Sorry about the long string of photos. For some reason I couldn´t get them to move to the proper places in the email. The first four pictures are of the locals hanging out on Sunday night in Sambo Creek. You sort of forget you are in central america because this is a Garifuna community, descendants of African Slaves.
Today we took a kayak tour of the Cacao Lagoon which is just east of where we are staying. It was somewhat physically demanding as we were paddling for about 5 hours. The next six pictures are of various places in the lagoon. We started out by paddling through a disgusting little river until it opened up into the main part of the lagoon. While loading up we were visited by the local fire ants. For some reason, they actually don´t like me so I was safe. The guide and other customers however were bitten. Once into the main lagoon it was definitely less fetid. We stopped near the opening to the ocean to have some lunch and then continued on around the rest of the lagoon. In the afternoon we veered off into a narrow channel that started off quite inocently. We saw some howler monkeys, some lovely trees, but the further on into this channel we got, the more it narrowed and became more fetid again. Imagine trees growing into the water with barnacles on them and a weird bacteria, that takes the salt out of the water. On these trees live ginormous termite communities that create this big ugly brown nests. Then on some of the trees you find these dark lines running up and down them. This turns out to be ant trails. They too have developed a coating around their trails so they are left to roam in piece. As we ventured further we discovered the largest bees nest I have ever seen. You could hear it coming. So imagine your are trying to maneuver through a tiny channel, filled with obstacles and dangling branches covered in spikes while trying to not get too close to the nest. All I could think about was which would be worse, enduring the bee stings, or hiding in the water. It´s a tough call. As we got in further the bugs started to be a little more prominent including spiders that would drop down onto you and into your kayak. This was when the journey into the little channel concluded and we turned around and went back out into the lagoon. While all of these was definitely an experience and a wonderful one at that, I definitely have a new perspective on lagoons!!
Only two more days left, very sad.
Mandy
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