la mosquitia is a large forested region in eastern honduras and western nicaragua. it's a little like the central american amazon - indigenous folks, relatively untouched terrian, but more developed, smaller and generally less exotic stuff.
la mosquitia with the help of mopawi, i spent five weeks traveling and visiting with folks from
puerto lempira
mocoron
on the rio patuca:
awas
wampusirpi
brus laguna
belen
raista
on the rio platano:
las marias
cocobelia
plaplaya
batalla
after lempira i didn't see any phones.
after awas i didn't see any cars. there were occasional computers, however, in churches and in mopawi offices. they were run off solar panels.
i slept mostly in hospedajes - a separate house for guests off of some family's house. you get a room with a bed and a padlockable door. and sonic intimacy with your neighbors - usually partitions of a larger room with a shared roof. the santa teresita is an urbanish example of that. otherwise i slept in mopawi offices, or once or twice in a house.
i did actually venture into the forest, with weird bugs, like picking leeches out of my clothes in the mornings. there i slept under leaf lean-tos.
that and las marias didn't have any lard or rice - only beans, spaghetti, flour and yeast. that was about as grim as it got.
otherwise, i could buy batteries most places. some cities had movie houses, wooden benches with vcrs up front showing obscure action flicks you might see on late night cable in the states.
some buildings have power, lights between 6 and 8pm. otherwise, it's generators for the pulperias (general stores) that have refrigerators. or they use kerosene refrigerators - a weird concept.
infrastructure is real difficult - there isn't much. everybody communicates with CBish radio. travelling is by boat, walking, or semi-irregular 8 seater planes. i was there during the rainy season, so a few of the runways were non functional. but you don't know that until you wait for five hours of irregular downpouring rain, in constant motion to avoid moskitos, and some kids are sent from the town (in this case wampusirpi) to tell you that the plane might actually come tomorrow.
i had one 12 hour canoe ride that was a real test of faith.
i walked three or four hours between barra brus and belen, and between belen and plaplaya - all along the coast. it was palm trees and white sands and cleanish water, and me, and these two miskito women. there were these weird sea-grapes with big seeds that we ate.
being in that kind of country alone is a rare feeling. otherwise, it's mostly about the miskito people, and the way they interact with the land.
and that's a whole other web page.
mosquitia | hondo | trip | life
justin's links by justin hall: contact