Well, I made it to Nicaragua. It took a minute, and I was lucky to make it in as little time as I did. Overall, what Honduras and the Moskita lacked in new and interesting foods, it more than made up for in new and exciting 3rd world transport adventures.
So the journey into the Moskitia started in La Ceiba at about 5 in the morning. I was waiting for my cab. When I had gotten my cab into town (after passing up about 6 other cabs that refused to give me the set fare for the city) I arranged to have the same driver come pick me up at 5 so I wouldn't have to struggle to get a decent price when there were hardly any cabs around. Well, he never showed up, so I walked to a main street where a cab would come by every 5 minutes. After passing up the first two for not giving me the right price, I went for the third at a slightly inflated price just because I was wasting time, and really wanted to get the first bus out of town to ensure a smooth journey for the day. Well, either way I missed the first, and ended up on the 6 AM bus headed to Trujillo. I got off in Tocoa where I got another cab to where I was planning to catch a truck into the Moskitia. I was mauled by about 6 guys before my cab even stopped. I was bartering for my fare before even opening my door. As I got out all these guys were fighting desperately for my business. This is very rare for Central America. It felt like India again, but I must say this was even more intense the way they not only fought over me, but my bag as well. It was getting tossed around, as they probably assumed whoever got control of it would get my business. I yelled, "Just give me my bag" a few times until they all calmed down and handed it over. Now, who wanted to take me for 300 Lempiras? Someone agreed. I liked this market. I was in control and I got a much better deal than the guide book had even said (400-500). The guy took my bag and put it on his truck, when surprisingly I saw a couple other travelers next to one of the other trucks. After speaking with them, I found out that none of the trucks could leave until they had a few more people. Mine had one. Theirs had three. I was not about to wait for theirs to fill and then for mine to. I asked their driver if he would also take me for 300 and he agreed. He went and tried to grab my bag off the other truck and the other driver started yelling at him. They were up in each other's face and almost threw down in fisticuffs, until I got in there and explained that I was going with this other guy and that I was sorry.
We waited at least an hour and a half until we were on the road at about 10 or 1030. About a half an hour into the journey the truck started stalling about every couple kilometers. After one of the several peeks under the hood, the driver pulled out a couple of pieces from inside that to me looked fairly important and put them in the back with us. I didn't think taking parts out would help, but I don't know anything about cars and engines and junk, so whatever. After about an hour of this starting and stopping, we reached a town with a mechanic and after about 30 minutes we were back on the road. The road turned to dirt, and it got real rural real quick. It was supposed to be a 4 or 5 hour ride to Batalla. After about 5 hours of a nauseously twisting road with plenty of potholes and formerly washed out areas, we reached the coast, where we drover through a bunch of tiny little Garifuna fishing communities. I really wanted to just get off at one of these and see if I could find a place to stay for the night, but I had already paid the full fare, so I stayed on. Eventually we picked up a full load of people in a village and all their goods. Finally the truck was packed. Then, unexpectedly the road ended and we took a detour onto the beach. I thought this was just temporary, but for about 2 hours we drove right through the sand. Unfortunately it was high tide, so to stay on firm sand, the truck was driving half in the water and half out. Looking left, it was about 2 feet deep, looking right it was just wet, firm sand. There were some very tricky sections, but we made it through without too many complications. We reached Batalla, on the Laguna de Ibans, where we unloaded everything and reloaded it onto a pipante, a very long and skinny canoe with a motor. It was just getting dark (meaning that our 4-5 hour ride was more like 7-8, which I would quickly get used to in this region) and we started off. It was a beautiful journey across this lagoon, but after about an hour of the bumpy ride sitting on a wooden board (the same thing I'd been sitting on all day) destroying my backside, the novelty of this boat ride wore off. The sun had set, the wind was picking up and plenty of water was splashing up making me and my bag wet and cold. Not too bad though.
I arrived in a tiny village, Rais Ta, with the two other guys, Germans in their early 40's, around 8. There was one guesthouse, and it was kinda pricey, but there was no real choice. The German guys had been talking about making a trip out to Las Marias, a 6 hour boat ride up the Rio Platano. The tiny village was supposed to be super remote and out in the middle of the jungle on the river, just the way I liked it. I had thought about this before, but because there are no regular boats that go up there, tourists have to pay an exorbitant amount to charter a boat up there. Split between the three of us, they had told me would be $50 each, for both ways. I decided that if we stayed two nights there and I ate cheap and everything it wouldn't be too far out of my budget, so I went for it. We made plans to have someone take us the next morning.
7 AM, we spoke with our boat captain and he tells us that the price has gone up and it will cost more like $70 per person. Breakin my balls, boat cap'n, I thought. We asked why it was so much more and he had all sorts of explanations (such as cost of gas, which is about $5 per gallon out here, that he also had to pay the bowman, and that we were paying him to wait for two nights to take us back). Whatever, we went for it anyway. The boat ride was great. Very peaceful even though it was so long, turning out to be more like 7 or 8 hours. There were little villages all along the way, kids running around, waving at us, women doing laundry, men in their dugout canoes fishing or moving loads of plantains to the next village. My only complaints were that it didn't seem very jungly and the majority of the wildlife (supposedly a big draw for the area) we saw was cattle and a few birds. Oh and that bowman we were paying so dearly for...yeah, there wasn't one.
Las Marias, the biggest village along the Rio Platano has about a hundred families living in it, though that could mean like 4900 people live there judging by the size of the typical Central American family. It is all very spread out, and the area where our guest house was consisted of our guest house and the owner's family's living area. We were warmly greeted by one of the sons living there getting us some coconuts from their tree for us to drink. For the afternoon I just laid around on a hammock and read Life of Pi (highly recommended). In the evening the "head guide" came around and asked what trip we would like to do the next day. There was the option of multi day jungle treks, river tours and night time crocodile watching. This little town really knew how to work the tourism. Every tour, when he worked out the price, it was including two guides for the three of us (which seemed completely unnecessary to me) plus an extra 100 lempiras for the "booking fee" to the head guide (him). Anything on the river required three guides: two to handle the poling (no motor) and one to steer. This all seemed ridiculous, so we decided on a one day hike and convinced him to let us have just one guide. The Germans were really into seeing wildlife, especially birds, so they made the guide grudgingly agree to get started at 7 AM (the earliest he was willing).
Las Marias, is an entirely Moskito village. I have really come to like the Moskito people. The sound of their language fascinates me. The caidence and tone reminds me of Belizean Creole. Especially because random words are English, or based on it, as the British had more influence here than the Spanish. But there is Spanish mixed in as well. Such as all numbers. You would think that the Moskito people didn't know how to count before the Spanish came. To me it sounded like this: blea blah bloo spoon blah blee blah mil quinientos blah bananos bloo. A sentence obviously about how they had bought 1500 spoons in exchange for some bananas. Currently my moskito vocabulary includes the following:
monney=hello
tinky=thank you (this one is based on the english word)
tinky pauley=thank you very much
zocolon=frog
tawa-tawa=little by little or slowly, fitting for how to describe getting around La Moskitia
The people automatically seemed more friendly and hospitable (not just where I was staying, but all the people I have met) than most I have encountered on this trip. Especially the Mayans. As much as I respect them for all they have endured over the years, and how strong of a people they are, none of them ever seemed very friendly, especially to foreigners. Though that is understandable. It is just that several times the Moskito people have made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside with their natural friendliness.
Anyway, for the hike, we didn't get going until 8, surprise, and I think 7 would have been too late anyway to see many birds. They rise early, but then just hide out as soon as it starts to get warm. We had also been promised white faced monkeys. I think in the whole hike we saw like 3 birds and that's about it. It was a good hike though, a lot of trudging through mud, and we rose to a lookout over a huge expanse of jungle below us. It seemed to just go on forever, and it was all flat. Behind us there was a bit of mountainous area with a good view of Pico Dama (Lady Peak?).
More relaxing that evening, then a fairly early start back down the river. A much quicker journey this time, as we had the current with us. I didn't really know how I was going to get to Nicaragua, but after asking around I found that I could get a boat to Brus Laguna, on the Laguna de Brus, from the town of Rio Platano, at the mouth of the river. I asked to be let off there as we neared the village where the Rio Platano dumped into the ocean. I bid farewell to my silly German companions and continued on my journey. This seemed like a cool village, almost completely surrounded by water, with a good mix of Moskito people and Garifunas. I wanted to at least hang out in the village for a couple hours while I waited for the boat. However, the boat to go to Brus was already loading up. I threw my bag in and we were just about off. Among the locals, there was also this Belgian guy, named Tio, much to the humor off anyone speaking Spanish. Picture some foreigner coming to your town and introducing himself as Uncle. Anyway, Tio was trying to do the same route as me, so we decided to team up. Already I had seen three more tourists than I had expected to. But it wasn't bad. In fact, I feel like I met every tourist that was in the entire region at the same time as me.
The two hour boat ride quickly turned into three before we arrived in Brus. This town was shockingly big at 4,300 hundred, and it definitely had that port town's edge to it. It was on the inside of a lagoon, that opened up to the ocean. We checked into our room and asked the owner, who was running the bar across the street, how to get to Puerto Lempira (near the Nicaraguan border) or Ahuas, just another town in the right direction. He said you can't get to Puerto Lempira from there, but by boat you could get to Ahuas, if there is indeed a boat running, which is highly unlikely. We asked about a road out of town, because there was definitely a road in this town wide enough to fit cars. He said there was no road access to this town, but if he heard of a boat leaving in the next couple days he would let us know. I did not want to turn around here, but it looked like we could be out of luck. We looked at Tio's map, and it did show a dirt road going from Bus to Ahuas. We decided to investigate just by walking down the main road out of town. After ten minutes of walking I asked a boy where the road went. To the "pista" he told me. Is that like autopista (highway) I asked? Uhhhh, si, he responded. OK, so there IS a way out of town by road. We asked somebody else, they said no, no way out by car. Then a car passed! Well, if there are cars in the town they must have come in by road right? We flagged it down and asked where the road went. To the airport he said. But after the airport? Nowhere. Apparently that is what the kid meant by "pista". So if there was no way out of town, how did we see at least five cars that day?
Coming back to the hotel, we were stopped by an old man with four teeth and good English. He told us he was going to Ahuas the next morning at 7. What luck. We didn't realize at the time how rarely boats travel between the two towns, but it is not very often. On our way back to the hotel, I went into the bar to ask the owner if I could buy one of the coconuts off of his tree. It was before 5 PM and there were already people stumbling out the front doors, barely able to walk. I swear, that place was a pirate bar. Modern day pirates. A drug running hot bed, where trades were being discussed in a mix of Moskito and heavily accented Spanish. This is all speculation, but it is fun to imagine, and it definitely gave off that vibe. There were plenty of sketch folk wandering around Brus. Back at the hotel, we were approached by a swaying man with one brown eye, and one turquoise from blindness. He told me over and over (in English) how he wanted me to teach him the words of the American language. He really creeped me out, but Tio and were able to convince him to go get a book in English from his house and we would help him read it. Predictably, he never came back.
Oh, and I was denied the purchase of a coconut, but I went to a guy two shanties down and he sold me one of his. I went back and realized my machete still wasn't sharp. So I went and bought a file, and tried to sharpen it back at the hotel. I knowingly did a very poor job of it right outside my room, in hopes someone would see me struggling and do it for me. A man from the room next door was watching me and I told him that I had never sharpened anything before and that I didn't think I was doing it right. Sure enough, he sent his ten year old grand son to help me out. He sharpened it perfectly, and I immediately became a coconut opening machine. It is tougher than they make it look, but I did a very respectable job my first time, opening the top less than an inch wide, perfect to drink out of. I shared it with the kid and he seemed to think it was a very just reward.After drinking it, I split it in half and we ate the meat together.
We met at the dock at about 6:30 and enjoyed an amazing sunrise as silhouetted men standing in their dugout canoes poled their way around the canals. The extremely narrow pipante started loading up after 7 with large women, their kids, a few men and a ton of goods. Fruit, gasoline, water, etc. Now, I know that anyone that has been to Central knows the fame of the chicken buses, those old school buses for dirt cheap where people transport all their wares, including fowl. However, I am proud to say that I am probably one of the few travelers who has experienced an iguana boat. Yep, tossed in with all the luggage and bags of wares, was 3 foot long iguana with all limbs tied behind it's back. I felt so bad for it. It was constantly being smashed between or under bags, and even stepped on a couple times. What was this, a pet? I didn't really think much about it until later. After an hour or two of navigating a series of narrow canals, we arrived into the main river that would eventually lead to Ahuas...eventually. This boat trip made me regret going to Las Marias because this boat trip was easily twice as rad, albeit 8x as cramped an uncomfortable). The scenery was better, we saw tons of turtles and plenty of unique birds, and the river life was just as interesting. However, the people seemed much more impoverished here. They were visibly traumatized by hurricanes, as most of the houses were as basic as a frame of a small logs and a few tarps. We stopped at a house along the way and everyone got out. I followed them up to a large women's house frame where she sat with the stature of a jungle mystic that would cure us of our ailments with unheard of herbs and then tell our future. Actually she was selling fish and turtles. Three fairly good sized turtles were purchased, thrown in bags, and into the boat. I asked the kid on the bench what the turtles were for. To eat, was the answer. Awesome! And they had cost less than three dollars. I bet one of those things could feed two families if accompanied with rice and beans and tortillas, as it surely would be. And the iguana? Same. Wow. I guess I didn't feel as bad for the thing knowing that it would be on their plate in a matter of hours.
So because of the hour late start combined with typical Moskito transport, our estimated noon arrival time quickly became 3:30. To my disappointment, when we got off the little boat, the town seemed to consist of just a couple of wooden shacks. It turned out that Ahuas isn't really on the river, but an hour's walk down the road. When we got pretty close to the town, we were passed in the opposite direction by a truck. Maybe there was a road leading out of this town? After asking around, no there definitely wasn't. Seriously why do these little towns with no road access even have cars. I mean, jeez, Ahuas doesn't even have electricity, but it had plenty of vehicles (like 10). I asked our guesthouse owner how the cars get here. "2 canoes!" he replied. Seriously? Yep, they take two of the pipantes with motors, put a huge board in between, and drive a truck or car up onto it. Transporting a vehicle into Ahuas costs roughly $550. I don't know who could afford that on top of the car, but several have done it.
We asked around and asked if it is possible to get to Puerto Lempira. Well, whaddya know, it is! We were told that there are frequent fast boats that take 2 hours and cost nearly $20, or a 5-6 hour slow boat for about $13. The fast boat sounded like a good idea actually, especially because there were two leaving the next day, one at 6 and one at 9. That evening a guy came by, looking for passengers for the following morning's boat. He told us it leaves at 6 AM and costs $22. Well, we knew better and decided to take the later one, plus we knew it shouldn't cost that much. He warned us that there was only one boat leaving. I just wanted this guy to quit lying to us, so I told him we weren't going tomorrow.
Well, waking up the next morning we found out that there really was only one boat leaving that day. Also, there wouldn't be any the next day either as it was Sunday. Great. Now we're stuck in this little town with nothing to do for two more nights. That morning I also met our neighbors in the hotel. I had peeked out my window to see who was talking. A big fat white guy responding to someone from the hotel by saying, "uhhh, no understandy Spanish", before walking off. Whoa, who was this guy? I stepped out of my room and there were three more gringos. They turned out to be missionaries from Pennsylvania, going around to different villages, handing out clothing and showing a movie about Jesus. To me it seemed like a way to guilt-trip people into your religion. They had flown into town and were flying back to Puerto Lempira the next day. They informed us of this great hotel to stay at that was only $50 a night. Little did they know that the $9/night place I was at with them was quite a stretch on my budget.
With my free day I borrowed the hotel owner's bike and rode around town. I went to the river for a swim, and on the way back I took a left down a dirt road that I figured would not go very far. It did. I rode for about half an hour through some fields, wetlands, and eventually to another tiny village, where I acquired many a stare. It was good to have a bit of exercise. My other plan for the day was to find a place to get some iguana, or turtle. Well, the one eatery in town did not have any, and they said that you can only get iguana in April. Apparently the rest of the year they are just too skinny. We also kept asking around for boat options, and we heard a rumor of a 2:00 boat leaving on Sunday. It was a slow one, but I didn't care.
The next day we waited around for the truck to take us to the boat. It finally came at about 2:30. Then we drove around and picked up a bunch of other people and their stuff. I got to sit up front with the driver, a Cuban mechanic. I don't really know how he got there. I asked him about Cuban food, and his eyes welled with pride. "Si! Es muy rica!" he exclaimed. Then he went on about all the delights of his motherland's cookery. Then he told me that Fidel had resigned. Wow, I had no idea. He said he had heard just a few days before. I hadn't been on the net for almost a week, so I didn't know for sure. This was crazy. He thought the government was going to change too. Did this mean the embargo would be lifted? Would I no longer have the chance to go to Cuba illegally? I need to go there soon! It is true that if the government presses charges, the ACLU will defend you for free, and they have never lost a case, as the law is basically unconstitutional.
The truck stopped after about 20 minutes down a dirt road, just as it started to deteriorate. Well, there was no sign of any water except for a broken down canoe on the side of the
road. We set off on foot towards a forest off in the distance. I was carrying my backpack, 2 coconuts, and my camera bag. Everyone else was also carrying something as well, whether it was a load of bananas, luggage, empty diesel barrels. One guy was carrying the boat motor in over his head. The road started to get a big muddy and I struggled to keep on a route where I would not get my feet dirty. In front of me, Tio was getting his beefy boots muddy, and I stayed clean for a while. Until I made a bad step and sunk to my knee in mud. I got out fairly easily, but as soon as I felt that I was on stable ground again, I sunk again, this time both feet, knee deep. I couldn't stop from laughing. 5 minutes before I had been trying not to get my feet wet, now I was completely covered in mud. A young girl carrying bananas stopped to help me, but I was stuck too well. When I finally freed my left foot, I had lost my Keane sandal shoe thing. I reached in past my elbow to pull it out. It took a lot of force, so much in fact that it ripped them a bit before the mud released it. Now, my right foot. I had to ditch this shoe to, as I was stuck even worse on this side. The girl helped pull me out, not minding that I was all muddy. Then she helped get my shoe out. This one was much deeper and firmly planted in a suction of mud. Even with both of us reaching down deep, the shoe did not budge, it just ripped. After about 5 minutes of wiggling and fenagling it, I pulled it out. It really didn't even look like a shoe, just a blob of mud with grass and reeds on it. I was able to walk the rest of the way bare foot with only a few more sinkings.
We eventually reached what looked like a tiny pond surrounded by jungle. During the rainy season, the pond flows up all through the area we had just walked through, explaining the extreme marshiness of it, as well as that broken boat on the side of the road. We waited for the rest of the passengers next to the pond, which had several boats in it. Right after I washed off in the pond, I saw two crocodiles swimming in it. They were small, probably 3 feet. but it just meant the older ones were hiding somewhere nearby. I stayed out of the water from then on.
While we waited, I cracked open my first of the two coconuts. Getting better at it.
We got the boat loaded up and started off in this little pond. The jungle was so dense that it was hard for me to see where the outlet was. There was a small passage into a canal with thick jungle on both sides. Very much the heart-of-darkness feeling I had been hoping for. We proceeded slowly up the canal proceeded for a good 45 minutes, before it slowly opened up to a large lagoon. Yes, this journey was slow, but the boat was bigger and more comfortable. The sun set soon after, and I was left to lay on the floor of the boat taking in the stars and a very visible milky way. I saw Orion, a constellation that I like because I feel like he has been there wherever I've been since I was little. Even in the middle of nowhere, Honduras. As we started to go faster in the lagoon, water splashed up, and we all huddled under a tarp. This was an incredibly peaceful seven hour trip.
We finally arrived at about 11:00 to Puerto Lempira. This was a small town, about 5,000, but the biggest one in the area. In fact, right next to the dock where we got off there was a discotec bumping proudly. A far cry from Ahuas, the purely Christian town where you couldn't even get a beer.
Well, that was pretty much it. The next morning we were on a truck heading to the Nicaraguan border. It was only 125 km. We boarded at 8 AM, then drove around town for an hour picking up people until we were packed. We got to the border around three PM, partially due to the rough conditions of the dirt road, and partially due to the two military checkpoints, where they searched everyone's bag very thoroughly. Seriously, we were going south, what would we have been smuggling? And the heaviest searching was just as we were leaving the country. Did they think we were gonna steal something of Honduras'? Like what, their constitution? The Presidential banana stash? The truck eventually brought us to a river, which we crossed in a canoe and we were in Nicaragua. Another truck took us to nearby Waspam, another Moskito town, which felt much more like most Central American towns than the one's in Honduran Moskito. There was street food, a market, bars, etc. But here was something new: a casino? I will have to go there next time. We were supposed to go through immigration in this town, but I didn't really bother to find the office. It costs $7 to enter Nicaragua, but they don't give a stamp because between El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua you only need one for 90 days, so I figure if there is some sort of hold up when I try to leave, a $7ish bribe will suffice.
As I was sitting in my room on the second floor right on the main street, I heard some music start up outside. I got excited and went to the balcony. Well, this was like going to the door of the person that hands out apples on Halloween. It was evangelical Christian music, just blasting out of the typically poor sound system. A man singing with a woman accompanying on the keyboard. This was easily the worst musical performance I have ever seen in my life. And there was no escape. It was far too loud. After about an hour of singing, the man went into an hour of loud preaching. With every emphasized word of his fire and brimstone piercing my ears. At one point he was getting into politics, talking about Chavez and Bush and Castro and all that. I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying though. I don't know if this happens every nights or if the people ask him to do it or what. I mean it would seem that evangelical protestants are the great majority in Central America, but in reality they are just the loudest. Catholics make up over 70% of Nicaragua, but I have seen very little evidence of this.
Well, this morning we boarded a bus out of Waspam. Now I don't usually like the buses that much, but after a week of tiny boats and pickup trucks, it didn't seem so bad. Well, this bus ride was like trying to look at the bright side of getting that apple on halloween, then biting in and finding razors. Yep, another fire and brimstone preacher. Right there on our bus. Screaming into a megaphone at 7:30 in the morning for a solid hour. I didn't care that there was no room to sit and the aisles were packed, but I draw the line at over the top evangelizing early in the morning on a Tuesday! This was worse than 4:30 AM call to prayer waking me up in India. At least that sounds peaceful and only lasts a couple minutes. When I pretended that he was speaking German I realized he spoke with the same fervor of Hitler. I know his words were different, but the tone scares me.
Anyway, we are in Puerto Cabezas. A town of nearly 40,000. Feels like a metropolis. An ATM in town (though it was out of service, leaving us to panic with our lack of funds) internet, which lost service after 15 minutes, and mangoes, most of which were well over ripe. The highlight though, was that I went to a little food stand for lunch, asking what they had to eat. Only fried chicken, she told me. Too bad. I walked away, and then she called back. We also have turtle! aHA! This brought me back and she served me up a huge plate of gallo pinto (rice and beans), yucca, and a few hunks of foreign-looking meat. Each piece had a different texture. The first looked like a black sponge. It was chewy, but had a nice flavor, though a little fishy. Was it sea turtle? I don't know, but I'd feel bad if it was. Aren't they endangered? The next piece was like a thin rubbery sheet. I could guess that this is like a membrane that goes between the turtle's body and it's shell. The last piece had a texture much more like chicken, but almost black. It too had that fishy flavor. In the end, the weird fish flavor combined with the textures not the slightest bit like fish made me decide that this would probably be the last time I would have turtle. It had a good taste, but sometimes the feel of weird textures just won't do it for me.
So no my next mission is to get a lobster fisherman to take me out to the Moskito Cayes nearby, though I don't know how likely this is to happen. If not, then it's on to Managua where I will start my internship at La Prensa, the country's biggest newspaper.
