El Camino

October is the month of three-day weekends for Honduran teachers. And as a first-year teacher it hasn’t taken me long to figure out that the only thing better than a three-day weekend is a four-day one. The students seem to like them too…

This past weekend Koali and I, along with three other coworkers hit the road early Saturday morning taking a series of buses to Lado de Yoja. The lake is the largest in Honduras, and the only one to feature a brewery near its shores.

After five hours bussing it, we arrived in Pina Blanca amidst a torrential downpour. I swiftly purchased one of those umbrellas big enough for two. I’d been holding off buying one as I have this belief that one should never buy an umbrella from a street vender when it is raining, as they must be cheaper when the sun is out. I got this one for 50 lempiras (about $2.60), a price that is hard to argue with. Fellow teachers Rachel and Melissa promptly purchased umbrellas as well, Melissa’s with an elegant Chinese-looking flower pattern and Rachel’s looking like it was stitched together from a laser-light school photo backdrop.

During all these purchases, Koali had secured us a ride to the brewery. Gringos are easy to pick out in towns like Pina Blanca and Bob, the owner of the D & D Brewery where we were planning to spend the night, spotted Koali and offered us a ride in the back of his truck.

After a damp ride, we all shacked up in a cabin at the brewery and ate freshly made chicken soup. We went on a pleasant but mosquito-ridden walk to the lakeshore, returning to home base to sample Bob’s beer (a welcome change from Salva Vida and Imperial, the best of the Honduran brews). We talked shop with vacationing teachers from other bilingual schools (it being the slow season for tourism in Honduras, the Gringos we’ve run into on our trips so far seem to all be working in Honduras, either as teachers, volunteers, or doctors) comparing housing options, salary, hours, and beach access. For those considering teaching down hear, the schools in Tela seems to have good things going for them…

The next day we checked out the nearby waterfalls and ate a lot, but by far the highlight of the trip was a 4-hour bird tour of the lake by rowboat, given by an enthusiastic guide from Ipswich. We saw over 45 species of birds (the lake apparently is home to 400) and I for the first time began to understand why my parents used to listen to those bird call records when I was younger.

The elusive quetzal was sadly not on our list, apparently it prefers to hang in the nearby cloud forest. We’ll just have to go back.

Thanks to the Honduran school calendar, which apparently has more school holidays than any other country, we had this Monday and Tuesday off (for Independence Day and Teacher’s Day respectively). So after our first two grueling weeks of teaching it was time for a trip to the beach.

View Larger Map

Tela is a beautiful Caribbean beach town with ten times the population of Copan. It’s roughly 5 hours by bus from Copan, providing your bus doesn’t get a flat tire on route (as ours did). Once there, however, it’s delightful. The buildings are painted in bright pastels, the people are a diverse group of Spanish, indigenous, and African decent, and the whole town is built right next to a big beautiful beach.

Tela has an interesting colonial history. It’s an old banana company town and used to house the offices of Standard Fruit, the exporters of Chiquita bananas. It’s also smack in the middle of several Garifuna villages. The Garifuna are a people of African decent who were enslaved by the British in the 1700’s on the island of St. Vincent. The Garifuna fiercely resisted slavery and eventually the British deported 5,000 of them to the now Honduran island of Roatan. The 2,000 people who survived became todays Garifuna, who now number in the hundred thousands and who’s culture has been identified by the United Nations as a “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.” More about the Garifuna can be found at Garifuna.org.

Koali and I stopped trying to pretend we weren’t tourists and visited the top sites of Tela, including Central America’s largest botanical garden and Punta Sal, a beautiful national park. We braved vicious mosquitos, ate a bunch of fried fish and had lots fresh liquados (smoothies). And we snorkeled and swam in the Caribbean, which was warmer than I thought ocean water would ever be.

We also produced an amazing 50 second documentary titled “Ants!” shot in Tela. Stay tuned.