Sambo Creek to Santa Rosa

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When I left you last time we had walked 9km from the Jungle River Lodge at Pico Bonito to the highway. We jumped onto the first chicken bus passing by on our way to the Garifuna village of Sambo Creek.

Even though Triumfo de la Cruz is touted as being the second biggest of these villages (next to Limon), Sambo Creek seemed like it was more alive and hopping than any of the villages we saw near Tela.

We stayed at the Hotel Avila which is conveniently at the very end of the bus line in Sambo. Just get off and keep walking forward. The restaurant on your right is the place. The double cost us 100L and came with a fan. The bathrooms are clean and it's right across the little road from the beach, but the showers are freezing!

There are other shwanky places in town, two of them run by French Canadians much to our glee! The Canadien, down the beach to the right was the only place we could find that served proper breakfast and Helens also had a little beachside restaurant.

Moving down the beach in the other direction was a place called the Sambo Restaurant. Try the grilled Kingfish in garlic. It was the best fish I had all trip. Like a steak, not a filet. Next to it is a huge looking place that just seemed like it was way too big for what we were looking for (read: expensive) so we never ate there. If you take a right in front of this place there's one more joint up the street called Tipico. I had good garlic shrimp (although they were a little cheap on the shrimp) with the biggest pile of tajada (fried plantain) I'd ever seen! I don't think I can eat any more of that stuff for weeks I ate so much of it in these villages.

There isn't a ton of stuff to do in these little places. Make sure you've got a good book. There's a little internet place down the main road and if you follow the road from Helen's hotel out to the highway and turn left there are two places that offer Thermal pools, a canopy tour and horseback riding but the thermal pools were either unimpressive and expensive or just plain closed when we went to check it out.

People are generally pretty friendly. Chris seemed to feel like we were always bothering people when we were asking for something, but I think that's how they react to everyone, not just tourists. A lot of them tried to speak English and you could tell that many wanted to learn.

From Sambo we took a chicken bus back into La Ceiba to the main bus terminal to catch a bus to San Pedro. From here we caught another into Santa Rosa de Copan.

Santa Rosa is a quiet little colonial mountain town with a surprising number of schools. The people seemed to be particularly well off and the town is outfitted for tourists, but we still got the staredown from a ton of them. I still can't quite figure why.

We stayed at a small hotel called the Blanca Nieve for 120L a night. Pretty good considering what the town looked like. We were sure it would be more expensive. The room was teeny weeny but it was enough. To get there walk two blocks past the Parque Centrale to the left of the church if you're facing it. Take a left and it's on the left side of the street facing a little mall complex that has an ice cream store in it and a movie theatre.

This theatre was our source of entertainment on the Tuesday night we got there, which also happened to be two for one night. I discovered my new favorite movie snack, M&Ms mixed in with a little bag of popcorn. It's heaven. Salty and sweet all mixed together. Genius!

The next day we tried to visit the cigar factory that's down the hill in the industrial area next to the bus station. First they told us to come back at 2h00 then they told us they were too busy and that we would have to come back the next day. We were catching a bus so we couldn't, kind of disappointing. If you're going to do it go in the morning, you'll have the best luck I think. The tour cost 80L if I remember right. Either way it's not free anymore.

The next morning we would start three days of hardcore travelling so we had dinner at Lily's restaurant (great Pinchots) picked up some bus pasteries and jumped into bed early. We wanted to try to catch the 5h00am to the border town of Agua Cliente, but missed it and had to wait for the 8h00 on the beginning of our journey back up the continent.

More soon,

Much love

Vanessa

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