La Libertad--Cerro de los Tornillos

Nohelia, Alexis and I took a little day trip recetly to La Libertad, a small city near our home base of Comayagua. I was most excited to check out a place I had heard about that had some interesting fossils called "Cerro de los Tornillos" or Screw Hill. While it has nothing to do with teenage trysts, it is a reference to the shape of the fossilized shells that look like twisted screw shapes (See image). I was hoping to scout out the place before taking a class on a possible field trip there to do our own fossil hunting. I didn't know if it was a park or what, and I wanted to see for myself.

When we got there, the hill was literally right next to where the bus dropped us off (how convenient!). That also meant that it was smack in the middle of a neighborhood. There were some cement steps built to help visitors and residents up the hill, but there was no kind of protected area. We asked some local residents about the place, and they said even they would like to see it more protected. One woman said that at some point, an interested party tried to get the residents to sell their land so the site could be excavated, but the residents preferred to stay. I think it would be nice to have some kind of interpretive sign set up to explain to visitors what it is they're looking at and how it came to be. After a little internet research, the fossils are gastropods from the Cretaceous period.

The rest of La Libertad was not much to write home about (sorry Libertenos!!). We spent probably an hour and half poking around on el Cerro de los Tornillos, then ate lunch and came back to Comayagua. Since the place wasn't really set up to receive visitors, I don't think a field trip would be the greatest idea unless it included some other things, but it might be nice to come up with some interpretive signs as a class service project :)

Photo credits go to El Heraldo newspaper, which has a site on Honduran fossils (in Spanish) and lots of great pictures here http://www.elheraldo.hn/Otras-Secciones/Especial-Fosiles/Inicio Clicking on the articles section also has more info about the lack of fossil protection in Honduras.

SPRING BREAK!!!

After we get though one more week of exams, I will finally be going to Roatan for spring break, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!!!

Here is where we are going:

http://www.henrymorganroatan.info/

Since it's an all-inclusive resort, Cecilia and I can only afford to go for 2 nights, but all-inclusive resorts get kind of boring after that amount of time anyway. We will also be spending 2 nights in La Ceiba which has lots of fun clubs and restaurants :) Can't wait!!! I'm finally getting to the Bay Islands!!! Woohoooo!!!!

Misty morning on Lago de Yojoa

Another cross-posting from the gratitude challenge :)

"Take a picture of one thing, person, place, or specific moment that makes you feel grateful. Share it with your social network."

Well, my camera doesn't work anymore (at least, i'm pretty sure it doesn't), so I couldn't take a picture specifically for today's challenge. More on that in a moment... I'm going to include one from a recent trip instead.



This picture was taken at about 7 in the morning on the edge of a river emptying in to el Lago de Yojoa. I was just setting out for a birdwatching tour of the lake with two of my best friends here in Honduras (Elisa and Shirley). I was excited to be out at that time of day... it reminded me of all the times I went up to watch the sun rise at Pretty Place in South Carolina... there's something so quiet and intimate about the mist rising up off the world when the sun first comes out. As we would say watching the sun rise, God puts on a different and amazing show every day. You just have to take the time to be still, be present and watch it. I'm thankful for anytime I can roust myself out of bed to experience this recurrent moment on the Earth. It truly is one of the most beautiful things that can be seen.

I was also thankful for learning about an amazing ecosystem during my day on the lake, and learning how different birds fill different niches on the lake. It was good to come to know Honduras a little more and feel like I could relate some of what I learned to the kids I'm teaching (out of North American biology textbooks that often seem very out of context). I learned so many fascinating things.

I was extremely thankful that day for the company of my friends and of our guides. I was especially thankful to have this picture at all, since I dropped my camera and it sank to the bottom of the (thankfully shallow and clear) lake. The oarsman got out and retrieved my camera (I was able to salvage the pictures from the card), so I would not even be able to have shown you all this picture if it weren't for his act of kindness.

So this picture represents a lot of things for me, and I hope that you enjoyed hearing about it. :) I AM SO THANKFUL for the people, places, and forces that brought it to me in the first place and also that got it back to me!

Taulabe Caves

A couple of weeks ago, Elisa and I went to check out the caves of Taulabe and had a nice time! We were scheming on the way back from our personal trip of ways to take our classes to the caves and to also plan the trip together. Well, after quite a bit of planning, we all made it back in one piece from the caves today! I was glad we both got to draw on our outdoor education experiences and incorporate some of the activities we had done at our outdoor schools into our program for the kids. We even baked them all cookies!!! A triple recipe = 6 stick of butter = really good sugar cookies :P

Anyway, I'm kind of "cross-posting" again on this block since I wrote about what I am grateful for on the trip through the "Gratitude Challenge" that I'm doing for the first part of Lent. Enjoy!

"Write about something you feel grateful for in your life today."

Well, I dunno about life in general, but I can definitely talk about today! We went to the Taulabe caves today with 5th and 11th grade, and I was grateful to know that the students can have this kind of experience with their friends and with their school. I'm not sure if any of them is nearly as excited about geology as I am, but I think it's important for people to come in contact with nature and I'm glad we did it.

I'm also grateful for the way my students took care of each other today--the 11th graders helping th 5th graders and even helping each other out when the cave darkness gets scary. Seeing Juan Carlos give Graciela a hug when she needed it was cool. Seeing Graciela be "mom" to the 5th graders was cool. Seeing the 5th graders be the first to step up and thank us for organizing the field trip was also pretty inspiring. I'm grateful that somebody's grateful for me/my efforts!

I also was grateful for a moment alone in the dark cave when I was picking up the little candles we had left and making sure everything was cleaned up. The group was far ahead of me and I walked back alone in the dark (or relatively so since I had a flashlight). After a day of lots of people, it was a beautiful thing to have a moment alone in the cave... it's a powerful place and it's nice to experience that without distractions sometimes.

So thanks to all the people and places that made today special!!

Tela--The North Coast part 2

Also part of my Independence Day vacation, some friends and I went up to the beach town of Tela. It's considerably smaller and sleepier than La Ceiba, but that makes it less dirty and more charming :) There is a nice little beachfront paseo (concrete "boardwalk") and several really cute little restaurants. Tela, like Ceiba, is a nice jumping off point for touring national parks and tiny Garifuna villages, which I'll talk about in my next post :)

In Tela, we simply enjoyed the palm trees, the sunshine, and the tasty comida costeña (coastal cuisine). Besides lots of wonderful fresh fish and seafood, we especially enjoyed a little Italian place right on the beach that was quite authentic, as it was run by a retired Italian couple. We pretty much wanted to eat there every night because it was so good, but decided against in for the sake of trying everything the town had to offer. Too bad, because I ended up wasting a day being sick on whatever I had at the other restaurant!!

A garifuna woman selling fresh agua de coco (also called "agua de pipa") Hack with a machete, stick a straw in it, and call it a nice snack :) While Garifuna men mostly earn a living fishing, the women sell coconut products (such as yummy pan de coco and empanadas de coco) and offer to do hair braiding.

Enjoying a tropical sunset :)

Museo de la Mariposas--La Ceiba

This is the first of several catch-up posts from my trip to the North Coast of Honduras over the Independence holidays about a month ago. We had 4 days off and we enjoyed them by getting out of town to explore the beaches and the coastal cities. La Ceiba is one of the larger cities on the North Coast and is known as la Novia de Honduras--Honduras's girlfriend or sweetheart, since it is loved by the Honduran people. They probably love it because people here like to PARTY!! While La Ceiba is not particularly known for its beaches, it does have a series of really nice nightclubs and bars that are all right on the beach--or have their own sea walls. You can lean over the railing of the outdoor decks and watch the waves roll in. I enjoyed the bars at the beach in the Dominican Republic more because they actually had nice swaths of beach to lounge on, but even just being close to the water is enough to make your night.

My favorite part of being in La Ceiba was going to El Museo de las Mariposas (The Butterfly Museum). A true DC girl spoiled by the Smithsonian Institute, I sniff out the museums anywhere I go, and I was excited to find something on natural history as well. The museum is run by an American ex-pat from Ohio who taught school for many years here in Honduras. He gives talks to school groups, and there are rumors of the 10th grade parents wanting to organize a trip to Ceiba... I might just get my students in there yet!

The museum wasn't just butterflies, and I learned quite a lot about central american and worldwide insects. One fascinating yet dangerous thing I learned about was the "kissing bug," in the assassin bug family that transmits a parasite responsible for Chagas disease.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagas_disease

Getting up close and personal with a live Hercules beetle :) Don't worry, they don't bite. He was happily sucking on a piece of papaya before we met.

There was also an insect unlike any I had ever seen before--the "peanut head bug." The elongated, lumpy part of its head is actually hollow, so essentially a predator could take a bite out of the insect's head with all its vital organs still intact.

I was also pleased to purchase lots of educational materials for the school there. I think it's important that the kids at our school learn more about what's available in their own country. Since it's a bilingual school, many of our textbooks are from North America and talk about things for which Hondurans don't have much context (one of my students asked me about fall and snow the other day). I thought it was GREAT that the butterfly museum had big color posters of different insects that were native to Honduras, and I bought a bunch of them. I also got a CD of birdcalls of Honduras and a CD-ROM of orchids of Honduras. It seems that folks are very familiar with the national symbols of Honduras (white-tailed deer, orchid, etc) but they don't seem to know much beyond that, so I think we will have fun learning about all this country has to offer together.

Pulhapanzak Falls

Before the soccer game yesterday, Elisa and I went trekking out of Comayagua for the first time and took a bus north towards el Lago de Yojoa. It was one of those days where we didn´t really have a plan, we just went out on a scouting mission to see what was there. It´s this beautiful lake in central-western Honduras that´s fed by waters from a nearby cloud forest. The bus passed by all these little restaurants with fresh fish from the lake that we have sworn to go to next time when hopefully we find a more flexible mode of transportation.











The waterfall, about 25 minutes north of the lake, was AMAZING!!! It had the same soaking mist as Niagara Falls so I´m surprised that any of my pictures came out with all the water droplets on my lens! I didn´t learn too much about the history of the area, but I did figure out that Pulhapanzak is a Mayan word (western Honduras is about the farthest extent of the range of the Maya). I was glad I had Elisa as my day trip buddy because she helped me notice a lot of amazing little creatures and details while we were walking around. We saw leaf-cutter ants (she told me that they harvest leaves not to eat themselves, but to feed the fungus that they cultivate to feed their entire colony--how cool is that?? Agricultural ants!), a whole bunch of amazing land snails that loved soaking up the moisture from the spray from the falls, and Elisa´s favorite, the fuzzy white caterpillar (barely visibe in the picture below). I enjoyed checking out all the crazy plants climbing up and hanging down off the trees.









Right when Elisa and I had finished checking out the falls and were wondering what else there was to do, one of the guides there convinced us to take the ¨cave tour.¨ This consisted of getting into our bathing suits, walking down under the waterfall under slippery rocks, getting a pounding from the water above, and tucking ourselves into a few little coves and a bigger cave behind the waterfall. The water was pounding down so hard that all I could see was white spray, sometimes my feet, and my sopping wet hair in my face. The guide would grab us by the hand and lead us one by one through the sections under the falls, showing us where to place my feet. because visibility was so short, I wonder how anyone was able to find the caves in the first place!! Essentially every time I would go ahead and wait for the guide and Elisa to come meet me, all I could see was white, thinking, are they coming? Are they ok? And then at the last second they would appear out of the mist right when they were upon me. It reminds me a lot of the scene from the last of the Mohicans when they do the same thing, only in our case it was a lot more waterfall and a lot less cave. It was so much fun and definitely an adrenaline rush. Here´s a gratuitous swimsuit photo with our guide, Luis.




I can´t wait to get back to el Lago de Yojoa to be able to explore more. There´s a microbrewery that was unfortunately not open for lunch when we got there, and I must get back there!! The beer here is not much to write home about, haha. There´s also several national parks and private ecological reserves in the area that are great for wildlife watching. Perhaps next time it will be a weekend trip instead of a day trip for scouting. Anyone who´s considering visiting... this could be a lot of fun!! :)