makes swimming in the lake off a pier a highlight of the day for tourists and locals alike.  Indeed, you have to watch out that you don´t get creamed by a pre-teen flinging himself off the dock and into the water.  For the third time we have run into a guy from Seattle we met in Xela two months ago at our first school.  We joke that he is our oldest friend in Central America.