La Primera Vez a la Costa Norte

Javi and I left Comayagua last Friday to spend a few days on Honduras’ north coast. Our official purpose for going up that way was to spend a few days in Tela to work on a peace corps business project. A group of nine volunteers met to work on a manual for a business simulation done during pre-service training for future volunteers in the business project. We had been putting the manual together over email and met to review and revise the first draft in person. We spent two nights in Tela but only part of one morning was spent on the manual, so it wasn’t too bad as far as “business trips” are concerned. (Getting to Tela takes several hours on the bus, thus the two night stay). Below is a picture of Javi and another volunteer, Marc, after we finished up our morning meeting.
Tela is a nice beach side town – Javi and I really liked it, and felt a twinge of jealousy because Tela is home to two lucky peace corps volunteers. Tela is small and relaxed with a mix of mestizo (what you normally think of as Hondurans) and Garifuna inhabitants.

Side note: Garifuna are black Caribbean people with an interesting story. They came to live on the Caribbean coasts of Belize and Honduras several hundred years ago after a series of historical events led them this way. The Garifuna are basically the product of Black Caribs (Native Americans from South America) and escaped/shipwrecked African slaves. They lived on the Caribbean island of San Vincente for many years where these two groups intermixed and created a unique race with their own language, dance and music, food and customs. They were deported off the island by the English in the late 1700’s to Honduras, where they established communities all over the Honduran North Coast region. Most speak Spanish, but there are still isolated communities where they only speak Garifuna.

Long before the Tela trip was to happen, Javi and I had been discussing checking about a national park near Tela called Jeanette Kawas (named after in advocate who was assassinated for working to save the park from developers). This park has a peninsula called Punta Sal, where I had read you could camp on the beach. After Tela, we made plans to camp two nights on Punta Sal with our friends Sean and Kate. We arranged a combination of taxi and boat travel to reach the peninsula (only reachable by boat) and made sure we had enough food and water. We were told two families lived on the peninsula on the beach, so we would be camping near them, and they could make us a few meals if we liked. The picture below is what we saw as we pulled up to Cocolito beach on the boat, where we camped.

Punta Sal, and especially Cocolito beach, was amazing. It is truly a very special place. The water was a clear green (like emerald) and combined with the green of the jungle it was absolutely beautiful. There was amazing animal life – we saw monkeys, tropical birds, colorful crabs, and some sea life (which we didn’t really get to see too much of because we unfortunately had no snorkel gear). We heard the monkeys howling in the trees within 30 minutes of getting there and were lucky enough to catch several glimpses of them, one time from the beach as we swam. The water was clear and warm, so we spent a lot of time in it. The first night when we sat on the dock after dinner, we could see glowing jelly fish swimming by. The second night, because the currents had taken away the jelly fish, we went for a swim where something beautiful and unexplainable happened in the water. Anytime you moved, glowing “sparks” of light would come alive under the water. They would stick to clothes and to hair long after you came out of the water and you could even see them sparkling on the beach. One of the guys who lived there, Alex, who was swimming with us that night said it was from the reflection of the moon, but we’re not sure about that. We couldn’t come up with an explanation for it, although I’m sure there is one.

Below are more pictures of Punta Sal:

It wasn’t all perfect at this place – in return for the amazing beauty and specialness of this place, you had to give one thing in return……bug bites. The bugs were relentless. Probably the most annoying were the sand flies – tiny, vile creatures that bit and left itchy red marks. When there wasn’t enough wind to keep them at bay we had to take refuge in the water. I fell asleep the second night to these guys biting me – they had found their way in the tent and would not let me fall asleep in peace. The second were the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were so big, you could feel them landing on you. We all returned home yesterday with several HUNDRED bites from mosquitoes and sand flies that are still itching.

The usual way for the tourist to see Punta Sal is through a day trip from Tela, which is understandable due to the fact that the average tourist does not have camping gear, several free days to spend there or the inclination to put up with the bugs. We were lucky to pass a few days on Cocolito beach, not just to fully appreciate the place and see more wildlife, but also to hang out one night with Alex (who ran the restaurant) and the park ranger. Those guys told us stories and facts about the place, something the average passerby does not get to hear.
Leaving Punta Sal on Tuesday morning, we stopped in a traditional Garifuna village called Miami. Miami is built on a thin sliver of sand; on one side is the beach, on the other a lagoon. The four of us had a quick bite to eat on the beach. We had a friend with us as we ate, who was quite the ham when I asked him if I could take his picture with his pet crab. (Apparently I was not the first tourist to ever take his picture.)

Here is a picture of Miami from the beach side.

We made it back to Comayagua yesterday afternoon – tired, nasty from beach camping and covered with bites, but with a greater appreciation for this country that we are temporarily calling home.