Miami, Honduras

Christina and I went to Miami on Saturday. Miami is a small Garifuna village about 40 minutes away. It was impossible to get accurate information about getting to Miami. One person said we could ride our bikes, another said it was over 40 min. by car and too far and dangerous to ride our bikes, a taxi driver said the road was closed and he couldn't get us there, another said he could take us but for 200 lemps each since it was a bad road, online we found a tourist who said she took a bus to Tornabe and had to wait there for 2 hours for a pickup the rest of the way, other people said there were no buses.

Even with conflicting reports, we were still set on going. Trying to get there would be part of the adventure. We took a bus into downtwon Tela. We then walked to the main bus stop and asked around. There were no buses to Miami but one to Tornabe (about half way there). We hopped on for 15 lemps ($0.80). The entire ride was on bumpy dirt roads through little villages. At one point we confronted a lake and thought the bus would have to stop but the driver figured out a way around it which involved driving on a tiny sand bar with the lake on one side and the sea on the other. About 2 minutes later the road was blocked by construction equipment and workers, gaping holes in the road, and mounds of dirt. This was the endpoint, Tornabe. The bus drive said the last bus back to Tela was at 4:00pm and only one bus runs on Sunday leaving Tornabe sometime between 8:00am and 3:00pm. Nice schedule. (By the way, Tornabe gets it's name from 16th century pirates who named it "Turn Bay", Argh!)We got out and were told Miami was still a ways away and a pick-up truck could give us a ride for 20 lemps ($1.05) but wouldn't arrive in Tornabe for 3 more hours. We decided just to start walking and within seconds two taxis pulled up. Good karma. We bargained the driver down to 100 lemps each ($5.26), which still seemed high. While riding, I noticed a strange juxtaposition of a thatched hut oddly built between two concrete houses.The taxi ride was down an even bumpier road than the bus route. For long stretches, the plants grew taller than me on both sides of the narrow one-lane road. Talk about suffocating. Then a car approached us head-on from the other direction. There was nowhere for either car to move to the side but somehow, after lots of honking, waving and maneuvering, they were able to barely squeeze past each other and we continued on. On the way, the driver asked us when we wanted him to come back and get us. He explained there were no taxis in Miami and we would thus have to arrange with him in advance.

Arriving in Miami, we both realized this was the most rustic, authentic Garifuna village we had been to yet. There was no concrete to be found. There were only thatched huts made of wooden sticks. The village is situated on a peninsular sandbar with a giant lagoon, Laguna de Los Micos (lagoon of the long-tailed monkeys), on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other. According to my dictionary, a lagoon is "a stretch of salt water separated from the sea by a low sandbank or coral reef." Miami is thus very scenic and unique with gorgeous views on both sides of you. Click on the link to check out a video of the view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slFr14Hk-CA
The driver let us off next to the only "hotel" in Miami. It consisted of two wooden cabanas, one with two beds and the other with four beds. We walked around the village awhile just checking out the people, huts, sea, and lagoon when a guy at a pupleria began introducing himself over the cluck of the chickens. (His name was Fernando, 31, and he came for the weekend from Tegucigalpa. He lived in the states from ages 16 to 28. He moved back to Honduras in 2005 because he was friends with the new president's son and could get hooked up with construction jobs.) He then asked how much we weighed. We both though it was an odd question but he quickly explained that he had a jet ski which he pointed to behind us on the lagoon. He offered to give us a ride around... for free. What amazing luck! We agreed immediately and climbed on.

It perfectly fit all three of us. Wrapping our arms around each other to hang on, he rode us all around the massive lagoon. We saw thousand of mangroves, birds, and many fishermen in cayucos (dugout canoes - many of which had gaping holes causing the men to continually scoop the water out to avoid sinking). Then we crossed a waterway over the sandbar and headed off into the Caribbean Sea. We were having a blast when he suggested we ride all the way to Punta Sal. Yay! (Our previous trip there cost $35.00 and now we get to return for free - re: August blog "Trip to Punta Sal".) The sea was little rough going there with us bouncing high off the seats, slamming our bodies and chins into each other, and hugging our arms around each other for dear life.We pulled up to the beach at Punta Sal and it was heaven. Punta Sal is the endpoint of Blanca Jeannette Kawas National Park jutting out into the Caribbean Sea. The beach was clear, calm, turquoise, and gorgeous. We swam for awhile, relaxed, and then got back on the jet ski. Fernando took us sightseeing around the other side of the rocky point and then we headed back to Miami. The ride wasn't as rough on the return and Fernando even let me pilot the jet ski the entire way back across the sea, through the waterway into the lagoon, and parking on shore where I stepped into the gooey muck on the bottom of the lagoon. Ew!

Christina had to be back in Tela by 5:00pm to volunteer at a church and I planned to spend the night and have a relaxing Sunday exploring more of Miami. Fernando offered to give Christina a ride back to Tela on the jet ski, saving her the transportation costs and problems. She called the taxi driver letting him no she didn't need him to come back for her. They walked back to the hotel with me. I was shown the smaller cabana and was told it was 100 lemps per night ($5.26). It seemed good enough. I waved goodbye to Christina and Fernando and settled in at the hotel.Two women cleaned out my room while I played with their children and talked to an older man. He even let me video him singing a song in his native tongue, Garifuna. Click on the link to see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB0CafbmHoI. My room was basic, with a plastic table, two plastic chairs, and two beds. The beds had very thin mattresses on them and when I sat down they sank in deeply. Fun. There was a latrine style shared toilet across the dirt walkway and a shower (or pipe with cold water only) right in between my cabana and the other one.I walked over to the restaurant and ordered some rice and beans and a salad. The open-air restaurant had about four wooden tables with many locals, mostly Garifunas, just chatting and chillin'. I was the only tourist. I talked to many of them (in Spanish, of course) and played dominoes with some of the kids having fun seeing who could slap the dominoes on the table loudest when it was your turn. When my dinner came, I saw a older homeless man I had spoken to earlier. He has a bad back and needs an operation on his heart but he doesn't have the money. He has lived all over Honduras and his grown daughter now lives in the U.S. I offered to buy him some dinner also. He was very thankful. The people here try to help him out by giving him small jobs in exchange for food.

After dinner it got very dark and there were no lights. Inside the huts people were burning candles (fire inside huts made of wood and dried palm leaves... sounds safe) but it was too windy to light any outside so I headed back to my cabana. My room had a car battery to power two lights so I chatted for awhile on the porch with some locals. Then I headed off to sleep, choosing the least lumpy and sunken of the two beds. During the night the room became pitch black. I couldn't see anything. The weather turned windy and stormy but even with pounding rain my room stayed dry. I was a little scared sleeping in a pitch black room by myself during a storm. I went to turn on the lights but they didn't work anymore. Great. I couldn't sleep the whole night imagining bugs, people, and other scary things in the dark.

I decided it was pointless to spend all Sunday there if it was just going to be rainy so when I heard a taxi pull up outside at 7:00am, I grabbed my stuff and rushed out. (No taxi's huh?). The driver agreed to bring me all the way back to Tela for only 80 lemps ($4.21) The taxi driver I had previously arranged wanted 300 ($15.79)!. The ride back was miserable. I was exhausted, my legs hurt from squeezing them to the jet ski, I was hungry, I was nauseous from not having eaten much, the road was very bumpy, I was squished in the backseat with two large Garifuna women, and I couldn't even open the window for fresh air because it was pouring rain. I crossed my fingers the entire ride hoping I wouldn't throw up but held on to the door handle just in case. Luckily I made it home without getting sick. Once inside, I rushed to the toilet finding Christina had beat me to it. Apparently on the way home, she and Fernando stopped in Tornabe for shrimp. Later that night they rode his 4-wheeler all the way to Miami and back to make sure I was settling in okay. I guess none of it sat well with her stomach and she had been sick the entire night.

Even with it ending with us both being sick, we agreed it was still an amazing, serendipitous weekend.