The last two weeks of March, my friends from home Charlie and Erik came down to see Honduras. Looking for adventure, we spent most of their time here traveling in the Mosquitia, the large, remote region that covers much of eastern Honduras. Traveling by bus, river, ocean and car, we made a 7-day circuit around a very large chunk of Honduras. The trip involved more sitting than I think any of us had ever done in a week, but the views and the chance to see a truly remote area were worth it. My co-worker Antonio also accompanied us. He had worked and lived in the Mosquitia several years ago, so was able to show us the ropes.
Day 1 Tegucicalpa to Palestina
We left early in the morning from the middle of the market in Tegucigalpa. An aging retired school bus from the United States would take us directly to Palestina, Olancho, the frontier town near where we would start our journey on the Patuca River. As we headed east through the department of El Paraiso and then turned north into Olancho, the bus was taking its time. The upside was that we stopped twice to eat and use the bathroom. The downside was that the trip took 6-hours. This felt a bit long, especially during the intervals when we were forced to sit three-to-a-seat. It was good practice for all the sitting to come though.
On the bus we ran into a friend of Antonio’s named Lilia. When he worked in Palestina Antonio had eaten at Lilia’s mom, Dona Juana’s house. We would be pitching our tents in Dona Juana’s yard that night. Lilia lives in Tegucigalpa but is building a house in Palestina so comes often to visit the family and check up on construction. This time she brought a bale of used American clothing (something like Goodwill rejects I assume) with her to sell in Palestina.
Arriving in Palestina, we made our way to Dona Juana’s house to leave our things. They welcomed Antonio like he was one of the family and were also extremely friendly to us. Our plan was to get on the first boat that we could find going out the next morning. The river was currently low, so they said it might be harder than usual to find transportation. We went to inquire at the hotel where most of the pipanteros (boatmen) stay when in town. The owner there gave us the phone number of Don Dionicio, a pipantero she said was likely heading out the next morning.
While hanging around the hotel, a man walked in with his thumb bandaged up and a revolver stuck in his belt. In this part of Olancho guns are the norm, and he was one of the first of many armed Olanchanos we would see. I don’t know if Olancho is really that much more dangerous than other parts of Honduras. Guns are just a part of the culture. “See all these simple little houses in town,” Antonio told me. “Almost all of them, no matter how humble, have guns inside.” He explained that in Tegucigalpa, if a family can spare any money, they invest it in a good stereo and a TV. Here in Olancho, the first thing they buy to make their household complete is a good gun. This culture is probably not all that much different from the American West. Nearly all of the people in Palestina are transplants or descendants of transplants, many from Southern Honduras, who came to this new frontier to get free land. Antonio said some also came running from the law. While I’m never particularly comfortable around armed people, I assume that if you don’t mess with them they won’t mess with you.
Dona Juana and Lilia made us a great dinner and we bought 12 beers to share with the family. At about 8 pm Antonio called Don Dionicio to see about transportation. We found out he would be leaving the next day early for Wampusirpi with a boat full of merchandise and we were welcome to join him. Antonio realized he had heard of Dionicio, who has a large general store in Wampusirpi, back when he was working in the area. Dionicio said his normal price was 1500 Lempiras a person, but that he would give us the ride for 1000 each. He said a friend of his could give us a ride down to the river dock at 4:30 am. We accepted the offer and Antonio was able to negotiate for the friend to pick us up at 5:30 am, giving us an extra hour to sleep.
Day 2 Palestina to Somewhere on the Rio Patuca
At 5:30 am we were in front of city hall waiting for Don Diocicio’s friend. He pulled up at the agreed-upon hour and said the trip down to the river would cost 300 Lempiras. His normal price was 400 Lempiras he said, but he was giving us a deal. We were starting to see a pattern here. People there tell you they’ve already reduced their rate so you don’t feel the need to do any negotiating yourself. 300 Lempiras seemed a bit steep, but divided by 4 it wasn’t bad and we certainly had no other transportation options. After a chilly 20-minute ride, we were at the river. This being the main entry point for river traffic down to the entire Rio Patuca, I had been expecting at least a dock. What we found was a cleared out section of shore where people pulled their boats up.
The ride to the river landing
The vehicle we took to the river landing
The river landing
The boatmenb must not be too concerned about the aesthetics of the river. All of the outboard motor oil bottles get thrown on the beach.
Three pipantes tied up on shore. The one to the right is ours.
But we also found Dionicio, “Don Nicho”, for short, and his nephew Josue preparing the boat. Up until now I have said we would be traveling down the river in a boat. In reality we would be traveling in a pipante, pretty much the only craft aside from rafts that anyone uses to travel the upper Patuca. They are used for everything from crossing to the other side of the river to run an errand to multi-day trips. Pipantes range greatly in size, but all are long, narrow, and carved out of one, single hollow log, usually of mahogany or Ceiba. The smallest pipantes might be about 12 inches wide and 15 feet long. There is not enough room to sit on them, so the driver stands up and pushes his way along the river’s edge with a long pole. When the river becomes too deep, he must switch to a paddle.
Don Nicho’s pipante was about as big as they come. Powered by a 60-horse Yamaha outboard, it was 56 feet long, about 4 feet wide in the middle and about 3 feet deep. Aside from about 8 inches of planking added on to increase the freeboard, the entire craft was cut from a sigle Ceiba tree trunk. Josue said Don Nicho had made the pipante himself. I assume that means he hired people to do most of the carving. Today, the pipante was loaded up with what I estimated to be about 8,000 pounds of cargo and gasoline. The cargo included soft drinks, flour, cornmeal, plastic chairs, axes, machetes, files and about anything else you might sell at a general store in the middle of the Mosquitia.
Don Nicho´s pipante with a full load (photos courtesy of Charlie)
We found out that Don Nicho’s pipante wouldn’t be leaving any time too soon (good thing Antonio had negotiated for the extra hour of sleep) so decided to look for our last meal in civilization. Erik would make a remark a few days later regarding the abundance of food in all parts of Honduras as long as you had a little money. He boasted that, despite the limitations in his Spanish, he could probably arrive in any small Honduran village and have a hot plate of beans, rice and tortillas in front of him within 10 minutes. Given that Erik likes to eat, this attribute of Honduras was a selling point for him. The river “dock” was no exception, and in about 10 minutes we were desayunando típico (having a typical breakfast).
Don Nicho and Josue still hadn’t had breakfast, so we had about an hour to sit around, let our food digest and use the facilities before getting underway. We probably shoved off at about 8:30.
Resting before the voyage
Even though I knew our trip would mainly consist of sitting in a pipante on the river, before setting out I hadn’t thought or asked much about the logistics of actually getting down the river. I had heard the river was low and that that might mean some pushing, but I pictured a very wide, slow, calm, muddy river. It turned out that the upper half of the Patuca was narrow and fast-moving. Parts of the journey more or less amounted to whitewater rafting in a 56-foot long dugout canoe loaded with cargo that weighed about the same as two mid-sized cars.
When we approached the most difficult of the rapids, Don Nicho would often drift down to take a closer look, decide on a route and then motor back upstream to take a run at it. Speed and momentum must have helped when confronting the rapids. Don Nicho would steer the boat from the back, while Josue stood up front and pointed out rocks. In sharp turns, Josue would also use a paddle to direct the front of the pipante. Sometimes water would splash over the bow. Every once in awhile we would scrape up against a rock, which would produce a loud scraping sound and throw the boat off balance a bit. Don Nicho has been running the river for 30 years and said he has never flipped a boat or lost any cargo. That, and the fact that it was in his best interest not to flip the boat this time either, gave confidence that we’d arrive safely, even when what we were seeing and feeling wasn’t exactly reassuring.
There were also shallow parts where the boat got stuck. We hit the first one about an hour into the trip. The pipante ground to a halt and Josue and Don Nicho immediately kicked off their shoes and jumped in the knee-to-thigh-deep water in their jeans. They began twisting the boat back and forth about its center in an effort to dislodge it from the bottom as the river pulled it downstream. After about a minute of helplessly watching them, the four of us kicked off our shoes and jumped in too. Don Nicho, Antonio and Charlie pushed in the back and Erik, Josue and I pushed in the front. Don Nicho directed the effort of twisting and heaving. It became evident that we weren’t making much progress. In what I thought an ingenious solution, Josue and Don Nicho threw the full 18-gallon fuel canisters overboard, tying them together and to the boat with a long rope. Throwing the canisters out both lightened the load and created a very strong drag force to pull the pipante off the bar it was stuck on. By this point, a man and several women who lived on the shore had also jumped in to lend a hand. Finally, the boat broke free and we all clambered over the sides as it accelerated downstream. Don Nicho started up the motor, and Josue began hauling in the chain of fuel canisters. The whole process felt a bit like tipping a sailboat: a long slow effort to get underway again and then a mad rush to stay with the boat and get it under control once it jumps back to life.
Josue helping to guide the boat through the rapids (photo courtesy of Charlie)
Pushing boat off of a shallow spot
We would get stuck once more that day. The second time we freed the boat without throwing fuel canisters overboard, but Erik and I were nearly swept away by the current as the water climbed up to our chests. While the center of the boat was on a shallow spot, where we were standing and pushing the river was quite deep. Making matters worse, the boat was slightly crosswise in the current, making the current much stronger on our upstream side of the boat. We both climbed back in the boat and moved over to the other side to push before we were swept away.
Along the edge of the river we saw dozens of prospectors panning for gold. Many had simple camps set up on the river, and panned for gold the old-fashioned way, knee deep in the water sifting the sand in a large round pan. Others had machines mounted on rafts to extract the gold. Gas motors on the rafts run pumps that suck the sand up from the bottom of the river. The sand goes though some sort of mechanism that sifts out an infinitesimal quantity of gold and then gets thrown back in the river. This prospecting must not be too profitable, since no one seemed to be doing it on a large scale, but it must be profitable enough to make it worth their while.
Josue on one of the motorized gold digging machines.
When it became too dark to see the rapids, after about 10 hours underway, we pulled over to the beach below a house owned by some acquaintances of Don Nicho. A 50 or 60-something man lived there with his daughter and several of her young children. Dinner was a freeze-dried meal Charlie and Erik had brought from the States, a few boiled eggs Don Nicho bought from our hosts and gave to us, and a cup of coffee generously provided by our hosts.
Wood is abundant in this part of the country, and all of the houses are wooden structures, with plank floors and siding, built on stilts several feet above the ground. The wooden houses all seemed pretty large and clean, masking the simple and unhealthy conditions that their inhabitants were likely living in. This house had a small kitchen, a sitting room with a couple hammocks for Josue and Don Nicho, a couple bedrooms for all of the usual inhabitants, and an extra room large enough for us to set up both of our small tents in it. Despite the size of their house, a couple of the kids were quite small for their age and looked malnourished. The small children slept together on a thin mat spread out over the hard wood floor and one girl was coughing all night long. Her coughing didn’t seem to arise enough concern for her mother to get up and do anything about it.
The house where we spent our first night.
Day 3 Somewhere on the Patuca to Tukrún
We were on the river at first light. Don Nicho didn’t think we would make it to Wampusirpi in the 2 days he had planned on originally, but thought we would at least get close. We only got stuck once the second day, but Don Nicho spent more time stopping on the shore and doing errands than the day before. It became clear that we were entering his territory and that he was sort of a big guy in that neck of the woods. He stopped to talk with nearly every pipante that passed and stopped several times along the shore. This made sense since I imagine that chance encounters on the river are one of the few ways people here have to communicate with each other. A couple of the people we encountered wanted to borrow money from Don Nicho. One woman’s father was sick and several hundred miles away. She wanted to put one of her cows in hock to get enough money for her mother and her to visit him. Don Nicho said he was sorry but that he didn’t have any extra money on him. One man, who was missing an arm and looked like his face had been cut up with a machete, gave 2,500 Lempiras to Don Nicho for safe-keeping. He said he’d rather not carry the money himself and that he’d feel better if Don Nicho had it.
Don Nicho had some land on this stretch of the river and was clearing one parcel of it for cattle grazing. Josue had been planning on stopping off there to set up a camp for workers who were coming to clear the land. He would be there alone for a couple days and seemed excited for the adventure. At first it sounded like Don Nicho was in favor of the plan, but as we neared the property he must have reconsidered. As we passed by Josue asked why we weren’t stopping to let him off and Don Nicho just kept on motoring down the river. He probably decided Josue wasn’t ready for that much adventure.
Josue, who we began to refer to as Daddy Yaknee once we left him behind in Wampusirpi, was an unlikely character to be traveling up and down the Patuca in a pipante. Keeping a watchful eye for rocks off the prow of the pipante, he sported a black cap with large dollar signs embroidered on it. He was only 20 years old, but had lived two years in Miami, installing security equipment with a work visa, and had picked up a decent amount of English, particularly the four-letter words. He said he’d been in jail 5 times during his tenure in Miami, not for doing anything criminal, just for getting in fights with people who looked at him wrong or in some other way disrespected him. His favorite phrase was “I’m hungry as sh!*”, which was unfortunate because he had brought none of his own food and was dependent on what we gave him. Since Josue seemed to be a bit volatile, we tried to stay on his good side and ended up sharing quite a few snacks with him. Josue didn’t display a gun, but told us he was carrying one. He said that when he had a son he’d give him a gun to bring to school by the time he was 8 years old. The other kids at school can really be rough sometimes and a guy has to be able to protect himself he told us.
Despite Josue’s rough personality, he was also a 20-yr old in awe of his uncle. Even though he was pretty good at talking back to him, Josue couldn’t say enough about Don Nicho’s experience navigating the river, or about how much he liked being out here on the river. You could tell how much he wanted to be the big man and stay alone setting up camp at his uncle’s property and how it hurt his pride when Don Nicho decided he wasn’t ready.
Daddy Yankee riding up front
In the afternoon we stopped one place to pick up some long wooden boards someone had cut for Don Nicho. We dragged them alongside the boat for a bit to a property where a lot of his family seemed to live. We passed Don Nicho´s son and what appeared to be a couple of nephews fishing on the shore and they came to meet us at the property where he would drop off the wood. His son had a shiny revolver sticking out of his pocket; one of the younger relatives had a pistol stuck in his waistband and the other an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. The guy with the AK-47 couldn’t have been more than 18. All looked friendly, but I wasn’t about to look the wrong way at any of them. Josue later explained to us that Don Nicho’s son had a lot of cattle and a lot of money, and for that reason needed extra protection. Don Nicho’s mother also came down to meet us. He dropped of quite a few provisions with them. Just as we were leaving, we picked up a woman and her two young children as passengers (the wife and kids of the man who was missing an arm I think) and were on our way once again.
Attaching the wood to the boat (photo courtesy of Charlie)
By the time we got to the next stop, we paying passengers were perhaps getting a little sick of all the errands. As I walked on the edge of the boat to the front to bring get some food to bring back, I lost my balance and landed feet-first in the water up to my stomach. I jumped right back in, but the damage had been done, my pants and shoes were soaked and my pride a bit wounded. It was at the point in the afternoon, after sitting on the boat so long, and faced with the prospect of sitting for a few more hours in wet jeans, when the whole mishap wasn’t really all that funny. I lumbered to the back of the boat to dump the water out of my boots and await our departure.
Just before we pulled off, the woman Don Nicho was leaving provisions with came down with about 20 pounds of soft fresh cheese called cuajada and a pot of steaming boiled yucca. There could not have been a better cure for my situation. Don Nicho, perhaps sensing that we were a little weary of the journey and of the errands, told us to take all we wanted of both the cheese and the yucca. We took the remaining yucca to go in a rinsed-out quart bottle of motor oil and Don Nicho installed the large tub of cheese on a chair just behind my head. As we motored down the river I reached back and grabbed chunks of the salty goodness until it started to rain and we covered ourselves up with tarps. Before arriving at our destination we got stuck once again and had to get out an push, at which point it no longer mattered that I had gotten my jeans wet.
20 pounds of cuajada that tasted so good (photo courtesy of Charlie)
Yucca in an oil bottle (photo courtesy of Charlie)
As promised, we did not make it to Wampusirpi that night. As darkness fell we found ourselves in the village of Tukrún, were Don Nicho’s daughter owned the main business in town, a general store complete with a generator, a TV, and of course hot dinner for sale. We had a great dinner and split a couple of cold pops before heading back to the beach to sleep in our tents. Don Nicho slept under a tarp in the back of the pipante guarding the merchandise.
A house in Tukrún
Day 4 Tukrún to Wawina
Early morning on the beach in Tukrún
After about 2 hours of early-morning travel, we found ourselves in Wampusirpi, something of a metropolis in the middle of the Mosquitia. There were a few cars, a restaurant and an airstrip. We left Don Nicho and Josue on the muddy riverbank to unload their cargo while we took off to get breakfast and see the town. We were instructed to arrive later to Don Nicho’s house to see if he had found us a pipantero (boatman) to take us on the next leg of our journey. At his house we were greeted by his friendly wife who had slices of watermelon to go around. The local pastor was also in the kitchen slurping watermelon. He informed us that going to Barra Patuca, the Carribean mouth of the Patuca River, as we had been planning, was not a recommendable option. The police had been cracking down on drug trafficking there recently and this was resulting in firefights at night. He said it would be much better to get off the river before reaching the coast and take the canals to Brus Laguna, a larger and safer town.
On the river in the morning
Unloading inWampusirpi
The restaurant where we ate breakfast (photo courtesy of Charlie)
Plotting our course as we wait for breakfast (photo courtesy of Charlie)
Drying our clothes in the sun while we ate breakfast
The church in front of Don Nicho´s house
Don Nicho in front of his house (photo courtesy of Charlie)
By the afternoon Don Nicho had put us in contact with Stanley, a friend of his heading down the river to Ahuas. Stanley and the young nurse accompanying him had just finished chauffeuring a medical brigade from Michigan around to different villages farther up the river. Their boat was now empty and they were heading back home to Ahuas, where the nurse worked in a hospital where Stanley’s sister was also a doctor. The lady in the restaurant where we ate breakfast had told us that Ahuas was reachable in about an hour and a half, so we were expecting a short trip. I began to think it might take a bit longer though, since Stanley made even more stops than Don Nicho had. It appeared that he and the nurse were trying to get rid of all of the leftover medicine from the brigade. We stopped at various houses along the river where they filled up plastic bottles with de-parasite medicine (something like a parasite eating laxative I imagine) and dropped off eye drops. As we were shoving off toward the next stop, the nurse would give quick dosage instructions and tell the people to share the medicine with their neighbors. The whole process didn’t seem too controlled or effective to me, but perhaps the nurse knew what she was doing.
As the afternoon wore one, we were startled to hear from the nurse that we likely wouldn’t arrive today. The restaurant lady’s 1.5 hour trip had turned into a multi-day journey. She must have been completely misinformed or thinking we were traveling by plane. After a reality check and a look at the long distance between Wampusirpi and Ahuas on the map we realized that believing her had been an exercise in wishful thinking. We would pitch our tents that night inside a large wooden warehouse on the beach below a town called Wawina. The warehouse had been used by a rich congressman from the region but had now been abandoned. The woman we found at the warehouse shared beans with us and Stanley had a few flour tortillas along to share. We also cooked up the freeze-dried, packaged variety of beans and rice to pass around.
Our second craft wasn´t as full as the first
Erik looking very tall and white (well a bit red actually) on the beach
The warehouse we stayed in in Wawina
Day 5 Wawina to Brus Laguna
The people of Wawina getting ready to go to work in their pipantes
After a couple hours the next morning we were in Ahuas. True to form, 10 minutes after entering a small house on the riverbank we were served four plates of chicken, rice and beans. We then took off for a tour around town. The most notable characteristic of Ahuas was how flat it was. I felt as if I were standing on the prairie in Kansas. The nurse who had been on the boat with us offered us bucket showers at her house and we accepted. It felt good to be clean after several days.
In the afternoon we left Ahuas for Brus Laguna on a large passenger launch that Stanley had suggested. He was also going to Brus as well and would travel on the same launch. Since the river would be deeper from here on out, larger and faster boats could make it through. The boat we took had double 200 horse motors and must have had capacity for about 35 people. It made daily runs between Ahuas and Brus.
The minute we got into Ahuas, our esteemed captain Stanley went into relax mode. He must have needed to unwind after a long week on the river with the medical brigade. By the time we boarded the boat he had already put down several beers and was in a good mood. He was friends with the boat captain and sat in back of the boat watching a movie on a laptop with another friend. En route they flagged down a pipante to buy more Port Royal beer and were jolly again. As we sped down the narrow, curvy river (the ride could have been from a video game) I kept looking back to make sure that the captain was not consuming any beer. We arrived in Brus Laguna unscathed but too late to catch a boat to go any further.
Brus, on a large lagoon that empties to the coast, had a noticeable coastal feel to it. The houses were still on stilts, but some of them were now right over the lagoon. There were way more bars than the other towns we had been in, a few hotels, and a few restaurants. We found a nice wood hotel right on the water and shared a room with two beds among the four of us.
We found a decent restaurant for dinner and a beer. As night fell, it became evident that there were a lot of mosquitoes coming up from the lagoon. By Minnesota standards there really weren’t that many, but the difference in Honduras is that the mosquitoes are dangerous, especially on the north coast where they can carry malaria. We sat out on the pier for a few minutes until we realized we were slowly being eaten and then headed back to the hotel to sleep. The room had fans, but they would be turning off at 10pm when the town´s generators shut down for the night. Antonio predicted that there would be quite a few mosquitoes in the room when that happened. As ridiculous as we knew it looked, and even though we were sick of sleeping in it, we decided to set up my tent on top of our double bed. At least the surface would be soft.
Charlie and Erik agreed that sleeping in a tent on top of a bed would look ridiculous and decided to chance it without the tent. At 11pm I woke up to the sounds of them setting up their tent as well. Once the fans went out they had to hide in their sleeping bags to avoid the mosquitoes and this had proved to be suffocatingly hot.
The boat landing in Ahuas
The Mosquitia prarrie
A typical house in Ahuas
A composting letrine
Our ride to Brus Laguna
Brus Laguna
Day 6 Brus Laguna to Batalla
After a breakfast of baleadas (a coastal delicacy of homemade flour tortillas folded in half around refried beans and white, salty, grated cheese) we started looking for a ride farther down the coast. Initially we had hoped to find a ride all the way to Batalla, where we would get a pickup ride along the beach to the highway where we would get a bus to Trujillo. However, in the morning we could not find anyone who wanted to go that far. We would have to get a boat to Cocobila, where they assured us we would be able to find regular passenger service to Palacios in the afternoon. Paying more than we wanted to, and not going as far as we wanted to, but having no other options, we took the boat to Cocobila.
I had been told when we entered the Mosquitia that the Mesquitos didn’t have as many guns as the people in Olancho. So far that seemed to be only marginally true. The Mesquitos tended to have rifles instead of hadguns and machine guns, but still seemed pretty well armed. In this boat, one man was busy polishing his revolver while another man carried a rifle wrapped in a cloth to protect it.
Crossing the lagoon in the 20-some foot open boat with an outboard motor was a change in scenery. After crossing the lagoon, the boat captain was faced with a decision. We could enter a canal that would take us along the coast to the next lagoon, or we could cross out into the open ocean, speed along the coast and cross back into the next lagoon. The former option must have been slower and probably involved the risk of getting stuck in the shallow canal. The latter option involved crossing the shallow bars between the lagoons and the ocean where 6-foot waves were breaking violently. The older female passenger behind us who had passed through the violent surf before and couldn’t swim was arguing fiercely that we take the slower canal route. Despite her protests, the guys running the show charged out to the open ocean.
As we crossed the bar, one man in front of the boat spotted the waves and signaled to the driver how to approach them. The preferred technique seemed to be to face the waves head on and gun the motor to get over them, preferably not hot while they were breaking. The whole process looked a bit tricky. Following Antonio’s lead, I unlaced my hiking boots to aid in swimming should that become necessary. We had been traveling by water for 5 days and had yet to see or hear of a life preserver.
Once we got away from the bar, the ocean was much calmer. We cruised along at a good pace until we reached the mouth of Rio Plátano, which had it’s own bar complete with crashing surf. Coming in to the bar was calmer but could very well have been more dangerous. If the boat were overtaken by a breaking wave disaster would ensue. Disaster did not ensue and we entered the beautiful Rio Plátano. From the river we turned off on a canal that brought us to Laguna Ibans, another large lagoon where they left us off at a community called Cocobila.
The waves we were up against
The village at the mouth of the Rio Plátano
Plying through the canals from Rio Plátano to Laguna Ibans
Our transportation from Brus to Cocobila
Arriving in Cocobila, the regular passenger transportation we had been promised was not available. The regular boats only left early in the morning to get people to Batalla in time to meet the pickup trucks leaving from there. The only way we could get to Batalla today would be hiring an express trip that would cost us about 40% more than the normal fare. While we deliberated our options we decided to have a look around. From Cocobila it was only a short walk to Raistá, a small community with an ecotourism resort where Antonio had worked on a composting latrine project several years ago. There we met a man named Carlos who worked for an NGO in Belen, the next set of houses about 400 yards down. He said we were welcome to pitch out tents in his yard if we decided to stay the night. Still unsure of our plans, we decided to check his place out since it was near the beach and we were itching for a swim in the ocean.
The beach in Belen was deserted, long and beautiful, even if littered with quite a bit of trash. We speculated that all of the trash that gets dumped in the Patuca river probably makes it out to the ocean, mixes with the trash people dump in the ocean, and then washes up on shore. Part of being in Honduras is learning to deal with tragedies like trash on the beach. If you let the trash on the beach ruin your perception of the entire beach, or if you let the diesel exhaust in Tegucigalpa ruin your perception of the entire city, you’ll never enjoy anything in this flawed yet beautiful country. At the same time, you don’t want to embrace or accept these flaws because then you will forget that they should be repaired.
After playing in the waves and swallowing some salt water, we headed back to Carlos’ place where he offered us freshwater showers. We had lunch back at the resort Antonio knew about and contracted a boat from the owner there to get to Batalla. The boat ride was uneventful and at about 4:30 pm we were pulling up to the beach in Batalla.
On the beach in Belen
When we arrived at Batalla, we were surprised to see a pickup parked on the shore. The trucks normally leave early in the morning each day, but they said they would take us immediately for a slightly higher fee. Looking at the depressed little beach town in front of us, I immediately started to dream of spending the night in a comfortable bed in Trujillo, the beach town we were planning to head to when we left the Mosquitia. After a quick consultation, we decided to take the offer and get the heck out of Batalla. Another plus was that since only we would be riding, we would all get to ride inside the double cab of the huge 3.0 L Toyota diesel pickup.
We loaded our things in the back and took off through the sandy and winding streets of Batalla. We realized the guy at the wheel was a chubby teenager, who drove with recklessness commensurate with his age. He assured us that he was 18 and had a license. Thinking we were on the fast track out of Batalla, we were surprised when the car stopped after 45 seconds at another boat landing. After standing around for a bit at this landing, we were told to transfer into another car, this one a slightly older-looking Toyota 2.8 diesel. It was a step down in vehicle, but the driver in this one was capable of growing facial hair, so I was happy to make the trade. As we sat waiting, I mentioned to Antonio that we were experiencing a phenomenon common when traveling in unknown territory. There was a plan being executed that those around us were aware of but we were simply passive recipients of. We were just sitting there waiting to see which car they told us to get in next. I also mentioned to Charlie and Erik that it seemed like many of our adventures seem to end quickly and sooner than planned. On hiking trips we often hike a few extra miles the last few days to get out to the car a day early. It appeared that this one would turn out to be no different.
We sat another 10 minutes, the driver took out a plate of Chinese food, presumably to eat during the trip, and we tore off down the sandy 2-track road. About 3 minutes later, still in the outskirts of Batalla, the driver received a phone call. When he hung up he pulled off the road and began to turn the car around. He explained that there was a water crossing on the road where the car had to cross on a raft and that the raft operator was going home for the night. We would have to spend the night in Batalla and go the next morning. Because of the hassle, he would give us a discounted rate at 5 am the next morning of 350 Lempiras each instead of 500.
This trip would not end prematurely like many of our others, but as Antonio quickly pointed out, I was right about one thing: we were clearly along for the ride on this trip, and the recipients of the plans of others, which we knew very little about.
After thoughts of a soft bed in Trujillo, our accommodations in Batalla didn’t look too good. In fact I think it was probably about the shabbiest place I have ever paid to stay in. We would certainly be pitching our tents on top of the beds. The bathrooms were flushable latrines outside. Fortunately, the owner of the rooming house also sold food and was very friendly. Once we got settled in, she sent her young son Esaul with us to show us around town. He was about 10 years old but spoke very good English. He went to a bilingual school across the bay in the larger town of Palacios.
Exploring Batalla with our guide Esaul. The road in the lower photo is the one we would be traveling on the next morning.
On the way back from the beach with Esaul, we passed by some men who had another pickup truck that made trips out of Batalla. They said they would take us at 4 am the next morning for 300 Lempiras instead of 350. Always interested in saving a buck, we told them we would think about it and that if we were interested we would be waiting for them at our “hotel” at 4 am. As we walked away Esaul informed us that these guys were not to be trusted. His mom had taken a ride with them once for a cheap price, but when they arrived at their destination they demanded that she pay full price. After hearing this I realized that these guys did look even shadier than the guys we had accepted a ride with first. We decided it would be best to get a ride with the original outfit, and hoped these new guys wouldn’t come around looking for us in the morning.
For dinner, our host served us each a good plate of fried fish, fried plantains and coleslaw. Cabbage is a very easy food to get sick from, especially if it is not washed with clean water. Water looked to be scarce in Batalla and I’m not sure where it came from. As a precaution neither Antonio nor I ate the coleslaw. When I looked over at Erik’s plate though I saw that he had already polished off all of his coleslaw. He didn’t get sick, so apparently the coleslaw was good or he has a pretty strong stomach.
Day 7 Batalla to Trujillo
At 4:30 the next morning we were packed and ready to go. Our original driver had come by at 4:15 and said he was going to pick up some other passengers and would be back for us soon. At 4:30 the new guys pulled up and asked if we were ready to go. This could be a sticky situation. I was afraid they might have taken our response the night before as a commitment to go with them and that they might be upset with us now. These were not the kind of guys I wanted upset with us and standing in the dark at 4 am in Batalla was not the time or place to have anyone upset with you. I told them that since they had not been there at 4 am we had committed to go with the other truck. Thankfully, they accepted this answer and took off. At 6 am our ride showed up, but already nearly full. The cab was full, the roof was stacked with luggage and the back of the truck was nearly full of people. Today we would be riding in the back. They tied our backpacks to the pile on the roof; we squeezed ourselves in and took off at what seemed like full capacity.
The truck, before about half of the 17 passengers had gotten on.
As we left Batalla we picked up two more passengers. At this point there were 5 people inside the cab and 11 people on the back (two of them small children), and one young man standing on the roof holding onto the pile of luggage. What ensued was the most dangerous and most uncomfortable ride I have had in my life. We held on for dear life as the truck sped down soft dirt roads, lined with branches that nearly knocked the guys on top off the truck. Things were even more harrowing when we started driving right on the beach, at the point where the surf keeps the sand wet and somewhat smooth, and where the waves came up and wet the tires of the truck. Given the speeds we traveled at, the soft surfaces we were on, and the high center of gravity of the pickup´s load, a rollover seemed somewhat likely and if that happened a death seemed even more likely.
The only thing I took comfort in was that the driver had surely done this dozens of times before. We also felt fortunate to not be in the black Nissan that left Batalla at the same time we did. That car looked to be managed by the same group of men we had run into the night before. The Nissan also carried passengers, but very few. We were told that everyone preferred to go with our driver because he wasn’t insane. The Nissan attempted to race us, speeding ahead and throwing up a cloud of black diesel exhaust every once in awhile and then dropping back because the driver wasn’t really all that good at what he was doing.
The black Nissan crossing a wet stretch on the raft while we wait our turn to go accross.
Antonio and Erik looking positive despite the uncomfortable position they are in (photo courtesy of Charlie)
I was relieved when we arrived at the road. The ride was less than half over, but at least I figured it should be safer from here on out. It might have been safer, but was certainly no more comfortable. The dust permeated everything, and the washboard road and the two-by-four I was sitting on were making my seat feel pretty raw. The man I sat next to lived in the Mosquitia and traveled this route round-trip every two weeks to purchase goods to sell. I would be reluctant to make the trip ever again in my life, much less every two weeks. After about two hours on the road, the three and a half hour trip was over and we were at the turnoff to Trujillo. I have never been so happy to get out of a vehicle. Antonio would continue on for another 20 minutes to Tocoa where he would get a bus to La Ceiba and then to Tegucigalpa. We would head to Trujillo for a couple days of R and R at the beach.
Aside for the last harrowing ride, the trip had been a success. We’d spent less money than we had planned on and had seen about everything we wanted to. The Mosquitia was not quite as intimidating as I had expected, and I would love to go back someday, especially to see some of the more protected areas in the Rio Plátano Biosphere.
