Kevin's trip to La Moskitia

On Friday, July 17 I left with the 3rd year natural resources students, some faculty and guides in pipantes (large canoes made of one solid piece of wood) on a six day trip on the Patuca River down to the community of Wampusirpi and back upriver. The Patuca River forms one edge of the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve and is in the middle of what is called La Moskitia, the largest preserved primary forest in Central America. Basically we went to the middle of the jungle. A huge plus of going with the students was that all expenses were paid by the university and an NGO named Proyecto Corazon.
The first day involved leaving the house at 5:40 in the morning and meeting everyone at the university. Then we drove for 3-4 hours on dirt/mud roads to our departing point on Rio Cuyamel. We loaded up two pipantes with six days of food and tents and sleeping bags and the personal things of 19 people going on the trip. The first day involved a lot of getting in and out of the boats to walk around the rapids so we wouldn't tip over. It involved a lot of walking on land and through the water, often waist high or sometimes deeper. It started pouring that afternoon while we were in the boats and we all had ponchos but as we were so we already, no one even used them. We spent the first night at one of the boat conductors house at the junction with Rio Patuca. We unloaded both boats and in the morning we loaded everything into one much larger boat as Rio Patuca is a much larger river that can handle bigger boats. We spent a few hours in the boat going down river until we arrived at the small community of Krausirpi, where native Tawahkas live. There are several very small communities strung out along the river the entire way. That evening we went upriver to a small community to where some students from Tegucigalpa are conducting studies on local animals including Jaguars, fish, rats, and bats. That night we set up a bat catching net so see how it was done and caught two types of bat, one a vampire bat. Krausirpi had a gas generator that powered several houses with power for a few hours each night. Day three we went on downriver to Wampusirpi where, amazingly, they have a giant cell tower for Digicel, one of the cell phone companies here, and they even had internet. We walked around the town and talked to some local people and learned about the chocolate processing they did as the area's income relies a heavily on the large amounts of chocolate farms in the area as well as some ecotourism. We all stayed at a convent that night and headed back to Krausirpi the next afternoon were we stayed one more night. The fifth day we headed back to the junction of Rio Patuca and Rio Cuyamel again and camped on the beach this time. I also talked to some people who were panning for gold and even had gas powered machines to help them. The gold only comes in small flakes and never in nuggets and our boat driver pays for everything with gold. A boat comes by his place twice a month to deliver what he had requested the time before. There is no cell coverage there. In fact, about an hour drive out of Catacamas we lost cell coverage for the entire trip except for Wampusirpi. They also find very small rubies in the river, but too small to be worth anything. That night it poured and poured and we sat and talked and played volleyball in the river as we were already soaked anyway. I only listened as they were speaking Spanish of course. The river was warmer than the air and rain at that point and we finally got out and went to bed sometime well after dark. We had cup soup and tortillas with packets of refried beans to eat for dinner. The next morning we headed back up Rio Cuyamel and the river had dropped since we had come down and was about 70% of normal flow, which meant more rocks and hazards and slower going upriver. It took several hours and then several more to drive back to Catacamas and we finally made it back at about 8:30 when we stopped at the Texaco to have some fried chicken and french fries for dinner and, of course, Coke.
The trip was an awesome experience to go traveling by boat, the only form of transportation in the area until Wampusirpi which has a small airstrip, into the middle of the jungle. We saw Coati, monkeys, iguanas, crocodiles, wild makaws and other birds, frogs, insects and various types of trees and plants. I got to practice my spanish A LOT as everyone of course spoke Spanish. One facutly member speaks good English so he was able to help me out a lot when I needed it. In the communities we visited, many people speak 3 languages, Spanish which is taught in schools, Miskito and Tawahka, both native languages in the region. It was interesting to see how the people lived there and also to see how the outside world has drastically influenced the area. A giant cell tower in the middle of nowhere with internet. Coke, Pepsi, Tropical, Mirinda and other sodas. Wampusirpi had Schlitz Malt Liquor, I don't even see that in Catacamas, not that I want to. All types of chips and other normal Honduran snacks as well. Now I can only sit and wait until my next adventure begins.