More catchups…
March 21, 2011
For words and pictures on the ride from Mocoron to the Atlantic coast in Nicaragua and down to Granada, just click on one of the bananas below…
Click a banana for more on Nicaragua's Moskitia.
More on La Moskitia…
March 17, 2011
I’ve filed away another blog post from my time in Honduras’ Moskitia. Find it by clicking on the delicious fried yukka treats below…
Click here for more on La Moskitia, where much yukka was eaten...
Puerto Cabezas and the Region Autonoma del Atlantico Norte, Nicaragua.
February 11, 2011
This next instalment in my catch-up posts covers the ride south from Mocoron (Honduras) to (Granada) Nicaragua, a distance of some 800kms, most of which is on rough, remote dirt roads.
RAAN, the Region Autonoma del Atlantico Norte, is home to a cultural melting pot of Creole, Mestizo and a indigenous groups, including Miskitos. I had to detour into its capital, Puerto Cabezas, to get my passport stamped. A ramshackle, sketchy Caribbean port, it’s infamous as a stop off for cocaine smugglers working their way north from Colombia.
Drug running is definitely a big part of life in these parts. One Roatanian living here told me about a high speed chase with a blacked out US Apache helicopter along the coast at night. He claimed in the right conditions, the boats – effectively superlight hulls with a row of outboard motors bolted onto the back – could do 80 knots. Unable to escape the beam of its search light despite pulling his best moves, he finally had to ditch the boat and its cargo of cocaine on the beach and disappear into the night… ‘I don’t do that anymore. It’s too stressful now I have a family. I just build fibreglass boats in the peace and quiet of the forest.’
Hm, I wonder what they’re for…
Loaded up and ready to leave wonderful Mocoron, where I'd been resting up for a couple of days. A huge thank you to Anita and Legia!
The girls saw me off with a few slabs of energy rich yukka coconut cake we'd made the day before.
Initially, the countryside almost felt reminiscent of the forest trails in Montana. Crossing from Leimus into Nicaragua was straight forward - just a dollar ride across the river in a dugout under a heavy downpour.
Welcome to Nicaragua.
Not long into the ride, I met Stefan, a Romanian motorbiker who'd travelled down from Canada. We'd first bumped into each other in La Ceiba, from where he'd taken a cargo boat to Puerto Lempira. We ended camping out together or staying in the same cheap digs for the next few days.
Stopping for a food in a Nicaraguan comedor as I entered RAAN.
The meal was one of the best I've had in a while - chicken, yucca, beans, rice and chopped tomatoes. It was all grown locally, and as a sat down and ate, the owner of the comedor joined me, a farmer who ran the business to help supplement his income. He'd seen a couple of touring cyclists pass by before and having chatted to them, had clearly been cogitating about bike touring. 'Rare is the man who really knows the world. You can't understand life from a car or plane. But on your bicycle, you see and experience everything,' he said.
Local rural transport in Northern Nicaragua. A long way from Montgomery School...
Red dirt. The road from Waspan to Puerto Lempira was mined with puddly potholes, thanks to the storms that rolles in above the vast, far reaching savannah.
On the road, and loving it.
I was joined by a local cyclist at one point. We climbed an observation tower for an epic view of this part of La Moskitia.
Repairing a puncture by knotting it off - a technique I hadn't seen before.
I kept playing tag with Stephan and his Kawasaki, as he had some welding he needed to deal with, and his customs paperwork took longer to process.
My biking buddy's home. I like the way it was partitioned for different members of the family.
Approaching Puerto Cabezas - known as Bilwi in Moskitian - a sketchy port home to Moskitians, Colombian cocaine smugglers and only the most tenacious of missionaries.
A leatherback chopped up and swarming with flies in the market - not a particularly heart warming sight for a turtle lover, like me. Apparently, turtles that aren't fully grown have to be thrown back in by law.
No shortage of bananas in these parts. The five stubs are the one I had for breakfast.
This local guy offered to show me around town, and we spent the afternoon together exploring some the backroads around Puerto Cabezas and the villages nearby.
From Puerto Cabezas, I'd been told it was a rough and remote 560kms to the capital Managua - and dirt all the way to Rio Blanco. To give you some idea how slow going it can be, it takes the bus 24 hours to cover that distance... That's an average of around 23 kilometres an hour.
And here's one such bus. Fast and Furious, reads the livery. That must be a relative term round here...
No wonder, with extended parts like this. If I put in some long days in the saddle, I figured I could make it in six days to colonial Granada, quieter and safer than the capital, and a little under 600kms away.
This surface was some of the worst I've ridden over, with thousands of small yet jagged rocks embedded into the earth.
Every once in a while, the road rippled with short yet steep stunted hills that afforded views over the pine forest and savannah.
One night I slept on the floor of this cheerful, Evangelical pastor. I was too tired too be kept up by the rousing nighttime singalong.
Civilisation, in the form of the bustling metropolis of La Rosita, bringing with it the promise of a good meal and some fresh fruit other than bananas...
La Rosita was also home to some cool utility bikes concocted with motorbike parts.
Check out that fork used to brace the rear triangle. These cost around $200 and are made locally.
Hanging out at the local bike shop.
The road alternated from bad to really bad. This particular stretch rattled my brains and loosed my fillings. Not to mention giving me a sore backside. Sometimes I could seek rattling sanctuary from sliver of smoothish trail along the very edge, riding faster than the transport trucks the deliver supplies up to Puerto Cabezas.
The area felt settled in the daytime, but I was told to be off the road before nightfall. I didn't run into any trouble, but I did pass through a small community close to Rio Blanco where three men had been held up killed just five days before, at three in the afternoon. 'Are you worried about travelling along?' was a question I was often asked. In fact, while I always received a warm welcome whether I went, the constant barrage of warnings crept into my subconscious and became unsettling.
The fine line between pleasure and pain. The odd kilometre or two was paved. But it was just that. One or two kilometres.
Try finding a way of pushing a fully loaded bike across this bridge... It's like playing a game of Tetris.
I'd been told security on this part of Nicaragua can be an issue, so I either slept in cheap truck stop guesthouses, at 2 dollars a pop, or camped in villages and army check points.
Cowboy country.
Kids selling oranges by the roadside, which I gratefully guzzled down. When I went to leave, they gave me a handful for the journey.
The buses got to know me as they plied the route, and unleashed ear bleeding hoots of their horns to greet me. It's the thought that counts...
In Rio Blanco, I saw this custom rack for carrying a gas bottle on the streets of Rio Blanco.
Adjustable in size too, depending on the brand of bottle.
NGO handywork - one of the many water pumps in RAAN. This area took a big hit in the Contra War, and there was evidence of foreign aid programs all around.
Yep, one muddy bike...
And then, from Rio Blanco, the road was paved! Woohoo!
Blossoming trees by the roadside. These are called Guayacan.
I stopped off at this little shop, and got chatting to Nora, who took a real interest in the journey. I asked to take a photo of her, and she surprised me by asking if I had any photos of me and my bike. 'Very few people will make a journey like this. It would be nice to remember our meeting.'
She got her daughter to climb the orange tree and pick me a bunch.
Nora's pooches, lazing by her roadside shop.
Hm... honey. Better still, sold out of Fleur de Cana recyled rum bottles.
Enormous avocados sold by the roadside - perfect bike food.
This sign meant a lot to me. After negotiating all the Mosquito Coast, culminating in this last six days of hard riding, I was less than an hour from my destination.
And Granada, less than an hour later... My Moskitian adventure was finally over. Epic is a world that's thrown around a lot these days. This journey definitely felt like it justified it.
Resting up (and eating yucca) in Mocoron, La Moskitia
February 10, 2011
I’ve been meaning to catch up with more of the Moskitian leg of the journey for some time; my attempts to blog this missing piece in the jigsaw stalled after I lost my notebook and map, on which I’d scrawled all the details. So this will have to do for now…
Exhausted from my singletrack ride/push/canoe from Ahuas, I spent a couple of days resting up in Mocoron. I’d looked forward to reaching this small settlement in Honduras’ Gracias a Dios province since meeting Gigi, folk singer extraordinaire, back in Moab. When I mentioned I was toying with the idea of exploring this remote part of Central America, she told me about her mother.
Norma was born in Honduras, had lived in Texas, and then moved back to her homeland in the 1990s. Not only that, she’d now remarried and was spending much of the year in this quiet Moskitian settlement close to the Nicaraguan border, running a health and educational foundation. She sounded like an amazing character. What had been a vague idea now seemed to have reason; things had slotted in place.
In the event, I wasn’t able to meet Norma, as she was in La Ceiba collecting a humanitarian award. However, I still had a wonderful couple of days with her family. Hopefully I can make it back here at some point, as without doubt, it’s a very special place.
The final segment of my travels through this incredible region – the 700km dirt road ride to Lake Nicaragua- is due up next…
Downtown Mocoron. During the ten year, CIA-funded Nicaraguan Contra war in eighties, Mocoron was used as a Red Cross base, situated as it is close to the border. Ironically, this was a time of boom for the local economy.
One of the buildings at Norma's foundation, formerly a Honduran army barracks.
The school, which houses a bank of computers.
Anita, Norma's adopted daughter, who was house sitting between studies in Puerto Lempira.
Her precision axing technique, always with a smile, put us men to shame.
And her cousin Legia, who lives in Mocoron. These two amazing girls run the place when no one else is around.
Jason, a trainee nurse from Utah, arrived the same day as me to volunteer for a few months. We had a great time hanging out together.
Me, grating coconut, freshly loped off the tree. This was to make coconut and, you guessed it, yucca cake. Intense concentration is needed to avoid bloody knuckles.
Rebecca. She had something of a vicious streak, and bit Jason's foot. Apparently they still argue.
There were a few other smaller parrots amongst the feathered residents, one of whom was called Nancy. She loved nothing more than to scream out "Anita! Anita!" from across the compound, in the style of a cantankerous, overly-demanding grandmother. True to their stereotype, you can train parrots to repeat things. In fact, Jason heard one in Belen calling out from the treetops: Recarga con Clara! This translates to, Recharge your cellphone with Clara! It must have heard a salesman boating along the waterways, calling out on his loudspeaker as he sold pre paid cell phone units. Now that would make a great advert...
Also part of the clan, sweet Canela, always trying to ingratiate herself for scraps.
I wasn't about to give her any of my breakfast: fresh fish, fried yucca and beans. Absolutely delicious.
Washed down with a cup of the local brew, steeped from the plant above, which tasted very much like fresh lemon grass tea.
The girls cooked us up whatever they could get their hands on, like this fresh deer meat.
If ever we ran out of yucca, there was always a friendly neighbour to sell us more. Phew.
And the health clinic, readying itself for another busy day. It was formerly the Red Cross building during the Contra War.
Basic supplies, but a lifesaver for many of those living in these communities.
The Moskitian skyline...
Thank you Norma for your invitation to visit Mocoron. And a special thanks to Anita and Legia for cooking up such delicious meals, and showing me how to scrub my clothes in the river properly… I’m way better at it now.
Ahuas to Mocoron Singletrack, La Moskitia
February 8, 2011
Somewhere down there, there's some awesome singletrack...
For the next part of the trans-Moskitian adventure, I’d planned to hop on one of the lanchas plying the waterways linking Ahuas and Puerto Lempira, before picking up the main road – well, a potholed unpaved track – down to Mocoron. But after scrutinising my map and making various enquiries, the general consensus seemed to be that an overland route was rideable at this time of year, by following a network of footpaths that link one Moskitian village to the next.
Although it wasn’t a journey most locals advised doing alone, the route seemed straight forward enough, so I figured I’d give it a go…
This is my map to guide me onto the right trail out of Ahuas - my little moleskin notebook was often mistaken for a bible in these parts. With my head swirling with potential hazards, warnings and advice (watch out for the tigers/only stay with Christians/get yourself gun, or at least a decent sized machete) I pedalled off into the heart of La Moskitia...
It wasn't long before I was leaving the last of Ahuas' wonky, weatherstained houses behind.
Singletrack through the pines. If conditions continued to be so dry, the two day ride promised to be incredible.
Then I hit stretches like this... The mud is thick enough to hold the bike up by itself. I lost my sandals here, and delved around for a while with my hands to retrieve them.
And sank down right to my waist while looking for a route through this swampy section...
In Warunta, the pastor paddled across the river to pick me up, with the news that he'd been told to deliver anyone who looked 'different' to a nearby army checkpost - the area is rife with narcos and other insalubrious characters. Luckily formalities were quickly dealt with, and after feeding me a massive platter of wild pig, a soldier was assigned to guide me by horseback onto the correct trail out of town.
The collection of bizarre Meskitian names continue. I bumped into Jose Emeliano Alfred James, son of the late Rudigan James, as I was informed. As chance would have it, Emeliano was a resident of Coco, the next settlement on my route. He'd made the 2 1/2 hour walk to Warunta to make a phone call, where there was cell phone coverage, thanks to the solar powered towers mushrooming up all over the plains. It was just as well, as the route we took, via a muddy, jungly shortcut that I had to awkwardly drag my bike through, would have been tricky to navigate and manage alone.
The trail finally emerged onto this pebbly beach. It was too deep to wade across, so Emeliano kicked off his wellington boots and stripped down to his underwear, swam down river, and reappeared a little later with the village dugout.
Note to self: don't leave home without your shotgun.
We balanced the bike across the dugout, handlebars stirring the water as he paddled.
This is one of Coco's handful of houses, set above the shallow, meandering Rio Coo on the edge of the savannah. No electricity. No running water. And no cell phone coverage... Still, it didn't stop a rousing hymn singing session around the fire.
This is Emeliano's two month old baby, Kishnita, who was suffering from a fever. The remedy: wild garlic and some mysterious herbs, chopped up straight on the floorboards. Dinner was a bowl of rice mixed with milk power and sugar, and a few lumps of boiled yukka. His mother lamented, 'We are poor. We have no money. All we eat is yukka every day.'
The kitchen was on a raised platform, under a rusty, corrugated roof. In the morning, I was handed a bowl of fish and yukka for the ride/push ahead.
Again, the camera went down a treat with the children. With no glass or mirrows in the house, they took the opportunity to don a variety of guises, to general guffaws and amusement from the family.
All that's missing is the cell phone accessory. I heard this girl whispering words to her baby sister: So-ni Erik-son. Blac-be-ry.
Back on singletrack through more pine forest.
And across open savannah.
Past weird, stumpy outcrops. Emeliano and his cousin Joram had insisted on guiding me thorough to a spot where the trail would become more distinct.
In the jungle once more, dragging the bike along a rough, muddy trail cut through the undergrowth, and fording chest high rivers.
One last river crossing, this one in a dugout.
On the other side, I was relived to see the muddy forest had given way to expansive plains. From here, I was told vehicle markings through the grass would lead me all the way to Mocoron, my destination.
After a couple of days of riding singletrack and dragging my bike through swamp and mud, the hardpack road I emerged onto felt like a super highway. Now I was rolling!
I was met by a warm welcome in the first grocery store I came across. Lem, an ex lobster diver, took me on a tour of the village, a dozen men and boys in tow... I'd planned to stop here a couple of days, as Mocoron was also the home of Gigi's mother Norma Love, who runsa health clinic in the village. The relief of having arrived is always a moment to be savoured...
The Ahuan Kids, La Moskitia
February 7, 2011
The gang.
Before I move on from Ahuas and share the the singletrack adventures that took me south to Mocoron, here’s a little pictorial of Yudina’s amazing grandchildren and their neighbours.
The kids delighted in seeing themselves on the camera screen, probably because of the lack of mirrors or glass in any of the houses. Each picture would result in peals of laughter and playful jabs, followed by another pose…
1
2
3
4
5
And the faithful hound, El Amor.
Heading out towards La Moskitia
February 7, 2011
Bye bye road…
After a gruelling 580km stint from Puerto Cabezas, I’m now reached the colonial idyll of Granada, with access to my computer once more – thanks Richard for carting my plug all the way from Honduras!
There’s a lot to catch up on, so here’s a start.
La Moskitia is a vast swathe of sparsely inhabited land, covering lagoons, mangroves, dense jungle and unexpectedly open savannah. It overlaps Honduras and Nicaragua, and simply reaching its fringes takes hours of multi modal travel. The first part involves travelling along a paved road eastwards through massive palm oil plantations, beyond the relative metropolises of Trujillo, until it dwindles down to a dirt track, hugging the coastline, and finally petering out into nothing more than a white sand beach in Iriona…
The faithful Mongoose had found another owner! Chicagan Spanish teacher Elana, a keen cycle commuter back home, took up the challenge of riding it to the the Moskitia. I lent her a front bag and she roped down her rucksack to the rear rack. Alena planned to backtrack to Trujillo, and either continue cycling or sell her steed on again before returning to the Yucatan.
Pre ride morning feed. Egg, chicken and sweet, soft fried platanos maduros. My favourite.
Out on the road, pavement soon gave way to dirt. Only jeeps piled high with people and cargo, and the odd dusty chicken bus, plied the road.
Decapitated palm trees – collecting their oil is one of the main industries here, and has resulted in violent land rights disputes.
Wispy moss hanging like an old men’s beards.
Dusty conditions make for interesting tan lines. We washed off in the sea at the end of each day.
In Limon, we were invited in to stay for the night by a local garifuna family, and fed simple yet delicious fresh fish. Garifunas speak both Spanish and their own creole-derived language, Women are called Mama, men are called Papa, and little girls Madrecita. Little Mama!
Fording the odd murky stream…
Passing beautiful, unspoilt white sand beaches.
The Garifuna settlement of Punta Piedra.
A small, quiet fishing village.
Where, appropriately enough, we stopped for one of the tastiest fish meals I’ve had in a long time.
With views like this, you’d expect the area to be have become a little tourist haven. But Punta Piedra was a strictly local hangout.
A little further down the road, these poor creatures were destined for the pot, carried home from the beach by kids cycling by on broken, beat up bikes.
One of the cool cats I rode with. A side note for my football-obssessed brother. This remote and sparely populated stretch of the coast is famous for producing top class players, several of whom play internationally and in the Premiership – like Wilson Palacios, for Tottenham, and Henry Thomas, for Wigan. I later met Wilson’s cousin!
In seedy Iriona, the road came to an abrupt end, so we hopped in a passing ‘collectivo’ boat for the short ride to the village of Cocolito.
There, we were quickly descended upon by a mob of Garifuna kids who vied for our attention.
With little encouragement, they set about braiding Elana’s hair with great zeal in the local church.
I’d planned to catch a boat along this section of the coast, but nowadays, it’s only linked by 4WD jeeps who tear up and down the coastline through chicanes of mangroves. They churn up ankle deep sand, turning any efforts at cycling into a slow, sweaty trudge.
Hm. Not as rideable as I’d hoped…
A bemused local watches as I toil onwards. Upturned dugouts lined the beach, and families waded through the shallow waters fishing.
‘Balsas’, floating jetties, transport the daily run of modified jeeps across bridgeless rivers. As payment, the owner of this human powered raft asked me for only the equivalent of a can of coke to enjoy when the day was done.
Oops. This one didn’t quite make it. It took an hour to dig it out.
The riverside settlement of Nuevo Puerto wasn’t much more than a few houses and an enormous mango tree. Under its shade, a dozen boats were pulled up along the sandy shore. A few sinewy fishermen, in string vests supping bears, swung in hammocks. Surly Mama Patty, who vigourously upheld a reputation for shortchanging her customers, seemed none too impressed with Madrecita Elena’s braids.
Then it was time for anther collectivo boat ride to Belen (once Bethlehem, as it was named by the church missionaries), with magnificent views across the expanse of the laguna. The fabled Moskitia at last!
It’s not all idyllic though. The quiet communities here are squeezed along an elongated finger of land, between the lagoon and the Caribbean, stretches of which are heaped with sea junk. They’re also slap bang on the international drug smuggling route. Bags of cocaine are regularly washed ashore from abandoned speed boats, escaping US-funded helicopter patrols. Just a week earlier, the local kids had found a clutch of jettisoned guns.
That aside, these forgotten settlements are the perfect places to relax and catch up on some reading, before the next push through the waterways further into La Moskitia proper, and on to Nicaragua…
Nicaragua!
January 31, 2011
I’ve just arrived in Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua, a sketchy and ramshackle port tucked away along the remote caribbean coast, home an eclectic array of Moskitians, insalubrious drug runners and only the most tenacious of Mormon missionaries.
Crossing the Honduran swathe of La Moskitia proved to be a real adventure – a medley of white sand beaches, sinewy mangrove waterways and pine-flecked savannah, interlinked by rides in pencil-thin dugouts, some sublime singletrack and many a kilometre of calf deep mud…
I don’t have time for a full post now, as I still have some six hundred dirt road kilometres to the capital of Managua, across terrain so rough and mountainous it takes 24 straight hours by local bus! And, unfortunately, I left my computer power adaptor behind in La Ceiba. Thankfully it’s been scooped up by a fellow traveller and heading towards Costa Rica too, where I hope to be within a couple of weeks.
So this little missive is just to let any concerned friends and family that I’m still alive. Tired, but (very) well. More soon…
Moskitian smiles...
Heading for La Moskitia, hopefully
January 15, 2011
I’m now holed up in the Banana Republic guesthouse in La Ceiba, waiting out a storm that has unleashed torrential rain over the last four days, clogging up the city’s water supplies and grounding marine transport to a halt.
It’s not ideal, as my current plan is to make my way through La Moskitia – the Mosquito Coast – in order to pick up an epic track that heads south of Puerto Lempira into Nicaragua. From what I understand, the whole area is linked only by waterways and dirt roads – not a slab of pavement in sight. It’s said to be wild and remote, and home to the largest tract of rainforest north of the Amazon. I’ve been advised to stock up on cash and food, both of which can be hard to come by.
Part of the reason I’m keen to make it through is to visit Mocoron. While travelling in the US, I met a gifted folk singer, Gigi Love, who turned out to be the daughter of a Honduran woman who runs this foundation. It’s eighty kilometres down a rough dirt road from the main settlement of Puerto Lempira, and sounds like an incredible opportunity to learn about Moskitian life.
Aside from flying, there are a couple of ways to get to this region. I can try and catch a cargo boat from La Ceiba direct to Puerto Lempira, a twenty four hour ride that, subject to negotiations with the boat’s captain, costs around 1200 lempiras ($65).
Or – and my preferred option – I can cycle as far east as the road will take me, all the way to the Garifuna settlement of Batalla. Then I’ll try to pick up a succession of dugout canoes along the coast (a route shared with cocaine-smuggling narcotraficantes), or inland through various waterways. I’ve heard rumours there’s a cargo boat from Brus Laguna I should be able to connect with, subject to weather variables. There’s woefully little information on biking through the area, though this link on the Lonely Planet Thorntree forum has proved useful.
Unfortunately these canoe rides sound potentially expensive, as gas is hard to come by and options are limited, especially when travelling solo. Transporting the bike could be pricey too, as it’s effectively turfing someone out of their seat.
But the real fly in the ointment, as I’ve come to find out, is that the rainy season lingers longer on this north eastern coast of Honduras than in the rest of Central America, as it scoops up the edges of America’s east coast winter weather system.
This can make jungle travel by boat and dirt road slow going, or leave you stranded… Looks like I still have a couple more days to mull it over…
The ITM map to Honduras. Note abundance of green and blue. With a little local insight, hopefully I can make sense of what's rideable and what isn't at this time of year...
And some inspirational reading. Paul Theroux' Mosquito Coast chronicles the story of a man who moves to the jungle to build an ice machine. It was made into a movie in 1986 starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren and River Phoenix.
This is one of the few sites online with useful information. La Ruta Moskitia is a project to develop sustainable tourism in the area, and has some handy travel tips, including a list of local boat prices and contacts.
New Year’s Interlude: people (and animals)
January 13, 2011
A part of the enjoyment of travelling for me has always been meeting and forging friendships with fellow travellers on the road.
Here’s some of the people (and animals) I’ve had the good fortune to hang out with recently, and ring in the New Year on the Caribbean coast of Honduras.
Canadian Leah, outside the Banana Republic hostel in La Ceiba. I love meeting people who have a real passion in their life - and in this case, it was skateboarding. Aside from being an unusually warm, open person, Leah's also a gymnast, breakdancer, and used to work in London as a bike messenger.
With her shock of blond hair and tattooed body (arms, knuckles, belly, legs), she cut quite a look - it was interesting to see how the local Ladino men reacted to her. And as a Star Wars fan, I appreciated the play-on-words tattooed on her neck: Princess Slaya.
New Yorker Eric, who I first met at Mayapedal a few months ago. We spent a great New Year on the island of Utila, catching the sunsets out at the harbour and philosophising about life...
In party mode.
Along with fellow Maya Pedalist Julian from Austria, pictured clutching the goliath (1.75L) bottle of Nicaraguan rum. A rare moment of pensive contemplation from the Viennese.
Generally, Julian looks much more like this...
The consequence of such revelry: sitting out a tender head at our 6 dollar hangout, the Loma Vista.
I spent the first few days in Utila at Blueberry Hill. I first stayed here some 16 years ago, as a young backpacker as yet uninitiated to the joys of bike travel. Norma and her ninety year old husband welcomed me back with a warm hug, and treated me to a slice of her finest yucca cake. I told them I always remembered the catchphrase 'Norma and Will, on Blueberry Hill.' 'Like music to my ears,' she said.
Ingrid, from Guatemala was diving on Utila, and never failed to surprise us with her zest for life. As we tucked into lobster baleadas (for a bargain $2 a piece), we gleaned snippets of her exploits: living in the forest in Guatemala, running the London and New York Marathons, and seeing Pink Floyd live in the seventies.
Over in Roatan. Nancy, from Santa Fe: acupuncturist, yoga teacher, thai masseuse and a mean baker of flourless, chocolate chip/peanut butter cookies. A cool combo indeed.
Here she is in action.
And me, developing my new style of teeth brushing.
Hanging out in Coxen hole with a local from Roatan, who spoke English, Spanish and Miskito, the language of the Mosquito Coast. (photo Nancy Crowell)
The Bay Islands: Caribbean on a budget. I dove in its waters and saw a magnificent spotted eagle ray glide past, and a turtle munch on sea sponge.
Caribbean character.
West Bay, Roatan. The friendly guards at the gates of one of the developments let us in round the back, onto an almost deserted expanse of white sand and crystal clear waters.
I miss animals and like to befriend the locals. Here's one of the many creatures living at the Loma Vista Guesthouse, Utila.
Though I preferred this one, who snuck into my room for some attention and a nap.
I especially liked her awkwardly gangly legs.
And another resident of the Loma Vista.
Two more...
The gang.
Unusual sleeping habits in Chillies' Guesthouse, on the island of Roatan.
