Semana Santa: La Ceiba

Last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week), which in Honduras is basically a nation-wide spring break. The country shuts down and heads to the beach, and we were no exception. Three of us made plans together: four days at the coastal city of La Ceiba, then down to Comayagua a town in central Honduras known for its Semana Santa traditions. As there is more than enough for one blog post in each half of our trip, I will be splitting it into two to make it manageable for myself and to avoid overloading you with information.

     Sam, Melissa, and I left Pena Blanca early Sunday morning for San Pedro where we would be meeting one of Sam's friends from home who would be joining us for our time in La Ceiba. Because of a delay at the airport and a bus ride that took much longer than it should have for reasons which never became clear to us (although the simple fact that we were in Honduras could be reason enough), we didn't get to Ceiba until long after dark by which time we were so tired, hungry, and cranky that we weren't up for anything more than bed.
     With the combination of the ages-long bus ride the night before and the weather on Monday, our week of vacation got off to a slow start. For the first time in months we had rain during the day, which put a bit of a damper on our plans to relax on the beach. Instead, we went to the mall and tried to kill time, hoping that it would eventually be nice enough to spend time outside. Talking to our driver confirmed what we had already suspected: that while there is a lot to do in La Ceiba, it all depends on good weather, which is something we didn't have.

After a morning at the mall and the early afternoon spent in our hotel room, the rain finally stopped and the sun made attempts to break through the clouds. So we went for a walk along the ocean. The stretch of water in front of our hotel was bordered by gross beaches lined with trash but also the beginnings of an attempt at rehabilitation. A boardwalk was under construction and while it was not much further along than the beginning stages, it looked like it could be very nice. A pier stuck out from the boardwalk, creating a clear divide between the relatively wealthy part of town and the run-down shacks just across the street. This contrast between the well-off and desperately poor is one that is prevalent in Honduras no matter where you go. Rich and poor are pressed up right against each other, only heightening the contrast between the two ways of life.

     Tuesday was also fairly uneventful, but better because the sun finally came out. We walked about 10 minutes to a pool club where we swam and had lunch 20 feet from the crashing waves of the Caribbean. It had taken a while but it finally felt like spring break. After spending several hours there we moved back out to the actual beach. We lounged outside one of the most luxurious hotels I've ever seen and pretended it was ours. The waves were huge and the bottom quite rocky so we didn't do much actual swimming, but we frolicked in the sand and soaked up the sun before heading back to our hotel.


     On Wednesday we got up early for the main event of our time in La Ceiba: a trip to Cayos Cochinos. Cayos Cochinos is a group of protected islands just off the coast of Honduras known for its diversity of animal life and excellent coral reefs. It started off looking like it was going to be just as dismal a day as it had been on Monday, which fortunately turned out not to be true. Lined up on the beach were about ten 16 passenger motor boats and just about enough people to fill all of them. The trip out was rough with high waves that bounced the boat like a rock being skipped across the surface of the water, which was uncomfortable but better than the alternative of rolling back and forth.
     We first disboarded at Cayo Menor, the smaller of the two main islands, for an informational talk about the importance of maintaining the islands exactly as we found them. There was also something about turtles, their eggs, and Viagra, but my Spanish is not advanced enough to have understood that portion of the talk. I presume it had to do with leaving the eggs where they were and not consuming them as alternative medication.
     They then took us to a beach with the clearest water I've ever seen. Set back from the sand were two or three houses and some children from those houses came to greet us, one of them holding a snake which he offered to people for photos. Imagine living in this island paradise with boatloads (literally!) of tourists arriving every day to gawk at the scenery that is nothing more than your backyard. This is one of the things that strikes me the most when I'm travelling; that the places I'm visiting actually do belong to people, or people belong to them, and what is spectacular or exciting or interesting to me is just their life and doesn't hold nearly the same fascination.
     The next stop was the snorkling. I'd gone snorkling for the first time in Utila at the end of October and enjoyed it, but that was nothing next to this. The reef was teeming with life, colorful fish darting in and out of hidden crevasses, purple fans waving in the tide. As I took it all in I couldn't help but think that this was the most surreal thing I'd ever done. Not necessarily the most interesting or exciting thing, but the most otherworldly. There we were, floating along, buoyed by the salt water, looking down at an alien world that we couldn't enter. You're totally isolated from people despite being so close to them that they would occasionally brush against you in an arm stroke or a kick. The only sound you can hear is your own Darth Vader breath through the tube connecting you to the outside and every so often, the echo of a splash. It was utterly fascinating, but exhausting.
     The last stop was at a island that was barely more than a sand bar sticking out of the sea but was crowded by wooden huts of a Garifuna village. The Garifuna are a group of people descended from the West Africans who intermarried with the natives of Central America and now live all the way down the Caribbean coast from Belize to Nicaragua. They fed us lunch before we reboarded the boats for the trip back to the mainland. The trip back was no better than the trip out, but I was so exhausted that I could barely tell. In fact, I almost nodded off to sleep several times and jerked awake with a particularly abrupt movement from the boat. I was afraid I was going to topple off the bench seat and into the laps of the people behind me. Luckily, that didn't happen.

     We spent that evening people-watching (and being people-watched) on the pier. A man brought his daughter up to speak to us in English and then, through her, told us he thought we were beautiful. A woman brought her teenaged son over, spoke to us in broken English, and then urged the boy to talk to us. He shyly said, "I don't know what to ask", and we reassured him that that was perfectly all right. For better or worse, I don't think I will ever feel like as much of a celebrity as I do here in Honduras, where people stare at us no matter where we go or what we do.
    The next morning we left La Ceiba for San Pedro to drop Rachel off at her hotel before we headed to Comayagua for Good Friday. That was an adventure all its own...stay tuned!