Rio Zacate -- Atlantida, Honduras

We're homebodies for the most part, especially me. I am happy as a clam standing in the backyard barefoot watering the plants. That's my idea of a weekend. Our friends have been trying to get us to visit this spot for months. Sometimes it's good to leave the old ranch and see what the wide world has to offer.

River Guide Cliff Jump

I took these pictures at Jungle River Lodge last weekend. Jungle River is a nice little spot on the Río Cangrejal about 5 miles up the river from La Ceiba. Its my favorite bicycle destination. Here is one of the river guides demonstrating the proper way to enter the river.


Karine and I entered the river the boring way. We walked down a path to this delightful little spot.

Guaruma

I went on a field trip today with 20 sixth graders to the small town of Las Mangas. Its quite a ways into the mountains. We visited the Guaruma Organization. Check out their website. They are awesome. They do wonderful things for the community and the local ecosystem. Today they did something wonderful for me because they taught me how to take good pictures. They tried at least. Here are some of the results.

Vote for your favorite picture and you may become eligible to win a frozen turkey. The winner may be announced as soon as Dec. 23. Merry Christmas!!!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...well, not exactly Christmas as we've known it, but it's pretty nice here. We've been enjoying sunny days and coolish nights. In an attempt to be more active, we've been on the move around town.

On Saturday, Tom and his friend went golfing down the street. They are becoming pros on our less-than-professional golf course. They definitely wouldn't be golfing back in MN right now though! Sunday was a gorgeous day, so we went up to the Jungle River Lodge for some swimming and rock jumping. We jumped off of the 30 foot ledge into the river and swam around. It was lovely!

This gorgeous place is located at the edge of Pico Bonito National Park. The rainforest is literally in our backyard, and we finally got up the road a bit to enjoy it. Tom rode his bike with a friend, and I took a taxi with some other friends. We also met some avian friends there.

We are wrapping up the second semester at school. Tomorrow, Tom accompanies the 6th graders on a field trip up into the mountains for hiking and photography lessons. Hopefully we'll have some good shots to post from that.

This evening, we had our Spanish lesson, ate some Thai curry, and walked around our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. It was a strange sight for us to see entire families gathered out in front of their homes under palm trees while a shirtless, barefoot man hangs lights.

We were inspired to do a bit of our own Clark Griswald-ing. Our display is not as large as many neighbors, but it puts us in a festive mood.

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain...

We woke up Saturday morning to a strange light coming into our bedroom window. No, it did not have anything to do with the Mystery Photo Contest... (See previous post). It was the sun! After 5 or 6 consecutive weekends (and all the days in between) of rain, the sun was out. Tom and I had no choice but to hit the road!
We took a taxi out to The Lodge at Pico Bonito. This luxury eco-lodge was the place Samantha Brown stayed on her trip through La Ceiba filming her Discovery Travel channel show. For $28 each, we enjoyed a private tour-guided hike where we learned all about different types of trees and plants- in Spanish!
We were very interested in the leaf-cutting ants and will tell all about them in a later post. We hiked up the mountain through the rain forest to Mermaid Falls and Las Pilas - two waterfalls with areas to swim in the freezing cold water.
We hiked for 2 hours, we swam, and then we enjoyed a delicious lunch at the hotel's restaurant. The food was wonderful, and we even ordered the Pico Bonito Welcome Drink (also enjoyed by Samantha Brown) and sat on the front porch of the lodge looking out over hummingbirds and butterflies.
It was beautiful! (My parents are sure to enjoy their stay when they visit over Christmas- the invitation is still open for anyone else who'd like a visit!)