A Trip to Cayos

My assignment with the Fundación Cayos Cochinos can best be described as me going to some of the most beautiful places in the country and helping people with one of the coolest cultures (at least in my limited experience): the Garífunas. So as any volunteer would do, that’s exactly what I’ve set out to do. Last week it meant going on an overnight trip to the Cayos Cochinos to meet its beauty and its people for the first time.

The plan was to leave out of Ceiba’s peer at 5:00am on Wednesday morning to make the trip while the ocean’s waters were still calm. There was also a group of British students coming back to town and we could take their boat back. By “we” I mean Annabel, who is in charge of community development for the foundation and with whom I will be working hand-in-hand over the next two years, and me. Waking up at 4 in the morning was not an easy task and Max was very sweet to wake up, help me get ready, and walk with me to the office where we would be meeting. He kissed me good bye and went back home… this would be our first night apart in many months.

I haven’t written much about the geography of La Ceiba, but in a nutshell I can say it lies on the coast with one of the highest mountains in the country lying just inland to the south of the city. Very frequently, as we’re walking down the street, Max and I notice how beautiful the sky is here as it crowns Pico Bonito (the mountain). Last Wednesday on my way to the keys I saw a beautiful orange sky during sunrise with the ocean on one side and Pico Bonito on the other. I wish I was a poet to think of the right words to describe its beauty. (Maybe I should start drinking wine before writing these posts). We made it to Cayo Menor, where the scientific station is located and where we started the operations of the day.

In Cayo Menor the foundation has its base of operations and scientists and other volunteers live there year round. Most of the staff is Honduran or Latin American (which I think is really cool) and they devote their effort mostly to the conservation of the natural resources on the islands. They also host international students that spend months (usually the summer) helping with research, learning to dive, and enjoying the keys in general. Working there is no easy task; the staff spends 22 days a month on Cayo Menor and get to go home for 8 days. With all the time they spend together, it really is like a big family living together in an otherwise deserted tropical island.

The station consists of a few labs (dry and wet labs for instance), offices, a cafeteria, and cabins where the staff and the guests stay. There’s also camping areas where the foundation pitches tents to accommodate more people. The entire island is powered by solar energy but there is no running water. For showers there are two blue plastic oil drums in front of every cabin full of water (I am not sure where the water comes from). Every bathroom is equipped with two 5 gallon buckets that you can use to get water from the plastic drums to bring inside and shower. I kind of like showering with a bucket, so that isn’t a problem for me. The problem was that I didn’t pack a towel (I guess I thought I was going to a five star resort or something) and I had to dry with the same sweaty t-shirt I had been wearing all day. It didn’t help that the shirt is the new Peace Corps shirt our training group had made and I hadn’t washed it before wearing it so it wasn’t very absorbent. The big plastic paint Peace Corps logo on the back of the shirt wasn’t too pleasant to the touch.

But on that Wednesday morning I met everybody on the station, had a good greasy Honduran breakfast (fried spam included) and headed out to what I was there to do: meet the Garífuna people.