A slice of Tela

A few weekends ago, Megan and I decided to try traveling solo to one of the villages on the north coast of Honduras called Tela. We only stayed there one night, but we more or less got the feel of the place. Because Tela is on the north coast of Honduras where the climate is usually warm and damp, it used to be (and still is to some extent) a large producer of bananas. It also used to be a main shipping port of Honduras, but has since been usurped by another city on the coast called La Ceiba. Here's a photo of the old Tela Railroad company building, which used to employ quite a few people from the U.S. in its day.


We ended up renting some bikes to explore the outlying areas of the town a little bit, which was a lot of fun. We rode out to a local Garifuna (descendents of African slaves) village to see what the local rural life was like, and met a lot of very friendly and curious villagers who would shout "Hello!" and "Goodbye!" as we cruised past. The chain on my bike kept popping off, and at one point we stopped to fix it and were greeted by a Garifuna man who spoke English. He said he used to live Texas and pointed us toward his bike shop if we needed any help. He was super friendly.

We rode out to the beach at this Garifuna village and came across an old weather beaten boat - clearly a photo op.

The next day the weather was much better, as you can see from the sky in the pictures below. We laid on the beach and read, drank from fresh coconuts and attempted to build a sand iguana. A couple kids from San Pedro Sula (the other big city in Honduras) came over to lend a hand and talk with us gringos.

Have you ever drank fresh coconut "milk"? It's really not like milk at all. In fact it's more like water with some sugar in it. Kind of a let down, but at least it looks cool...kind of?!

This weekend Megan and I are going to a village called Intibuca as a field trip with the social studies teacher and the 7th grade class. I really don't know what to expect, because I'm sharing a cabin with 10 other 7th grade boys who are completely hilarious and love to pick on each other. The plus side is that they love to play video games and are planning on bringing a PS2, so I imagine we'll probably be up until 3 AM tomorrow night playing FIFA soccer or something. I just hope they don't end up shaving my head while I'm asleep.....