La Moskitia

This year, for Semana Santa (Holy week) – which much more closely resembles Spring Break in Honduras than a religious holiday – we decided to travel to La Moskitia with six other Peace Corps volunteers. La Moskitia, also spelled Mosquitia, is the largest swath of rainforest north of the Amazon and home to three distinct indigenous groups as well as flora and fauna not found elsewhere in Honduras. Because La Moskitia is so remote, and once there the only form of travel is via boat, we used the NGO La Ruta Moskitia to plan our trip. La Ruta Moskitia plans the travel logistics, but the money all goes to the local communities through envelopes of lempiras that we carried along with us.

Thursday, 25 March 2010
We all arrived in La Ceiba from our different sites and received a briefing from La Ruta Moskitia about our trip starting early the following morning.

Friday, 26 March 2010
At 4:00 am our alarm went off so that we could get to the airport by 5:00. At 6:10, our little 16-seater plane took off from the La Ceiba airport for our 50 minute flight to Brus Laguna. The small plane did not have a pressurized cabin and when we took off, the pilots had windows open in the cockpit. We landed on a dirt runway in Brus Laguna and were met by the coordinator of la Ruta Moskitia to take us to breakfast. Breakfast consisted of beans, cheese, a fried egg, flour tortillas, hot dogs pretending to be sausage, and coffee. Corn tortillas are commonly eaten throughout most of Honduras, but along the Caribbean coast, flour tortillas reign.

We took a quick tour of Brus Laguna, the last town of any size we were to see in La Moskitia, before heading upriver. From this point onward, all our travel was in pipantes (dugout canoes), some of which were motorized, others of which were powered by paddle and pole. Our trip upriver took about an hour and a half and along the way, we saw water buffalo (an introduced species that has thrived since its introduction), a small turtle, and Jabiru, a giant prehistoric-looking bird that stands over four feet tall.

We arrived at the Yamari Savanna Cabanas, which were wooden cabins on 6 foot tall stilts with thatched roofs. The cabins were surrounded by grassland, which is not what one typically imagines when thinking of La Moskitia, and there was neither a road nor visible signs of other people (we were told that a community lies just a few kilometers from where we stayed). A quick bathroom break presented another surprise; we discovered that frogs live along the rim of the toilet and are washed into the bowl by the rush of water every time someone flushed, only to scramble back up the slippery porcelain into their nook.

After a quick swim, we had a lunch of fish in coconut milk, rice, and salad. We went on a short hike in the afternoon and saw a scarlet tanager and a tarantula in its hole. After dinner, we got back into the pipante to look for caiman and crocodiles. Drifting downstream in our boat, we shone our headlamps about until spotting the glowing eyes of a crocodile. We saw three crocodiles between 3 and 5 feet long and the guide caught a baby croc for us to hold. After our nighttime adventure, we were ready for our first good night’s sleep in days and were rocked to sleep by the cabin as it swayed gently in the wind.

The Scarlet Tanager

Baby crocodile

Saturday, 27 March 2010
Breakfast consisted of warm milk and corn flakes (a preference many Hondurans still maintain from the days of pasteurizing milk by bringing it to a boil), pan de coco (bread made using coconut oil), honey, and eggs. Unfortunately, I (Emily) was feeling a bit under the weather, with what we later decided was a 24 hour bug, so I only stomached a couple of bites of bread, which I shortly thereafter threw up off the balcony of our cabin.

We had a four and a half hour trip to the community of Rais Ta. These long boat trips were beautiful but tiring due to the hours of sun exposure. We were constantly passing sunscreen up and down the boat. For lunch, we had rice, meat with gravy, whole beans, and boiled mature plantains. I stuck with the rice as my stomach was still not up to most foods. While I took a nap, everyone else went on a community tour and learned about the risky deep-water diving for lobster that provides an income for many in the community. After dinner, we attended a cultural night of traditional Miskito dances. The despedida (or farewell) dance was one in which we made a tunnel of arms and each couple repeatedly took their turn passing under the arms and becoming the end of the tunnel until we’d traced a perimeter around all of our cabins and returned to the bonfire for a final goodbye.

The sopilote (vulture) dance

Sunday, 28 March 2010
While I was feeling significantly better and finally up to eating, Nathan was getting sick. We decided that what was going around was probably viral, and since Nathan and I had sat next to each other on the boat the day before, we decided to “quarantine” us for the day. He and I sat in the back of the boat with Ana and Daniel as a buffer to keep the rest of the crew from getting sick. It seems to have worked because the bug stopped with Nathan.

We had a three hour boat trip up the Río Plátano (Plantain River) until our stop for a lunch of rice, chicken, mashed potatoes, pan de coco, and coconut water. Then we traveled for another three hours before reaching the community of Las Marias. Along the way, we saw an otter, a crocodile and a guacamaya/macaw (the national bird of Honduras). Our cabin in Las Marias was more rustic than the places we had stayed before and privacy was a bit harder to come by. Our room, for example, didn’t have any curtains, so we hung towels and sheets over the windows.

Lunch time!

Monday, 29 March 2010
We arose early for our daytrip to the petroglyphs. Two of us sat in each pipante, which were propelled upstream by two people with long poles in the front and one person using a paddle as a rudder in the back. The two in front, working together with the same rhythm, drove their poles down to the rocky bottom of the river and pushed the boat upriver. Miskito children learn from a very young age how to guide a pipante, and had we tried, we surely would have capsized the boat!


We hiked with our guide, Ezekiel, through primary rain forest and saw many medicinal plants as well as stunning vistas. After the hike and a quick lunch, the pipantes took us the rest of the way to the petroglyps. The age of the petroglyps is unknown (estimates range from 1000 to 3000 years old), but regardless of the ambiguity about their age they’ve been declared a world heritage site. Many believe the carving to be two crocodile heads facing in opposite directions. After a lovely swim next to the petroglyps, we headed back downriver. We were all ready for a shower after a long day of swimming, hiking and sweating in the sun. The shower at Las Marias was also not very private. It was a large roof-less porch constructed of wooden boards with a curtain for a door (which often blew open). We used a bucket to pour water over our bodies and the water simply flowed through the gaps in the floorboards and onto the ground 6 feet below. Although the shower was less private than what we’re used to, there were beautiful views of the river and jungle from inside.

Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Today we started our three-day hike up Pico Dama. After a short hike to the pipantes, we traveled upriver for a couple of hours. Along the way, we saw tucans, 4 macaws, and our guides stopped to harvest some yucca, which is the monstrous root structure of an unsuspecting small tree. Then we had a hard two and a half hour trip up to the cabin. We hiked through primary rainforest and Eva, our guide, taught us how to drink water out of a vine. The cabin where we stayed was also on stilts, and Eva made a fire underneath to cook dinner. Because of this arrangement, by the end of the trip, all of our clothing smelled of campfire smoke. After a dinner of yucca, spaghetti, beans, rice, and coffee, we all headed for bed early. With no light other than our headlamps and the fire, plus being tired from our arduous hike, we went to bed shortly after the sun set at 6:30.

Wednesday, 31 March 2010
At 5:45 we got up to summit Pico Dama, so we would have a greater chance of seeing wildlife in the early morning. The latrine was out of order, so for our morning bathroom break, we dug a hole with the machete. After a breakfast of fried tortillas and oatmeal, we started our hike. We came across a group of about 6 toucans, which, in the round, made a considerable amount of noise with their beaks. Later, Eva pointed out to us a tapir footprint in the mud.

Our hike included climbing up massive tree roots through an incredibly lush jungle. There was moss everywhere and moisture dripping from the leaves. We reached two beautiful viewing points from which we could see the community of Las Marias far downriver.

After lunch and a nap, Kevin came with news that he had seen monkeys just five minutes from camp, so we all rushed off to see the monkeys. Although we had been careful throughout our trip in the jungle to wear long pants and shoes, in our excitement about the monkeys many of us were wearing shorts and sandals. We did come across the spider monkey who was swinging through the trees. However, shortly thereafter, six of us walked past the barba amarilla (or fer-de-lance), the most poisonous snake in this region of the Americas, without noticing it. Eva told us that a bite from a barba amarilla can kill someone within 20 minutes if they do not receive medicinal plants and proper medical attention. We were very fortunate that the snake didn’t bite any of us and attribute our luck to having been quite boisterous as we walked through the woods (a surprised snake is much more likely to strike – out of fear – than one that can anticipate your presence; for that reason, when in snake country, it's often recommended to hike with a sturdy walking stick and plant it firmly on the ground while walking so as to send warning vibrations to any snakes in the area).

Thursday, 1 April 2010
It was raining hard for our nearly two hour hike down from the cabin, so we slipped and slid through the mud, most of us falling at least once. Along the way, Eva pointed out several medicinal plants for everything from bed wetting to menstrual pains to birth control. We saw a white-faced monkey as well, so of the three types of monkeys found in La Moskitia, we saw white-faced and spider monkeys and heard howler monkeys. The unique hike up Pico Dama was the highlight of the trip.

Pico Dama

For the pipante ride downstream, our guides used paddles instead of the poles. Once back in Las Marias, it was time for a shower and tick check. Shannon and I tied for the most ticks with nine each.

Friday, 2 April 2010
After a breakfast of oatmeal and fry bread, it was time for our four and a half hour trip back downriver to the community of Belén, which is along the Caribbean coast. Once there, we had a lunch of soup with coconut broth, plantains and yucca, as well as some fish.

We then went to learn how to fish in the ocean. We were given some fishing line wrapped around a coke bottle or a bit of wood with a hook on the end. We used red worms and then stood waist deep in the surf to try to catch a fish. Due to stormy weather, the surf was larger than normal, so our guides didn’t have much faith that we’d catch anything. The waves reminded me of Cannon Beach, which was surprising for the Caribbean. In over an hour of fishing, only Ana caught a fish, and although small, it was a stunning white. For dinner, we ate refried beans, fried egg, cheese, tajadas (fried green plantains), and Ana’s fish.

Saturday, 3 April 2010
Our last day was dedicated to traveling by land out of La Moskitia. At 3:30 a.m., we got in the boat for a nearly two hour ride. None of the communities where we had stayed had electricity, but as we moved closer to civilization, we saw more and more lights on the docks in the early-morning darkness.

We arrived in Batalla, where there were pickup trucks waiting to take passengers to Tocoa. Because there is still no road for a while, buses cannot run this route, so pickups are the mass-transit option. There were 14 of us crammed into the bed of the truck, which made for a less-than-luxurious ride. We drove along the beach, often in the water, for nearly two hours before hitting the dirt road upon which we traveled for another two and a half hours. By the time we were done, we were covered in dust, which stuck to our sunscreen and made us truly filthy.

The "road" to Tocoa

Once in Tocoa, we still needed to get to La Ceiba, where we were spending the night. We got a jalón (hitchhike ride) in the back of a pickup going to La Ceiba, which although free and faster than the bus, meant another couple hours of wind, sun, and dust. By the time we got to our hotel (a quaint little place named Casa Roselyn that’s located outside of town and owned by a young Honduran-Swiss couple), we were ready to relax and not be traveling for a little while. Swimming in the pool, which is filled with mountain runoff, felt amazing after all those hours in a pickup.

Sunday, 4 April 2010
We caught the 6:15 bus out of La Ceiba (for which we had bought tickets 10 days in advance in anticipation of the heavy traffic of thousands of people traveling home from Semana Santa) and were back in Siguatepeque by 11 a.m. Thus ended our adventure in La Moskitia.