Gracias a dios
I left the Garifuna village and went by taxi, bus, taxi, bus, bus to my next destination, Gracias a Dios (thanks to god), which is in the mountains in the western part of Honduras. I was absolutely after the second taxi driver charged me 50 Lempiras for a cab ride…I thought it was worth 20 Lempiras at best…the next bus I took cost 50 Lempiras, and was at least 2 hours long…how could a cab cost just as much? Now, 20 Lempiras is just over a dollar, and 50Lems is just over $2.50, so if you do the math, you can see that I got ripped off a whole $1.50, so it’s not all that big of a deal, I know. The guy needs that $1.50 more than I do. But, it’s the principle of the matter that he upcharged me 150% just for being a tourist. But enough of that…
I got to Gracias a cute, small mountain town, and made arrangements to go hiking the next day in Celaque, a national park just nearby. Got up at 6 the next morning to get some breakfast and meet the others who were also going for the hike. There were only 2 others, a cute couple from South Africa – Gideon and Georgina (who consequently have given me tons of information for when I’m there). It was raining slightly, a good drizzle, and we did contemplate forgoing the hike, though we were going into a cloud forest, where it’s always damp anyway, so it hardly mattered whether it was sunny or rainy; we were bound to get a little wet. We got a ride to the entrance, where we made arrangements to be picked up later. We had decided to hike the longer, newer, 6-7 hour trail, so we just had enough time, though we would have to keep the pace up a bit.
We walked up a steady hill to the visitors center, where we were greeted by a fairly large guardian turkey. We gave the password, did a little dance, and luckily it allowed us to pass, although grudgingly, indeed. And thus, we started the trail. It started out very nice and casual, rolling terrain, little footbridges over streams. We were walking through pine forests, which I never would have imagined were in Central America. The mist was thick – pretty cool…it was like everything disappeared into the mist about 100 feet inevery direction. The path got a little steeper. And we went up. And up, and up, and up, and dear god are we ever going to stop going up? This was steep up. And it really didn’t stop for about 2 hours. Seriously, it hurt. I was tired. I think we all thought at one point that we should just turn back, but of course we couldn’t do that. Then it mellowed out a bit, and we thought we had reached the top. The scenery changed up here…no more pine forest, but a thicker sort of jungle, where the trees looked like they had other trees growing out of them, like palm trees. This mellowing-out lasted about 5 minutes. Then more up and up for about another hour. We were crossing over on this ridge that was pretty narrow…you could tell both sides just went down, but we couldn’t see a damn thing. And more up. We had almost a continuous ascension for over three hours and climbed about 1000 meters (around 3000 feet), and the sad thing was that we couldn’t see a damn thing from way up there because of the mist. But it was kind of cool.
And then, we made it. We hit that point, that definitive down point. Not just a mellowing-out this time, this was serious down. Now, I’m a true believer that going down is always more difficult than going up, but not this time. Going down was heavenly. This first down part was through some thick, thick jungle – I’ve never hiked through such a wild area before. It was pretty cool through all the mist, too. About an hour after beginning our descent, the mist just dissipated and the sun came out. It gave a while new light to the forest, particularly when we came to a little clearing where we could see where we had just come from. We had climbed Rooster Hill, and it sure did look like a rooster’s comb (hence the up, mellow, up, mellow). The view must have been amazing from up there, but we all kind of agreed that if we had seen where we were going, it might have changed things for us.
The rest of the hike, mostly downhill, did end up taking a toll on my left knee, which felt like the kneecap was shattering into pieces every time I took another step down, though I was still happier than going up again. We ended up making it back to the pick-up spot slightly ahead of time, which I was rather surprised about, but we were all pretty proud in completing the hike in just under the estimated 6-hour minimum.
We got back into town and were sweaty, dirty, and tired. We took our respective showers (mine a painfully cold rinse, loaded with cusswords), and rejoined for some dinner, a few beers, and quite interesting conversation about political situations in South Africa (and the States, but at this point that’s hardly interesting and more a given than anything). Went to bed before 10, and decided to sleep in the next morning.
So, I woke up at 7 (hardly sleeping in) and took one little stretch of the body and no way in hell was I strapping that backpack on today and moving on. So another day in Gracias. It really is a charming little town, an old colonial village with cobblestone streets. I was told I should go to the nearby hotsprings, and I couldn’t think of a better way to treat this aching body. The thermal pools were cool…they had pools of all temps. The water entered one pool, which was the hottest, and they naturally cooled themselves by spilling the water into the next pool slightly lower. I made some friends and ran into another local I had met earlier (he had lived in Chicago for 8 years, and, next to Gracias, was his favorite place). I was in those pools for 4 hours, had a few beers, and just talked to people all afternoon into the night…oh, it was awesome; and then I walked back to town under the beautiful starlit sky with some new friends. This place is open 24 hours…could you imagine having one of these back home?
Tags: Honduras, Tag Index
Tania