This week has been a little different, it's Semana Santa here in Central America (Holy Week) and we have the week off school. This is by far the biggest celebration of the year, even bigger than Christmas, for Christmas people get the 24th off and the 31st but they get this whole week and the country goes a bit crazy. Tela gets flooded with Honduran tourists looking for a beach, in fact the whole coast gets packed with people. Not wanting to stay in Tela but still wanting to be part of all the celebrations Sarah and I decided to go to La Ceiba with two of the other volunteers. La Ceiba is just two hours away by bus or, if you happen to be as lucky as we were, one hour in a very nice air-conditioned car. We decided to hitch a ride after waiting for ages for the bus. Don't worry, hitching is really common here, everyone drives around in these trucks so if you hitch-hike you just hop in the back and let the wind blow your hair into a beautiful afro. It's great.
So we stayed three nights in La Ceiba in this hostel called Banana Republic, an old wooden building that gave us exactly what we paid for and not a thing more, but it did the job. I realised on the first night going to sleep (and this is the first time this has ever happened to me going away) that I hadn't brought more contact lenses! It was an absolute nightmare. I had to get up and go and find salt and cups but the man working at the 'desk' said they ran out of salt that day so I had to go and buy salt down the street, come back and make saline solution for my lenses. Ever since I've been just waiting for them to get too dry to wear and I've been wearing them for a week now.
We took full advantage of the fact we weree in a city and went first to 'the Mall' and wandered around the air-conditioned shops trying on ridiculously priced dresses and drinking frozen coffee. We even went to the cinema one evening, Sarah's first cinema trip in nine months she says. It was strange being in the cinema because, apart from the quality not being as good as at home, we could have been in any cinema anywhere in the world. I was surprised we were the only ones there though, it was cheap to get in and it's the only cinema in town but we had the place to ourselves!
During the day we went to some of the 'must-see' places around Ceiba that we could afford like we went to these hot springs which felt like we were in baths. We spent one of the afternoons there and had lunch and these amazing coconut milk topogigios. Topogigios are frozen liquid in a bag that you pierce with your teeth, a bit like an ice pop but not on a stick. The nicest thing about the springs was that all the area around it was completely litter free since they want people to some here to relax and what not. You really notice the difference when you don't have to pick your way through bottles and bags and cans all the time. This country is so full of litter! At home you would never finish a bottle of water then throw the bottle over your shoulder! Here, my friend Jackie was actually surprised when I told her off for doing it. She just didn't see why it was a problem. But then they do that and still complain about how dirty the place is. I reckon cleaning up this country would do wonders for how the people here treat it, they might actually take pride in being Honduran.
The other day we spent at Cayos Cuchinos, these 16 tiny island off the coast, literally tiny. You go for the day and hire a boat and the driver takes you around the islands, you eat lunch on the biggest one and then they drive you back to the mainland. The man driving the boat stopped on the way next to this other boat, got two fish off him and spent the rest of the ride cutting them and just eating them raw. Thankfully ours was cooked, and delicious, it was clearly just caught then put on to cook.
We spent the next night in Pico Bonito National Park at this lodge where we went river rafting and jumped off these huge rocks in the Rio Cangrejal. The river was really low so the rafting wasn't as difficult as it would be at other times. This park is huge though, it has Pico Bonito, Honduras's largest mountain right in the middle and this river also running through it. Most of it is just left to its own devices but there are these eco lodges and tours there as well. But, I left my iPod there. I'm actually quite upset about losing it because it has all this music on it from here and from loads of different people that has taken a long time to collect but when I called the lodge they claimed to have never seen it. I wonder what I'll listen to on my walks now.
That morning we caught the ferry to Roatan, originally we had planned to go but then changed our minds after seeing how little money we had left. Then changed our minds back again. So we turned up at Roatan and set about finding a place to sleep, which during Semana Santa is not an easy task. We eventually got put up in this little house that was just next to the beach and very cheap so we could forgive how disgusting it was. There was no light and the water didn't work for the first day.
Roatan isn't really Honduras, everything is different, the people, the culture, the language and on top of that Roatan in Semana Santa isn't really Roatan. So our experience of Roatan hasn't really been an accurate representation of what it might be like to stay here. The volunteers who live here on the island work on the other side of the island anyway and that's just a whole different world. The tourism has changed this end so much that's it's almost two separate islands. You have people working in the hotels or in restaurants who have to actually pay to work there just so they can get the tips. Then they go from the massive complexes and resorts to their homes where it's lucky if the electricity works. The difference is shocking.
I met this local called Morvi who told me that if it weren't for Semana Santa and all the people that come to the island then, some people wouldn't be able to live. They make so much money in that one week.
We've been pretty lazy here, we spent some time with the boys, Tom and Ali, and Tom's family who are here to visit and we've relaxed, snorkelled and basically been a classic tourist. Except for eating. To eat cheap we eat local food whereas all the tourist go and have pizza.
We're catching the boat home today, planning tomorrow, then we go back to school on Monday. Then it;'s just the last stretch until the summer holidays.
Asta Luego.
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