So I got robbed yesterday…

…but we´ll get to that later. First let me tell you about the rest of Honduras.

After we finally succeeded in getting off Utila, we went from La Cieba up the Rio Cangrejal, near Pico Bonito National Park. While waiting in vain for Jeff to show up in La Cieba, Matt and I found a post office and mailed in our ballots. (So we can´t be held responsible if America screws this up.) I talked a little before about the American influence in Honduras, but I was struck again by how friendly Hondurans were to us. Matt and I had four or five different people come up to us while we were waiting on the side of the street and ask (often in perfect English) if we were lost or needed help finding anything. Such friendliness is not unheard of other places – it´s just that those people are usually trying to sell you drugs or bring you to a hotel where they get a cut of what you pay. Not to say that Guatemalans were unfriendly, but the average Honduran seemed to be especially courteous and willing to help out a tourist. Maybe it´s because they get less of them than Guatemala, which had it´s own well developed tourist circuit.

With Jeff nowhere to be found, we shrugged our shoulders, assured ourselves he was a capable traveller and headed up to one of the several jungle lodges up the river. Matt and arrived just as it began to get dark and dump rain, which happened just about every night we were in Honduras. It appears we picked the wettest two weeks out of the year to visit the country, which may have unfairly tainted our feelings. At the lodge we were greeted by Jezza, an outgoing (though a little bit nuts) rafting guide from New Zealand. We got a room and made friends with the only other guests staying at the lodge – Oliver from San Francisco and his girlfriendish partner from Montreal, who was doing volunteer marine biology work on Utila. The next morning we headed down to the river with Jezza and another guide, a friendly but bro-ish dude from Maine. As we climbed in the boat, we looked up river to see Jeff with another rafting company about to begin their run. The bro would be in the boat with the four of us for rafting, which gave you just the right amount of adrenaline. I couldn´t take my camera with us for obvious reasons, but the river was gushing with all the rain from the tropical depression and ended up being quite a ride. I´d gone rafting once before when I was a teenager with my family, but didn´t remember it being the same kind of rush. We were given instructions on what to do if you fell out. Thankfully we didn´t need to put those tactics to use, despite a couple close calls. But at the end of the run, the bro told us that we were nearing the exit point and it was safe to jump and swim if we wanted to. Wanting to get wet, I jumped in but happened to float right into the one borderline “rapid,” and for a brief moment got to feel what it was like to be pulled underwater. It couldn´t have been more than four or five seconds, but it felt like much longer, especially when you were expecting a calm little swim. I opted out of swimming that stretch the second time down the river. Later that day we found Jeff and hiked to a pretty awesome waterfall in the national park . That night we came back and the bartender gave us a shot on the house of a native alcohol made by the Garifuna people that consisted of rum packed with an assortment of herbs and spices. We were told that they drink it for medicinal purposes – it essentially tasted like rum and herbed tea.

We rafted this.

A waterfall.

The next morning it was another big travel day (we´re growing to love those) south to Lake Yojoa, a large lake in the middle of the country. We had heard stories from various travellers of a microbrewery and hostel run by an American dude on the lake that served big burgers, porter and blueberry pancakes. There was no question that we would be staying at said microbrewery – the beer situation down here is pretty grim. We arrived (once again) just as it was getting dark and begining to rain and settled into some brews that were probably average by our standards in the States but tasted absolutely killer after nothing but alcoholic water (and rum) for a month. I was disappointed that there was no IPA – must be difficult to get the necessary hops down here. Matt and I had gotten an earlier start than Jeff, so we were actually pleasantly surprised when he stumbled in at 7 p.m. (two hours after sundown), wet and in need of a drink. We slept in a rustic cabin crawling with ants and termites and the next morning got up and went to Pulhapanzak Falls, one of many natural wonders in the area. Like the rest of the rivers in Honduras, it was gushing, making for an impressiveve sight. It actually reminded me a bit of Snoqualmie Falls, though you were able to get much closer. Apparently there are caves behind it that you can go in normally, but not with so much water coming down.

Me in front of the falls.

The falls.

At this point we all agreed that we needed to head south. Part of it is that we had spent too much time in Guatemala and were just a bit behind “schedule” (although that is an ever-changing idea these days), but it was also that the weather was getting us down. We came to Central America to escape the rain, but with the exception of the first couple days on Utila, the weather looked surprisingly like the Pacific Northwest. The afternoon downpours made it difficult to go do anything. That afternoon we had our first hitchhiking experience. Though Americans frown on the practice, it´s the most common way people get around in the rural areas around here, where there are few buses. As we were walking to the town where we would catch a bus, it began to pour once again. A flat bed truck full of logs stopped and we hopped on top and headed towards town – much better than getting soaked. The drivers dropped us off and we asked how much it would be, to which the said “nada.” We shook their hand and gave them a “mucho gracias” and I noted another example of Honduran hospitality – for every person looking to take advantage of gringo tourist, there´s one or two more that are flattered that you´re visiting their country and aware of the positive aspects of tourism. A few hours of bus ride (some of it standing up in the aisle) and we got near Comayagua, just north of Tegucigalpa, the capital where we planned to get a long distance bus to Managua, Nicaragua the next day. That night we got a room in a crappy hotel (Matt and I´s bathroom wouldn´t work and Jeff´s had no windows and a 40-year-old TV. Matt and I´s TV worked and had cable. Seeing as how it was Sunday, we switched it on and scanned the channels in hope of some football Americano. (Yes, we know we´re a stereotype.) No luck on that, but I found something much better – game 7 of the ALCS. Jeff and Matt both lack the patience and intellectual capacity to watch a baseball game, but I was pretty stoked to watch the Rays hold off the Sox. (Though Dustin Pedroia is one of my new favorite baseball players.)

The next morning we caught a 6 a.m. bus to Tegu. As a general rule, we try to avoid the capital of any of the Central American country. That´s usually where all the horror stories of travel down here come from and where most of this area´s problems are centralized – gangs, crime, drugs, etc. We spent an hour in traffic and were charged way too much by a taxi driver to take us 6 blocks to the Tica Bus terminal, but we made it onto the bus fine and were quickly enroute to Nicaragua. The long distance buses down here are actually quite swanky – comfortable seats you can sleep in, a bathroom and movies. After a two hour wait at the border for our passports to be processed, we made it into Nicaragua and all began to fall in love.

Maybe that´s a bit preemptiveve, as we´ve only been here a couple days, but we´re all digging it. Driving through the north of the country you got a view of the stunningly beautiful rolling green hills that served as a geographic base for the leftist movements of the 1980s. Being the rainy season, there are massive rolling clouds that are unlike those you see in the States and every night we´ve gotten an impressive lightning storm as the clouds mix with the warm tropic air coming off the Pacific. Gas is cheaper down here, which I theorize (need to do some reading) comes from Nicaragua´s close ties with Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. I´ve already spotted some Che graffiti, as well as “Lenin” scrawled across a building. The country has all the same comforts of capitalism (large malls, etc.), but you can tell that left-leaning politics are still alive and well – especially in comparison to Honduras. From Managua we caught a bus down to Granada, the second oldest city in the Americas (founded in the 1500s). It´s right at the north end of Lake Nicaragua (the second biggest lake in the Western Hemisphere – Titicaca is first) and has some of the most beautiful churches and buildings we´ve seen. It´s like Antigua but with fewer tourists. Some of the buildings have been burnt down and rebuilt several times during the many tumultuous political struggles – the city´s teeming with history. That night we treated ourselves to a big American meal – baby back ribs from a BBQ restaurant run by a dude from Alabama.

Yesterday we grabbed a guided boat tour around some of the Isletas on the lake – tiny islands, some of which are owned by the uber-rich families of Nicaragua and others owned by wealthy Americans. The lake supposedly has some of the only freshwater sharks anywhere in the world. Our guide was a Nicaraguan dude named George who lived in Houston for most of his life but then had to come home after the FBI arrested him for being part of an operation that was smuggling half a ton of pot across the Mexican border. Nice enough guy considering, and his English was refreshingly nice to hear in a guide. The highlight of the boat trip? Isla de Monos (Monkey Island). A veterinarian apparently left some monkeys (white faced, like the one Ross had on Friends, and Spider) on one of the tiny islands. Since they can´t swim, they procreated and now the trees of the island were teeming with them. As the boat pulled up they all came out to watch. One monkey (who the guide named Lucy) is especially tame and climbed on the boat. George told us that she´d want to go through our bags looking for food and that under no circumstances should we attempt to take anything away from Lucy, as she bites. So Lucy climbed on board and after going through other people´s bags unsuccessfully, came to mine. What I forgot up until that moment was that I had an opened bag of granola in my bag. Lucy, sitting right next to me, reached in and found it and took off into the trees, where she promptly handed it out to her monkey brethren. It was a bit creepy being that close to an animal with that many human characteristics, but the whole boat was in stitches and I was glad to trade two dollars of granola for an opportunity to be mugged by a primate.

On the boat.

Oh, hi Lucy.

What´s that Lucy? You want to look through my bag? Well I don´t want you to bite me, so I guess I don´t have many other options.

Fine, take my granola. But you cannot rob me of my self-respect, Lucy.

Lucy´s brethren wait.

Giant old boats sit docked on Lake Nicaragua. These giant ferries were given to the Nicaraguan government by the Soviet Union in the 1970s or 1980s and run by Soviet engineers. After the fall of the Soviet Union they sat unused because the Nicarguan government didn´t have the parts to fix or run them. Now they´re being refurbished for possible use as a restaurant or hotel, our guide tells us.

That afternoon we went to Volcan Masaya, a national park centered around a giant active volcano between Managua and Granada. Indigenous peoples sometimes made human sacrifices in the massive steaming crater in hopes of appeasing the “hag goddess” they believed lived inside. When the Spanish arrived, they acted in true Spanish fashion and erected a cross at the top of the volcano in hopes of converting the natives. Due to the sulphuric smell and the ominous hole in the ground, they dubbed the place the “gateway to hell.” The description really couldn´t be more fitting. Scraggly, dieing trees dot the hillside and the crater steadily emits steam. You´re allowed to drive a car up to the edge of the crater – one of the many “you couldn´t do this in the States” moments of the trip. But the park (which had a very nice visitor center with placards in English) is not without safety measures. After a 1999 eruption shot giant boulders into the air that crushed cars parked at the top, organizers ruled that everyone was required to park their cars facing downhill in case people needed to make a quick exit. They closed the park before we could see it, but we´re told hundreds of parakeets flock to the walls of the crater at sunset, where they can nest without fear of predators. We were blessed with the perfect timing to visit the crater – enough cloud cover to cool the 80-90 degree heat and make some magnificent pre-dusk pictures.

Steam fumes from the gates of hell.

Caleb attempts to do a Metalocalypse pose in front of the gates of hell.

Sunset over the gates of hell.

That night after a good meal we heard our very first first-hand story of crime against gringos in Central America. Almost every other traveller horrer story you hear is second or third hand. (The average story: “I talked to a dude at a hostel whose buddy knew a guy who got mugged.” ) The bartender at the hostel, a hippie-ish Calfornia girl who made money for travelling by bartending at strip clubs, told us she had been mugged in Granada after her cab driver dropped her and a friend off a block away from home late at night. Six unarmed dudes pushed her to the ground and took her purse, which a friend later recovered by chasing the hoodlums down. Hordes of cops with machine guns showed up minutes later and the bartender escaped unharmed. Though we were inundated with such horror stories before we came down here, we´ve all agreed that we´ve never at any point felt like we were in imminent danger. At least anymore so than you would in your average American urban area. Most everyone we´ve talked to has agreed: common sense goes a long way. We hope we´re not jinxing ourselves here, but so far so good.

The next morning it was up to drink a bottomless cup of Nicaraguan coffee, which made me beside myself with joy. Through much of Guatemala and Honduras you had to get used to Nescafe, as most of the good homegrown coffee was exported. Not here. I drank two cups and sat reading a recent copy of Time Magazine I pilfered from a restaurant. (I left an extra three dollars as a tip so as to counter my guilt, but I´ve been thirsting for news down here like nothing else. Finding a paper copy of The Economist appears to be out of the question, so this will have to do.) We then headed south to Isla de Ometepe, where we are now. After an hour ferry ride across the lake, we arrived in the island, which is formed by two volcanoes rising from the lake connected by an isthmus. The island is beautifully green – we hiked most of the way up one of the volcanoes today and got more Holwer monkies and some amazing views. Tomorrow the plan is to rent dirt bikes and bike around the island to see the rest of the sights.

Cheers.