La Mosquitia

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La Mosquitia- Kate´s version!

I think I must have been born with a slight deficiancy in the adventurous spirit department and sadly with age it only seems to be decreasing!
I was more than slightly anxious about our trip into the wilderness of La Mosquitia but not wanting to appear 'wet' I decided to "Man Up" Big White folk will know all about that!. The first day involved a 7am boat ride from the island of Roatan followed by a 3hr chicken bus ride to Tocoa arriving in the pouring rain and then a further 5hrs on another chicken bus to Irioma. I arrived quite tired with a numb bottom and more than a little concerned about where we were actually being dropped in the dark at 8pm? The local Judge? happened to be on hand, he took us into the village and introduced us to the local 'armed' policeman and then to the only hotel in town. It was in fact very reasonable apart from the ENORMOUS cockroaches inhabiting our room with us (I spent part of the night worrying I might swallow one in my sleep!)

Next morning we set off for day 2 of our epic journey into the wilderness. Sitting by the river and asking the locals when the boat would arrive wasn´t too hopeful when they kindly told us, "maybe 2pm?" "maybe tomorrow?" Finally a boat did arrive but it was only going a little way towards Palacios. We decided to get as far as we could anyway and so after 20mins upstream we arrived in a small Garifuna village. Here we were invited to wait on someones porch (with our fellow traveller who was reasuringly a priest) and told a truck would come along 'sometime'. Eventually a delivery truck did arrive at about 1pm and so began the next part of the journey.
Standing, clinging on to the back of the truck with the crates of Coca Cola, beer (very tempting for George) and gas canisters, was quite fun until we had to drive into the sea as the 'road' or sand track was under water. One of the guys jobs was to wade into the sea and test the depth of the water and firmness of the sand, not all that reasuring but I guessed he had done it before.
After crossing an inlet via a launch made of wood and plastic barrels which George helped to pull, we arrived in another Garifuna village called Batalla. This is where the 'road' ended.

From here we had to catch a lancha dugout boat upriver to our destination for the night, Raista. The dugout trip was a little hairy to say the least as it was pouring with rain and windy on the lagoon so the tiny boat filled with people was being thrown about. Coupled with the fact some idiot speedboat driver seemed intent on creating a huge tidal wave to sink us. We were all very relieved when we reached dry land.
Our smiley hoasts were Jorge and his wife who made us very welcome in their beautiful community run guesthouse. We had a fantastic dinner and organised our boat trip for the next day to take us to Las Marias, the last inhabited place within the reserve.

At 7.30am we met Wellington, our boatman for the next 5hrs and also the following 3days. Inevitable it rained and as you can imagine a dugout doesn´t provide much shelter. Eventually after much soul searching we arrived in Las Marias. We made friends with our host familie's children and arranged our jungle walk for the next day, being as there was no electricity and the bathroom was miles from our room with no running water and lots of creepy crawlies we retired very early to bed and the safety of our mosquito net!

Next day we met our guide, 'Jose' at 7.30am and soldiered into the jungle, determined to see animals! Not wanting to sound spoilt I must just say that our record of actually seeing anything other than mosquitos and ants in the jungle isn't great and this trip only strengthened my resolve that maybe I had been in enough jungles on this trip. After about half an hour in the jungle, it became clear that trying to prevent getting trench foot was probably more of a concern than seeing animals. We waded though mud, sweating most of our body weight for about 2hrs until it became quite clear we were going to see, nothing!. After a quick dip in the river whilst being eaten by mosiquitos (they don't call it La Mosquitia for nothing) we decided turning back was probably the best strategy, so tired, dehydrated and more than a little despondent we returned to our lodgings.

Unfortunately due to a slight under estimation on the money front we were dangerously low on funds and so food had to be the first 'luxury' to go! We could afford only one meal a day and so after our well deserved lunch we ended up going to bed quite hungry. Next morning we 'woke' or should I say rose at 4.30am, the previous night had not been a peaceful one as we seemed to be sharing our accomodation with a world champion snoorer!
We met Wellington and started our return journey to civilisation. Needless to say we were all very hungry as we had not had dinner or breakfast but luckliy we stopped to pick up some fruit from Wellingtons relatives, so the trusty banana was to be our excellent food source. We arrived back in Raista and managed to part with most of the rest of our money paying for the boat trip. This left us with about 5 dollars to pay for washing and get us to a cash machine, impossible!
Wellington took us back to Batalla and interestingly when we arrived someone told us a truck would be along shortly. As soon as Wellington had left us however it transpired that there may not be another truck today at all. We set about playing cards to try and pass the time and stop the worrying. Having no money to buy food or drink and not knowing how long we might have to wait made us a little tense and wasn´t helped by the fact the locals (apart from one generous man who bought us a drink) were not being very hospitable and seemed to find our predicament most ammusing.
After about 4 hours of wondering whether we would have to sleep outside or maybe in a disused building our saviour arrived in the form of a Toyota Hilux. We negotiated a rather desperate but essential rate to get us out of there and relaxed into the comforts of the back seat of the Hilux. Our return journey was somewhat faster and we ended up arriving back in Tocoa at about 7.30pm and to our great relief straight to a cash machine. We treated ourselves to a decent hotel and a feast of chineese food and I for one was certainly relieved to back in the land of ATM's, how sad and 21st Century I have become.

There is no worse feeling than not having money and being hungry, although we most certainly weren't anywhere near as hard up as some of the people we have encountered on our travels, it humbled me to realise what it must be like to not know when you might next eat and be at the mercy of peoples generosity. Not an emotion I would like to experience too many times in my life though. Thank you to George and Roz for putting up with my pesermistic tendencies!

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