a little bit of stimulant makes Jessa a happier soul

Since I last wrote things have taken a turn for the worst. Don’t fret, however, I am a firm believer that it takes shit to make bliss.

I got very, very sick at the beginning of April with an intestinal infection. After a solid seven days of bed rest I thought I was better. Then I had a bout of empacho, which still don’t totally know what is. The month of April was pretty much spent in bed. For 18 days I stared out of my bedroom door and watched the birds play in the tree and wonder if anything exciting was happening outside the compound walls. I became a miserable person totally sick of life in my body. I think a little depression kicked in, which didn’t make my health any better.

The last weekend of April I thought I was well enough to go with Quinton to a little village in the southern part of Honduras called Nacaome. The purpose for the trip was to buy some cheap Lencan pottery. The first 30 minutes of the bus ride south were horrible I began to second guess my health. But I took a nice long nap all the way in to Tegucigalpa and felt much better by the time we made our way on the ghetto little chicken bus to Nacaome. We arrived to find the nicest hotel I have been to in a long time. The room was air conditioned, there was a terrific pool, cable tv, a big squishy bed, even a bathtub!

The next day we went by bus another 30 minutes towards El Salvador. It was another chicken bus and the man sitting next to me actually had a market bag full of live chickens. We got off the bus in the middle of nowhere and found the pottery shop. Of course our Spanish is rudimentary so I couldn’t totally understand the details of this place but I gathered that it is a cooperative where women from the community can use the facilities to make pottery and sell it collectively. I guess they are selling it to travelers coming and going from Nicaragua and El Salvador because it is in such a desolate part of Honduras and the road connects these countries. We got some amazing pieces of pottery for such a good deal. I bought 5 pieces for $10. Quinton bought about $30 worth and that turned out to be about 15 pieces.

After our pottery excursion we went back to the hotel where we lounged around the pool for a few hours and ate a lunch of ceviche (fresh fish from the Pacific that is actually cooked in lime juice….the greatest thing I have ever eaten). We watched about 10 movies on cable….they make sure to put a lot of movies and shows in English on the TV with Spanish subtitles. We made a brief stroll into the outer parts of Nacaome, but it was unbearably hot so we went back to the hotel.

Being away from Siguatepeque made me feel better. My mind was a one again stimulated and I saw something different. Even though the trip was quite relaxing and we didn’t do a whole lot, it was just what the doctor ordered.

We got back from Nacaome on Sunday and just had a three day week of school. It went pretty quickly and on Wednesday we did an egg drop competition with the whole school. The groups were comprised of one or two students from each grade. The only egg that survived was from a group that cheated (they used paper that was not one of the given materials) but everyone still had a great time. It was fun to see the older kids acting as leaders for the younger kids.

Thursday we packed our bags again this time heading north to the coast. Our destination was the Jungle River Lodge just 10 minutes outside of La Ceiba on el Rio Cangrejal. We planned to stay just for a night and go on a white water rafting excursion. As soon as I saw the place I knew that one night would not be enough. Finally I had arrived in a place that was beautiful. I have been living in Honduras for 10 months now and it took until this past weekend to find a truly beautiful place. There were rocks leading up from the river to the lodge that were good for jumping. The water was so clear and the temperature was just perfect for swimming. We spent a good portion of our first day swimming and drying out on the rocks. Sitting on the rocks you look onto the Pico Bonito National Park, which is a well managed and protected area.

That night for dinner we sat around a table with the staff (we were the only guests the first night) and dined on wild boar, beans, rice, ensalada, and tortillas. The restaurant/bar area has no lighting so our dinner was served by candlelight. As if the beautiful scenery and delicious dinner wasn’t enough, ever staff person there was strikingly attractive. Exactly my type of earth biscuit meets DCMW.

The next morning we prepared ourselves for our rafting adventure. Quinton, Olivia and I were joined by Scott, a fellow north-westerner, who teaches at a bilingual school n Tegucigalpa. The four of us and our guides Jonny and Juan Carlos drove up river to begin our trip. The first half of the trip was jumping of a variety of rocks into turbulent water. We jumped from sitting positions, we had to scale rocks with the assistance of Juan Carlos’ rope, and finally we had to jump from about 20 feet into a waterfall. Now some of you know that I do not like jumping off rocks. I am scared of jumping off rocks. Needless to say I was the last person to jump into the waterfall after some serious coaching from Jonny. But I did it and even thought I might do it again one day (maybe….). We then floated down the river in our lifejackets to our boats were we began the rafting part of our trip.

Quinton and Olivia were paired together and Scott and I shared a boat. Scott is very athletic and adventuresome and I was glad to have him as my partner. We practiced rescuing each other after falling out of the boat which was good because Juan Carlos purposely flipped our boat on our first rapid (a class IV). The whole trip was great. We braved many rapids, mostly class III, and even got out of our boats on occasion to go down the rapids without our boats. Spicy Chili was a rapid we went down sans boat and it was just like a really fun water slide. We all went down Spicy Chili a handful of times. By the time we made it back to the lodge we were exhausted and pumped up on adrenaline.

I had to go into La Ceiba to send an important email so Quinton and I went into town. Olivia decided to go back to Siguatepeque after rafting so we said goodbye to her. In La Ceiba we met up with Dan and Charles who had just arrived. We headed back to the lodge and spent the afternoon swimming and drinking rum. That night I ended up talking to Oscar, the proprietor of Jungle River Tours and Lodge, and it turns out he is from Siguatepeque. Oscar told me of his interest in developing the community of El Naranjo which is just up the river from the lodge. His plans are all environmentally based (green) and have tourism as the economic developer. He needs some help getting things started and I am thinking about helping him. It sounds like the work I was doing in Jamaica. It is an option. I also talked with one of the guides, Darwin, for a long time as we took shots of Jungle Juice (rum saturated with roots and herbs from the jungle….it tasted like vegetables). Talking with him (in spanglish) reminded me that even though I have been totally removed from beautiful places this year, they still exist. And there are still people in this world who care about our planet just as passionately as I do, for the same reasons I do…..because we have experienced the beauty of our planet first hand over and over and over again.

By the time Sunday rolled around I was in no mood to head back to Siguatepeque. We said our goodbyes to Oscar and Darwin and the rest of the staff and headed back into La Ceiba where our bus bound for Sigua was waiting for us.