Our trip to Punta Sal

On Saturday, Sara and I ventured out on a guided trip to Punta Sal, a peninsula west of Tela, which included a hike though the Jeanette Kawas National Park (named after the same woman as the school I teach at) and snorkeling at Cocalito Beach(the picture to the left). It was about a 45 minute trip by boat from Tela. We traveled there with a group of 23 tourists from Turkey who conveniently signed up for the same exact tour, on the same exact day as we did! It ended up being a lot better than we thought, and they were very nice, helped me find my lost sunglasses, and even offered me extra bug spray before our hike through the jungle, I think they felt sorry for me as they looked at all the red bites I already had all over my body! The jungle was very dense, offered amazing amount of weird bugs and insects, the weirdest sounds (mostly from "howler monkeys), and a lot of odd looking plants and trees. As much as I dreaded it, I had to wear my hideous Velcro sandals during the hike, and just for you Clarisse and Tricia, I included this picture that you'll probably use to blackmail me with later!:)

Cocalito Beach was a very secluded beach, it was a short boat ride from where we went hiking. The picture on the left shows the only two houses on the peninsula. Two families lived there before they named it a national park, so they were allowed to stay. This is where we snorkeled and had lunch. We ate lunch under little huts made from palm leaves and wood, it felt like Gilligan's Island (you can see them in the first picture)!

They made us a traditional Garifuna meal: fried plantains, beans and rice, and fried fish. It was too delicious for words, a nice step up from my usual peanut butter sandwiches!! :)Unfortunately my tendency for motion sickness caught up with me and the boat ride to the beach paid it's toll. I felt too sick to do any snorkeling, especially because the waves were pretty strong, so I just opted to just have lunch, and go swimming.

Sara and I wandered around the little huts, and we noticed that some of them were made out of mud bricks, like in the picture. We also watched in amazement as we found a girl that lived there, chopping open coconuts with a huge machete, without even so much as a flinch. That's another thing I've noticed while living here, people use machetes for everything, they cut the grass, cut down palm trees, and we even saw little boys swinging them around like pros as they chopped up cabbage at a vegetable stand! The machetes were even bigger than they were! Sara and I wandered around more and found a path that led to the restroom which was built on stilts, luckily they were the cleanest public restrooms I've seen here!