Road trip: Yaruca

Happy boys riding their horse

After three hours of driving, we finally made it to Yaruca. Not that it is that far from La Ceiba, it was just because of all the picture taking and orchid shopping along the way. Click the map to enlarge it and you can see the Rio Cangrejal running southeast from the right of the La Ceiba dot. Yaruca is further south near the big blue '<' towards the bottom right. Map courtesy of Jungle River Rafting.

Little girls, left, and little boys, below

Yaruca is a typical little Honduran town. It is bigger than El Naranjo but smaller than El Porvenir. It has a big school and even a little police station.

There were lots of pretty flowers there and orchids growing on the fence posts. I'll have another article later with plant photos. El Jefe hadn't been here for 10 years, but he went to see an old man he had met way back then. The man remembered him and they talked forever.

There are cattle ranches around here and lots of horses. The little boy in front is 9 years old and has been riding for two years. He is teaching his little brother.




These horses look much healthier than most of the ones we see in La Ceiba.
















We saw some really weird looking chickens. Lots of them had no tails. A rooster with no tail just doesn't look right. Is this a breed or a freak of nature?



This curly hen looks as if it has no head, but she turned just as I was taking the photo. She looks like a feather duster with legs.


This is an example of a concrete pila that I'm always talking about. They usually consist of two or three sections, one section with a built in washboard and one or two sink sections. It's used to wash clothes and dishes, to give little children baths, and often to store water. Usually the pila is attached to the back of the house. This one is sitting on concrete blocks out in the middle of a courtyard.

They had some mighty big chickens and roosters in this area.



Pigs are in the street everywhere. These were mighty big also.


















These cows looked pretty happy. You can see their ribs, but they don't look as skinny as the ones we see around La Ceiba.





Honduras exports beef to the U.S.









You can tell that the yellow house belongs to a plant lover. It is likely that their lot ends just a foot or two (.3-.6 m.) outside the perimeter of the house and they don't have any room to plant in the ground.

Click to enlarge the photo and you'll see the electric lines wrapped around the column on the left, running through the planter box and down to the meter on the front left of the house. Another wire, cable television, I think, is draped across the ground, across the window, and then up to the second floor. A third wire (telephone?) is wrapped around the right column, run through the planter box, draped down the front of the house, and then goes through the window. This is very typical wiring in Honduras.


The blue house is more typical of the style and size of houses in Yaruca, and much of the north coast of Honduras for that matter.

It it made of concrete and has a corrugated sheet metal roof and a large front porch. This is very common in Honduran houses. Look closely and you'll see another tailless rooster and a hen in the front yard.


Translation: "Danger: Provisional Bridge"

You know it has to be something bad if there is a warning sign. Unlike the U.S., Honduras doesn't believe in warning signs − You're on your own here for the most part.

Guess what a provisional bridge is? It's a slab of concrete that the river flows OVER. I'm not making this up. You might think that provisional implies temporary. I really doubt that.

Provisional bridge

While it looks sufficient in this photo, after the three days of rain we recently had, I'm sure this "bridge" was impassable for at least a few days.

Deforestation of the mountains is evident in this photo. The river used to be as wide as the gravel area. I think this is Rio Viejo, but I'm not sure. In this area near Yaruca, several rivers come together (Rio del Padre, Rio Yaruca, Rio Blanco, and Rio Viejo) and continue on as the Rio Cangrejal.

My camera batteries went dead (1,000 photos on one pair of batteries − not!) just before we got here. I didn't want to wear out Katrina's batteries, so I tried to restrain myself.


More road trip to follow....