Fanny Packs are Back

After a week of all-day trainings, the teachers decided that we needed break from the dust and oppressive humidity. We had been looking longingly all week at the lush mountains that serve as the impressive backdrop to our little town and decided that it was a perfect time for a weekender. We were told that the mountains that we had been oogling over belonged to Cusuco National Park, a cloud forest complete with one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the planet, waterfalls, and most importantly, cool dry air (a prized commodity in these parts reserved only for the one place in our town with A/C: the Chinese restaurant)..

 

Having heard that the Chinese food was of questionable safety, we decided that Cusuco was a better bet.  How exactly we were to get to Cusuco, however, was unclear. Although it was a mere 15 miles away, it apparently was going to take an hour and a half to get there and it was not on any bus route. We were told to go to the central plaza of town between 4:30 and 6pm on Friday afternoon, and we could, occasionally, get lucky and find someone with a fruit truck that was heading up in that direction.

We did exactly that. Right  after school we rushed to the plaza, backpacks on our backs, and asked the first person that we saw with a truck, “Perdona senor, pero, va usted para Cusuco” (Excuse me, sir, are you heading for Cusuco).  “Yes, I am” he replied as if to imply “obviously”.  “Get in.”  We looked into the bed of his pickup piled with three 100lb bags of animal feed, then looked at the nine of us, and said “All of us?” He furled his brow in a facial gesture we had come accustomed to as to imply “silly gringos” and boasted, “I can  fit twenty people in here!” We smirked and said, what the hell, and jumped on board.

Ten minutes into the bumpy ride and three river crossings later we understood why it would take an hour and a half to travel 15 miles up to the national park. It was so eery to feel the climate shift so dramatically with every switchback up the potholed single track dirt road. With cool air filling our lungs, incredible views over huge canyons and mountain streams it was clear to us that we had made the right decision in going away for the    weekend.

We stayed at a “hostel” that was run by a Honduran man and his British wife who had become friends with previous teachers at our school. This “hostel” was really a more of awarehouse with cement floors, a fair amount of dust and an absence of electricity. We also discovered that there were only 6 mattresses for 9 people. At $4 a night, though, we weren’t about to complain. The place had its own sort of charm just looked at the experience as camping in style,. drinking rum by candlelight and playing cardgames on the six mattresses strewn across the floor, we were perfectly content.

The next day we hiked through a coffee plantation with Ibis, the son of the plantation owner. Quiet and equipped with a machete, Ibis served as a guide for the three hour hike up to a massive waterfall on his father’s property for a small fee of $1 per person. At the end of our hike,  we jumped into the waterfall and the frigid mountain-stream water knocked the wind out of us. Relishing in the experience of  actually feeling cold for the first time in the month and half since I left California, I stood under the massive falls as they beat down on my back. For $35 that weekend, we got transportation, lodging, a machete-clad guide, three meals and two-nights worth of rum. Not a bad weekend.