Break in La Ceiba was absolutly a mixture of every emotion (fear, excitement, joy, happiness... and the list could go on). I'll do my best to offer the details to you.
Wednesday after school we took off on a chicken (beat up old school buss) 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. We enjoyed the city with friends for the evening and stayed at a beautiful hotel.
The next morning we were picked up by Jeorge, 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, Kendall 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 our 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 (Jeorge 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 Kendall and I decided to walk 5 minutes down the road to the bank and to get some Wendy's.
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, "We both wonder why he is riding so close to us when he has the whole road."
Well, as he passed us he decided to smack Kendall's butt, and continue on. Soon, he turned his face around and gave a very creepy look towards us. I asked kendall if he touched me, and as she was rather upset about that incident alone, Kendall 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 us showing me the money sign with his hands. We started to back up and shook our head no. At this point the guy is in the middle of Kendall and I, and he kept coming towards us and then proceeded to act like he had a gun in his pants and acted like he kept going to get it. was saying "no, stop!" a lot and then as he continued to grab at kendall and her little purse. So Kendall threw her purse. It ended up by me and I put my foot on it. The guy grabbed at the purse, broke kendall's 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 Kendall isshaking and starting to cry and I told her not to worry because I had my pepper spray out now.
Well the guy immediately comes back and kendall runs to the ladies at the house behind the gate. I take the "rat" head on by spraying him in the face with pepper spray. I begin to run in the opposite direction towards our Hostel when Kendall yells at me to come towards the ladies. I change my direction getting pepperspray in my own eyes and on my skin (Not a good feeling.) We couldn't believe it all happened so close to where we were staying, and that it happened in broad daylight.
We got a ride from the ladies five houses down towards our host and reality fully hit, and we were really upset about what had just happened. Jeorge'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 Kendall had her 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 money, I 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.
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. 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. Kendall 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.
Well, I hope you all enjoyed my blog this time around. A short update about school....It is still a huge challenge in my classroom not being able to have the kids understand there is a time to talk and a time to be quiet. I am hoping and praying that things will get better each and every day.
Hope all is well love and miss you all.
*Compliments of Kendall Ross*
The restroom at the park.
Our first bridge we crossed.
We got to the park to begin our hike. The first part was not too bad, pretty simple, not a lot of hills. We continued on. The path got steeper and steeper. We got to our first resting point and one of the girls who was already feeling sick could not continue any longer.... So there as FOUR. We climbed more and more as it continued to get steeper. Another one of the girls was like I feel sick and feel like I cannot go any further... There was THREE. So, Tabitha, Kendall, and I continued to the top of the lookout wherre you can get a wonderful view of the large waterfall on the mountian. Celaque Mountain is known for having pumas in the forest...and I was ahead of the girls and a saw an animal that looked like a puma (or a monkey...something in the wild though :D ). Not many people believe me, but it is true. He climbed down from the tree and hid in the underbush. 
Not much further we see them walking under a nice umbrella together in the rain. 
