La Moskitia, Part One

Semana Santa began with an escape. I had set plans to leave Friday for La Moskitia, the remote eastern end of the country. However, my director decided our big Easter/ Father's Day/ Pool Day should be on the following Saturday. So I left with a mixture of excitement that comes with going somewhere new, and the anxiety of leaving some obligations behind. I wouldn't have stayed for anything, though. The opportunity to see the Moskito Coast was too rare and too tempting.

The bus came to my school an hour before classes ended, and I said to my assistant "Me voy!" as I ran out. I told Mr. Rodrigo, our P.E. teacher and forever-loyal Honduran, where I was going. As I stepped onto the bus, he said, "Mr. Brett, La Moskitia es Honduras." As in, there is no place one could go to find a better picture of what this country is, or what is once was.

The region gets its name, not from the bug, but from the natives' pronunciation of musket. However, the rumor is that there are sheets of mosquitos there, and it is an at-risk zone for Malaria. The Moskitos are a mix of natives and Spanish slaves. They have their own language, and have been largely unchanged unlike some other parts of the country.

We drove north to a coastal town called La Ceiba on Friday. It's hard to see on the map, but it is in the dip of coastline. Thinking that, being with a group of Hondurans, we would certainly take a Honduran pace on this trip. But no lazy morning at the beach; we got a wake up call a little past three A.M. We drove the bus as far east as we could, to a small town called Tocoa. By 8 o'clock, we had loaded all of our gear into 4 x 4 trucks. There were smelly gas cans tied to the back bumper. We sat on 2 boards, eight of us squeezing together for the next leg of the journey. Our drivers were Garifunas, escaped African slaves that made their own villages along the Caribbean. They drove fast, and would deflect any comment about our progress. The unchanging answer: just a little further. A little further, it turns out, was another 5 hours of some of the most incredible countryside I've seen.

And so the trip began. I had no idea how far we were going, or what to expect as a destination. Every leg of the journey contained several endless segments, but I got lost in the absolutely beautiful scenery that was flying by us peripherally. All I knew: we were close to the Caribbean, and we would arrive in La Moskitia by boat that afternoon.

Check back soon. The story continues.

See some of the photos here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129838&l=f7019&id=29705820