La Playa

Last week was rather uneventful. I had my first history exam. I studied for three hours for a 15 minuet- 2 page test. At least I was well prepared. It is now rainy season, which makes walking quite inconvenient. However, the rain does make it cooler. The other day I was talking with my dad and I told him I thought the day was a little cooler than most, but when he went on Google, the temperature in Tegus was 82. I am scarred to return to winter and snow.

Thursday night, Hope slept over at my house, because it would be unsafe for her to take a taxi by herself in the morning to the bus station. It is amazing how safety can be so inconvenient. Friday morning we left for the beach in Tela, a city on the northern coast of Honduras. I left my house at 4:45, to leave on the bus at 5:45. My mom had arranged for a taxi to come to my house, because it’s much safer to have a taxi driver my family knows when it is so early in the morning. The bus ride was about 5 hours with one stop in the middle. Because we were going through the mountains the whole trip, the bus was always turning and going up hills and down hills. We arrived in Tela around lunch time. We ate at a restaurant right on the beach. After lunch we went and looked at some tents set up for a festival that we going on. Friday was a holiday here in Honduras. The rest of the afternoon was spent at the beach. We got dressed up and went out Friday night to a nice restaurant. The rest of the night we spent on the beach and the hotel patio.

Saturday morning we got up at 6:30 to go on an excursion to a national park nearby, Punta Sal. We took a 40 minuet boat ride to the park. Our little boat got a lot of air off the large ocean waves. Once there we got off the boat and started our hike through the jungle. Our guide prefaced the hike with saying, “If I start to run, do not ask questions; just run with me. I will explain after I feel it’s safe and have stopped.” Of course being a little concerned I asked why we would need to run, and how often does this need to run occur? He responded saying that there were jaguars in the jungle, and running was more or less common. This really eased my nerves, or not. There were sooooo many mosquitoes that I literally spayed my can of bus spray the entire hike. I felt like one of those city girls who was defiantly outside her box. We did not see any jaguars, but we did see some monkeys. Our guide would make a monkey noise, and the monkeys would all then make a bunch of racket. It was a beautiful park. After the hike we got back into the boat and went to the other side of the peninsula. The guide dropped us off a bit away from shore, and we snorkeled our way back to shore. It was very cool to see all the ocean life. Once on the beach we had lunch. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, fish was for lunch. The whole fish sat on my plate staring me down. I do admit I did try it, but I really am not a fan of sea life as my meals. After lunch we had two hours to just relax on the beach. Because no one is allowed to live there, besides the two families that lived there before the land was a park, we pretty much had a private beach. We returned to the mainland after. We went out for dinner and then spent the evening again on the beach and hotel patio.

Sunday morning I got up early because I wanted to take advantage of the beautiful sunny day. After spending all morning at the beach we got some lunch and got ready to go. Once at the bus station, Katie told me I should call my parents to let them know at what time I would be returning that evening. When I went to get my phone, I realized that I had left it at the hotel. I do not know how, but one of the girls in our group remembered writing down the hotel number on our travel information sheets four days before. I called the hotel and asked if anyone spoke English, but of course not, so I had to explain the situation in Spanish. I told her I had just left the hotel, but I thought I left my phone in the room. She said she would go look and I should call back in 5 min. I had Katie keep calling my phone to help them find it. The women picked up, and asked if I were going to come back for it, but I did not have time to return to the hotel and then back to the bus station before our bus would need to leave. I told her that I would pay someone to bring it to me. Just as we were getting on the bus, she brought me my phone. It was soo close. We had a nice bus ride home. When I got home I was tired and went to bed. I would defiantly return again.

Just alittle something i noticed is the grand difference of the pictures currently on my blog- poor Honduras village compared to tourist hotel beach..i definatly am experiencing alot.