by Derek A Parent
We disembarked at the Miskito village of Ibans each paying the captain $US6.00 passage then found our way up to the main path - which links all the villages along this tropical paradise. We waited in the shade of towering palms for our next mode of transportation. Twenty minutes passed, Diego's old pickup truck hadn't arrived. Diego, a local school teacher, owned the only vehicle on this vast stretch of sand bar - it was put to use as a shuttle servicing 8 villages from Plaplaya to Nueva Jerusalem. The old pickup had been delivered to the sand bar years ago via an antiquated cargo boat named the "Margarita". How the truck was offloaded to shore remains a mystery to me. The Margarita has a deep draft and can only come within 200 meters of the beach. They probably had brought it to shore in dugouts piece by piece !
Steve and I were restless and decided to pass on the wheels and walk the 2 hours to Nueva Jerusalem where Diegos Hospedaje Yosira was located. We saved the $1.50 shuttle fare and took advantage of an opportunity to observe the unique way of life of the Miskito. Villagers abruptly stopped their activities and turned their attention to us, fixated in a state of disbelief as two white men carrying high-tech pack sacks strolled through their communities. By 3:00pm we had hiked through the Miskito villages of Cocobila, Belen and Payabila when the pickup motored by in a cloud of dust. Diego is a very enterprising fellow, not only does he run a shuttle service, guest house, comedor and store, he also has a gasoline powered electrical generator which provides enough light and juice to host videos in his modest home on Sunday nights - drawing villagers from miles around.
A room here will run you $3.00 a night double, which includes 110v AC between 6:00pm & 10:00pm, 2 comfortable beds, clean sheets, pillows and a writing table - but no running water. A dip & pour shower stall out back - dip the container in the drum & pour it over your head. After a virtuous supper, prepared by Diegos cheerful wife, consisting of boiled yucca, fried fish, boiled rice, beans and coffee - we formed our agenda for the following day.
Rio Platano Biosphere
Following a night's sleep under my mosquito net I went to visit with field officer Lic. Miguel Angel Guzman. A kind of park ranger working with the MOPAWI office in Belen. One of Guzmans duties is "to facilitate the integration of the human inhabitants living in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve with its fragile ecosystem". "No easy task" said Guzman, "there are only three field offices with a total of three staff to patrol more than 2000 square miles of reserve". Guzman said that "currently, there is a joint project between the Honduran Ecological Association (AHE), World Vision and MOPAWI with the support of the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, to manage the reserve and protect it from an advancing front of colonization and deforestation". He added that "we were losing the battle".
The Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve is an immense region of tropical rain forest comprised of broadleaf and pine forests, swamps, lagoons and grassy savannas traversed by numerous rivers flowing into the Caribbean sea. UNESCO awarded its highest honor to the Reserve in 1980 by naming it a World Heritage Site. In this virtually unexplored and sparsely populated rain forest lie some of the most intriguing traces of ancient middle American civilization only recently discovered by the outside world. This is a photographer's paradise, in which can be found unparalleled landscapes and animal life: jaguars, including the rare black ones, ocelots, spider & howler monkeys and the harpy eagle, the largest of the eagle family. In the rain forests of this region one can find a great variety of hardwood trees including ceiba, mahogany, Spanish cedar, rosewood, sapodilla, santa maria and balsa. Many varieties of epiphytic orchids proliferate in the humid forests just waiting to be discovered.
Most travelers who venture into the Honduran La Mosquitia - 200-300 a year according to MOPAWI - are destined for the village of Las Marias and Baltiltuk, located deep inside the Rio Platano Reserve. A chance at spotting a jaguar, ocelot or other rare mammals along the riverbank makes the 7 hour non- stop trip on rock hard mahogany seats worth the effort. The sky was deep blue that morning, there seemed to be little trace of flooding after the torrential rain we experienced last night. Even in March, the driest month, short periods of heavy rain can hit unpredictably. This region gets 3-4 meters of rain annually, most of it falling between the months of May and December. Clemens, Steve and Maria accompanied me to Barra Platano village, after saying our goodbyes they departed by tuk-tuk for Las Marias. Marc and I hit the beach for a 1.5 hour hike to La Barra, a tiny Miskito village at the mouth of Brus Laguna, where I knew we could find a tuk-tuk to take us across the 17 km laguna to Brus.
The last tuk-tuk from La Barra to Brus departs at around 11:00am, and this morning it was canceled due to high winds and rough water. We were lucky to spot an aluminum motor launch and flagged the pilot to shore, after negotiating a $6.00 US passage we were on our way to Brus. I'd planned on exploring Brus for two days before rendezvousing with Richard Thomas's launch which would take me on to Cannon Cay. Don Joaquin (pronounced wakeen), a large jovial ladino and the proprietor of the only hotel in town escorted me to my room. For $2.20 US I got a ten by ten foot bare wooden enclosure with a single metal- framed cot, a writing table and a wooden window (no glass) overlooking the building next door. N o running water here for a shower, a well with hand pump out back fills your wash pail. After the 50 minute pounding I endured, wave hopping crossing Brus Laguna, I didn't have the energy to walk the kilometer across town to Judge Jorge Goffs' immaculately clean bed and breakfast. As Mark was writing a anthropological paper on the Miskito peoples from Cocobila he had returned to La Barra with Francito Goff, the Mario Andretti of motor-launch pilots.
I'd spent the next two days with Rocky Wood, an english speaking Miskito whose ancestors founded the village of Brus. Rocky is a bright and ambitious fellow, having studied and mastered English, he is a fountain of information on the region and can usually be found at his grocery store Pulperia Los Dos Hermanos. As we walked through Brus Rocky recounted the story of his ancestors to me; "150 years ago, his great great grandfather Weiley Wood with his brother John came to The Mosquito Coast from Galveston, Texas to work in the lumber trade, soon after, the Goff family arrived from France, both families intermarried with the local Miskita indians eventually founding the village of Brus".
Copyright 1996. LatinWorld Magazine Content is Produced By Netpoint Communications, producers of the LatinWorld Directory. All original articles and photographs published in LatinWorld Magazine are protected by international copyright law. Reproduction, in whole or in part without prior written permission, is strictly prohibited. Miami, Florida, USA. 
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