Donde es Dallas?

Dallas es en Gracias, Honduras!

The Cayos

Hola everyone, this is my first update since departing Utila. Six of us volunteers left Friday morning for Cayos Menor, one of the larger islands of the Cayos Cachinos (Hog Islands). We stayed in a small lodge in a Garifunan village. In the village there were about a dozen small houses and a short road. It was mostly a fishing village, and our lodge was the only thing there remotely approaching touristy. There was one person who spoke English, and no stores, restaurants, etc. It was pretty cool to be so secluded, but it also proved difficult at times, since no one in our group spoke much Spanish (at least not more than me).

Rusty brought us to Cayos Menor on his sailboat, which took about 4.5 hours. We did some snorkeling out of his boat when we got there, and eventually a canoe with a tiny motor brought us to our lodge. I was certain that we would tip the entire time, but we got there.

The islands and surrounding reef are all protected, so there is very little in development. We tried to hike by ourselves, but were told we had to take a guide. Our first hike was led by a couple of kids, but on our next one, an experienced guide showed us around. We saw at least a half dozen pink boas the islands are famous for.

Somehow, I managed to catch a 1.5 hour canoe ride to the mainland with a local. The one guy that spoke English on the island was a lot of help.

Pico Bonito y Rio Cangrejal

After waiting in Nuevo Armenia 2 hours for the bus, I arrived in La Ceiba. I started walking to my destination, Omega Tours, thinking that a bus would pass sooner or later. It didn´t, so I walked 8 of the 10km (a friendly American couple gave me a ride for a bit).

Omega was great. It was pretty slow, so I had the dorm area to myself. The food was awesome; I ate only the German food. I spent my first day there hiking-running. In the morning I jogged to the park entrance and then hiked to the waterfall.

There were a ton of reptiles and amphibians, but I didn´t see any monkeys or jaguars. I saw a frog that was larger than me (almost), and a lot of lizards. The waterfall was about 60m tall, and the hike was a nice loop instead of the usual out and back. Later in the afternoon, I ran until I found a trail that followed the river. I saw a toucan and a lot more lizards, and some great views of the river.

The next day I did a river trek and rafting trip. First we walked-swam-climbed upstream. We did some cliff jumping, including a 35 foot jump. Then we floated down some rapids in our life preservers before getting on our rafts. The rafting had a pretty steady current with a few decent falls. There was nothing harder than Old Smokey on the Wolf River in Wisconsin though.

Traveling

I left early this morning and arrived in Gracias about 12 hours later. I navigated to my 3 buses pretty well and even found a decent hostel for 7.5$ here in Gracias. Tomorrow and the next day I am planning on hiking to the Celaque Summit, the highest point in Honduras (2849m), with an elevation gain of 1500m from the visitors center.

Scubadiving and more

SCUBA

I´m about 95% done with my getting my PADI open water SCUBA Diving certification. All I have left is the written exam, which is very easy. The class is built for a 10 year old to be able to understand, so everything in the written portion is very simple.

The practical part of the class was really fun. I was being trained with one other guy, Marco, from Finland, who was in his 50s. My instructor was very helpful, and I responded to the water pretty weel. The first lesson was just off the dock, and we did some basic stuf - took the mask off and on under water, find your regulator (gives you air) underwater if it falls off, etc.

The deep water training went well. We got down to about 50 feet the first day, and 60 feet the second. The biggest thing going deep was making sure to equalize every meter or so (like you unpop your ears). We did some underwater swimming without the mask and practiced some emergency accents. Overall, everything was pretty easy if you remember that you can just relax and breathe while doing it.

During the practice dives I saw a lobster, garden eels, a stingray, a school of baby squid, and a hawksbill sea turtle, amongst some awesome coral. I have two free fun dives to do, and after that I will probably do a couple more while on the island. Its about 50$ for two dives, which is a pretty good deal considering the quality of the diving.

Around the Station

Last week was pretty slow due to the weather. For awhile, it looked like Hurrican Ida was going to hit us. It did do some damage near the Nicaragua and Honduras border, but we just got a lot of rain. Things were a little slow, but I tried to keep busy.

Thursday we played kickball again, which was a lot of fun. Thursday night we all picked a dish from our country. I chose to make stuffed green peppers, because I couldn´t think of any important food in the US that wasn´t just borrowed from somewhere else. They turned out pretty good. We also had a German chicken dish, some English food that I forgot the name of, a bunch of great Honduran food, a apple pie from Switzerland, a hot pineapple punch served con Ron, and traditional onion rings and deep fried snickers. We ate for over 2 hours, spread over multiple courses. The main challenge was fitting everything into one small oven with only one grate.

This week work will pick up again. The station is builing a classroom for our education projects, and we will start building that this week. Additionally, I am writing a couple short reports on animals to be used for a lesson plan for kids. My first one is on the hucksbill sea turtle!

Running

Running here is a lot of fun, but its definitely challenging at times. Its not uncommon for there to be some non-running breaks required. My favorite run so far involves running west about 18 minutes, swimming across the canal for about 2 minutes, and then continuing west. West of the canal is almost completely undeveloped, with just one road heading parallal to the coast, about a quarter mile inland. The road is about as wide as an ATV trail, and cuts through a mangrove swampt. Due to the rain, some parts were flooded at least six inches.

The other runs I do all are based off the main road that goes to the airport. The airport has just one plane that goes back and forth from the mainland. Once I had to wait for the plane to land, but usually I can just run along the runway and cut over to the beach.

Last week I was able to put in 59.5 miles, off of 7 days of running (range 5.5-12, avg 8.5, 11 days straight) .

Next Up

This week I will be making a trek to Rock Harbour, on the other side of the island. We will be collecting some iguana food and exploreing the mangrove labrynth. Thursday we´re going to one of the Cays off the coast to celebrate one of the Doro´s, one of the volunteers, birthday.

I think I will be leaving the station just before Thanksgiving. That will give me about 3.5-4 works for traveling. My initial plans are to head to Pico Bonito National Park, just south of the mainland ferry port, for a few days. There I will hike, and hopefully see a jaguar. Then, I think I will take a bus across the country to Copan. At Copan, I will go to the ruins, and do some more hiking in the national parks near there. There is a peak of 2400m just east of Copan. Following that, I think I will go the 10 miles west into Guatemala and explore a bit there. The southeast coast of Belize isn´t much further, but I don´t know if I will venture that far.

Adios!
Go Badgers!
Leave a comment, por favor!

Hola!

Halloween here was pretty sweet. I didn´t know if it would be celebrated at all, but its actually pretty big. We went on a Booze Cruise one of the bars put on, and a bunch of us dressed up. My costume was a little weak (I just wore devil horns I found), but at least I tried. Some people went all out, and there were a lot of kids trick or treating. It wasn´t the same as Madison, but it was also nice that I could wear shorts and celebrate on a dock on the ocean.

Yesterday, we planned on going on a hike into the mangroves to explore and collect iguana food, but since the mosquitos are epically bad we decided to wait for another day. Last night´s and today´s rain will hopefully help that. So instead we continued clearing out and burning a brush pile. Starting fires is pretty fun, so I´m alright with that.

Later on I went snorkeling with a couple other volunteers. This was by far the best snorkel spot I´ve seen thus far, and will probably head back there again later this week. Its a bit far, and with 4 bikes that barely have breaks and gears, it is a little difficult to get to. The highlights were seeing a octopus and a baloon fish, which I have never seen before. Here´s a pretty picture:
On tuesdays a restaurant called the Wooden Spoon holds a fish talk, so we went to that again, this week´s subject was fish around Utila. Again, it was very interesting and the host insanely animated and enjoyed mimicing fish´s mating habits. They served lasagna and it was pretty good.

This morning, we measured and weighed a few of the adult iguanas. We tried to do it early before they were too active, but they were still pretty fiesty. They bite, but I´ve been lucky so far.


Here´s one of our few green iguanas, with only one arm:


In other news, I´ve been reading and hammocking a lot. I already finished Assassination Vacation, Fargo Rock City, Memories of my Melancholy Whores, Chapters 1-3 of the SCUBA dive textbook, and am almost done with a mediocre Agatha Christie book.

Random photo from a Bob Marley themed restuarant (Forrest Gump!):


(Photos take a long time to upload, one of these days I will put a lot up though)