Mom and Dad took a break from their retired life in the crazy Washington February weather to visit me for the second time. We spent 9 days in La Moskitia, the northeast corner and most remote area of Honduras with two other volunteers. The trip started by catching a bus to the town of Tocoa where we got in a "paila" for the trip into la Moskitia. The paila, also known as the back of a pickup, was piled with supplies and luggage with eight people piled on top. Thankfully, Mom was given a spot in the cab. She would not have done well. We considered ourselves lucky since one of the pailas traveling with us had eleven people on top of just as much stuff.
After An hour or so of pavement and a few hours of bumpy dirt road (much like all the roads in my site) we suddenly turned off the main road, onto the beach. Honduras regularly has problems with floods, heavy rain and other damage due to storms, especially on the north coast. Last October was especially bad and many areas still have not been repaired. In our naivety, we asked if the road was washed out or damaged. "No, this is the highway," replied the ayudante. I couldn't help but laugh at the multiple times he used the word "careterra", highway. We probably drove a solid 4 hours on the beach. We were lucky and hit it at low tide. The trip back we were slightly less fortunate and the awe factor of the first time was gone. Eventually passed through a few small Garifuna villages and arrived at in Batalla to take a collectivo boat to Raista, our first destination.
Raista is a small village sandwiched between the lagoon and the ocean. Everyone who lives in Raista is part of the same family, it's that small. We relaxed for the evening, enjoyed some incredible fresh fish soup with coconut milk (from the girl who doesn't like soup or fish in Honduras) and took a community tour early in the morning. Each community tour was a combination of the town history, and nature, usually pointing out all the medicinal plants and how they play into the livelihood of the people. This one even included picking coconut and to drink the water and "work up an appetite for breakfast."
From Raista (which means "Rice Point" in Miskito), we got in our dug out canoe with its tiny motor and after crossing two large lagoons, we found ourselves in the town of Brus Laguna. Brus is one of the main towns in the La Moskitia region. With about 2,000 inhabitants, it was the biggest town we saw since driving onto the beach-highway. We stayed about 2 hours away (by boat of course) in private cabañas called Yamari along a small water way. After two solid days of sitting on hard wood, between the paila and the boats, we took advantage of some free time to swim and kayak. After dinner we piled in the boat again to search for crocodiles and caiman. We saw several and our guide almost caught one. Unfortunately, the full moon inhibited us from seeing too many and the mosquitoes (the bugs not the people) sent us home after an hour and a half or so. We ended up seeing plenty more along the shores of the Rio Platano throughout the trip.
From Yamari back to Brus Laguna, we spent 5 more hours putting along up stream until we reached Las Marias, the destination for most of the few travelers to the region. The Miskito people were nomadic until the 1990s when changes in resources, the building and necessity of schools and other factors led many families to settle in the area now called Las Marias. It is only a few hundred residents and even finding a pulperia was a bit difficult. Everything that isn't grown is brought in by boat. Needless to say, the diet mostly consists of rice, beans, platanos, coconut and fish. Of all the wonderful food, our cook/hospedaje owner in Las Marias, Doña Diana, was the best. We wandered the "town" and relaxed, visited the petroglyphs (ancient carvings in rocks up river, so old no one is sure when they were done or by whom), hiked and learned about many more medicinal plants and the plight of outsiders trying to take the hard woods such as mahogany, laurel and cedar that naturally grow through out the rainforest.
The most touching moment was accompanying our guide (a different person in each community) to the petroglyphs. Until last October, her home stood on the shore by the main petroglyph, when rainstorms causing major flooding took the entire complex with it. The entire house, hospedaje, kitchen and comedor are gone. Remnants remain of the latrine. This was her first visit to the site since October. It was difficult not to feel as though we were intruding on such a personal moment as the tears quietly streaked her face.
Next stop was more hiking, the physical part of the vacation. Between our hospedaje in Las Marias and the petroglyphs lies the trailhead for Pico Dama (Old Peak), a naked volcanic cone, the outer surface long since eroded away. So, from Las Marias, 2 hours being poled up stream in canoes by our wonderful Miskito guides, 4 hours hiking through banana fields, jungle, tropical rainforest. Crossing and re-crossing the same creek (there is a dispute about the number of creek crossings but it was more than 15, 19 at most.) Sliding up, sliding down muddy trail, stopping so our main guide could find the right size and kind of tree, chop it down with a machete, strip the bark which he then used to make a rice sack into a backpack. After stopping to see various types of birds and plants, seemingly out of nowhere we arrived at the cabaña where we spent the next two nights. We enjoyed dinner made over a campfire and went to bed early (even for us Peace Corps Volunteers.) It just feels much later in the pitch blackness of the rainforest. We played word games from our mosquito-netted bunks until we felt tired enough to sleep (still probably around 8:30 or 9pm.) The next day, we hiked about 3.5 more hours up. Hiking isn't really the right word for it; much of it was closer to tree climbing. Honduran hiking trails aren't exactly what we would call "maintained" trail in the states. In many places, it can be difficult to find the trail if you don't know where you are going. Both days up, Ofracio, our local guide and mochila-maker kept telling me, "Laura, I don't know if your parents are going to make it." A fit, 40 year old mountain man and fast walker, he was especially worried about Mom. On the way down, I couldn't help but feel proud each time he commented, "Laura, su mama tiene fuerza." My mom is strong for 63! I know it was a challenge but I am proud they both made it without any major problems, mentally or physically. We took a few pictures, headed back down to the cabin to roast the chicken vienna sausages that were given to us for snacks on the hike. I didn't eat them but the Hondurans loved them. It was nice to know they didn't go to waste. The next morning we headed back down to the river and spent one more night in Las Marias. The people around La Marias demonstrated a much closer connection to the land than in other parts of Honduras. It was a pocket of clean, garbage-free nature. The flood debris hanging from branches 20-30ft off the current water surface was natural debris, grasses, tree trunks and stumps, not the old clothes, wrappers and tires filling fences and trees in the rest of the country.
The final stop was Belen, another small town near Raista on the narrow strip of land between a lagoon and the Caribbean. We enjoyed a presentation of traditional Miskito dancing on the beach, lit by bonfire. We were invited to dance with the women to the music of a metal washboard, a turtle shell and a guitar. We rose at 3am the next morning to reverse the trip and head back to Tocoa, La Ceiba and finally Talanga. My parents spent a few more days in my site, visiting neighbors, host family and schools before flying back home.
Since their visit, I have been busy starting my final long-term projects. With only 6 months to go, any thing long term has to be started now if I want to complete it before my time is up. Crazy thought, but yes, the end of service is looming closer and closer with each week. What next....?
Below is a link to some photos from La Moskitia. Let me know if you can't access them and I will try something else.
The other two photos are of my dental hygiene program at school.
