Life is All Kinds of Beautiful: Honduras Style: What an Adventure!

Break in La Ceiba was every bit of an adventure! I will sum up quickly my adventures, most will be shown in pictures, and I will tell a few enjoyable (hopefully) stories. Enjoy!

Wednesday after school we took off on a chicken bus to Santa Rosa. We stayed with a missionary family we had as a contact. They have lived in Santa Rosa for 2 years, and plan to stay for 10 years. It was a really great night eating pizza and sharing stories. Their house was beautiful and I fully felt like I was in the states for the night. We got little but comfortable sleep that night, waking up at 3:00am to catch the bus to San Pedro Sula, which was about a 4 hour bus ride. These longer bus rides had nicer buses, which was nice surprise! From San Pedro Sula we traveled to out destination La Ceiba. I woke up as we were entering the city and saw a Wendy's sign--I thought I was dreaming. Luckily, I wasn't :) I enjoyed Wendy's later in the weekend, of course! If you know me well, then you know my love for fast food, I was a happy girl needless to say! We enjoyed the city with friends for the evening and stayed at a beautiful hotel.

The next morning we were picked up by George, who owns the company we were going rafting through. We spent the day with our guides Victor and Ismael swimming in the Jungle River, rafting (sometimes in the rain) and climbing boulders and cliff jumping. We had class 1, 2, and 4 rapids, and at one point I did fall out and had to get pulled back into the raft. It was funny! Kiley and I shared a raft with our raft guide Ismael, who spoke very little English, so it was a lot of fun getting to use my Spanish with him, and I do think I am slowly getting better! The day was absolutely amazing, and it was extremely beautiful and relaxing. On the way home George stopped and purchased some sweet corn for us to try. The sweet corn was grilled and then they put lime and salt on it. YUM! I definitely recommend making it!!

After our day on the river, we headed back to the hostel we were staying at for free that night (George owns this hostel as well, and since we rafted with his company we got free lodging). It was about 3:30pm when we arrived, and Kiley and I decided to walk 5 minutes down the road to the bank and to get some Wendy's. And this is where the scary story begins.

On our way home we were greeted with some unexpected company. We got onto the loop our hostel was on (which is a very nice road with very nice houses), and were less than a minute away from it. I heard someone coming, and turned to see a man riding on a bike riding close to me. I thought in my head, "I wonder why he is riding so close to me when he has the whole road." Well, as he passed us he decided to smack my butt, and continue on. Soon, he turned his face around and gave a very creepy look towards us. Kiley asked me if he touched me, and as I was rather upset about that incident alone, I told her what he did and said "that's not okay!" We had also just passed four women behind their locked house gate, but they were outside and could see this all happening. Well, the guy turned around and started riding towards me showing me the money sign with his hands. I started to back up and shake my head no. At this point the guy is in the middle of Kiley and I, and he kept coming towards me and then proceeded to act like he has a gun in his pants and acted like he kept going to get it. I was saying "no, stop!" a lot and then as he continued to grab at me and my little purse I decided I just wanted him away from me. So I threw my purse. It ended up by Kiley and she put her foot on it. The guy grabbed at it, broke my keys off and threw them since they weren't what he was after, and continued trying to grab the purse. The ladies down the street were yelling for the man to stop, but not coming out to help. The guy stopped and took off. At this point I am shaking and starting to cry and I guess Kiley told me not to worry because she had her pepper spray out now, but I don't remember her saying that, as things started getting blurry here with my memory because I was so scared. Well the guy immediately comes back and that's when I yell to Kiley to run with me backwards to the ladies house (this is all happening 2 doors down from our hostel). The guy starts to go after Kiley with my purse now and that is when she pepper sprays him, AND GOOD! I remember that image perfectly. Kiley ended up running through some of the pepper spray to get back with me, and her eyes and skin were not mixing well with it. So we ended up locked in the ladies house (with my purse and all), and they couldn't believe it all happened so close to where we were staying, and that it happened in broad daylight. Their friend drove us down the road back to our hostel, and reality fully hit, and we were really upset about what had just happened. George's younger brother Nino, who was still at the hostel saw the end of what had happened and heard the guy got away, so he took off in his car to hunt the guy down. It ended up that Nino tracked down the guy (who was riding all over town trying to get lost) and hit him lightly with his car to make him fall off his bike. Nino brought him back to the hostel to make sure he got the right guy, and then the cops came. They made sure I had my purse, and were very curious as to what we did to the guys eyes! We showed them the pepper spray, and they were very impressed. Who knows what, if anything, happened to the guy. We heard that he is a "little rat" and does things like that all the time, unfortunately. SO, my first mugging experience was very scary to me at the time, but there were a lot of blessings throughout the whole experience. I made myself find the good in the situation. There were people around to see, it was daylight, he didn't have a weapon, he didn't get any of my money, Kiley had pepper spray, and we are both safe again. Maybe he even learned a lesson, because that pepper spray in his eyes did not feel good! It was scary, but God was definitely with us and had His angels guarding us as well. I found myself singing in the shower "God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good." I keep on replaying the incident over and over in my head, and thinking about what I would have done differently. The whole time I didn't even think to try and kick him or hurt him, which is what I always thought I would do if that happened. It just goes to show how differently things can turn out once you are actually in the situation. But it has helped to talk about it with the girls about how to be more defensive. I am looking into having my mom send me pepper spray if she can (I should have listened and got some before I left) and I definitely have my guard up way more now. I don't like having to feel that way now, but it is kind of inevitable now.

That didn't stop the fun break we had planned. The next morning we got picked up at 7am to go to the islands to go snorkeling and hiking. We took a 35 minute boat ride out to Cayos Cochinos, which is a group of about 15 small islands including one major and minor island. The minor island was where Survivor was once filmed on, and we saw some of the old game towers from the show on the island from our boat. Grandma, I know you will enjoy that little fun fact! We went snorkeling in the Caribbean Sea in the Meso American Barrier Reef, which is the second largest coral reef in the world. It was so beautiful! We swam with beautiful schools of fish and I even saw a sea horse! Sadly I didn't see a turtle or anything else, and I didn't have an underwater camera either. But I don't need pictures to remember the beauty of the sea! We then went hiking on one of the islands to look for the Pink Boa, which is almost extinct. We saw 4 of them on our hike! They looked more brownish, but when our guide picked one up, it slowly started to turn slightly pink. Our guide explained that this snake has no other predators, as no other animals can eat the snake, so it dies only from old age. After our hike we went to another island where we had a lovely fish lunch made for us, and we enjoyed swimming some more. Our boat ride home was really fun. We had to leave the island by 2pm because soon after the weather changes and the water gets really rough. We could tell we were headed straight for rain! Water cyclones were forming all around us, which was so neat to see! About 10 minutes left into our ride the hard rain began to fall. The waves quickly got bigger, and I felt like I was getting hit nonstop by paint balls. Kiley and I were sitting in the second row on the boat and were getting drenched. So, naturally, we decided to put on our snorkeling masks so we could at least see! It was HILARIOUS. We had on our old school orange life vests, and snorkeling goggles on the boat. I kept laughing out loud when I would look at her, and knew that I looked just as ridiculous! Good times. It was a good end to our adventures in La Ceiba.

We woke up at 5am the next morning to start our journey back to Gracias. The last bus ride had music and music videos playing, with a lot of Bob Marley. One of his great songs came on, and I simply sang along with a smile on my face.

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right

Let's get together and feel all right

I hope you enjoyed this post and pictures...and remember two things: first, find the good in every situation (even if it's hard) and second, remember God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. Because it's true :)