We were staying in Pena Blanca, Honduras when we found out that you can
rent row boats right down the road from where we were staying. Bob, who
runs the hostel we were staying in, gave us a ride to the ¨ boat shop.¨
It was a tiny wooden store that sold a few snacks and cold drinks and
if you didn´t know they were in the boat rental business, then it would
be a hard spot to find. It was an old man and his wife working there
and as soon as we said ¨lancha¨ to the man, he led us around the side
of the shack, loaded two heavy wooden paddles on his shoulders and
signaled for us to follow him. We walked down the dirt road a bit to a
canal that would lead out to the lake.
Just so you know, this is not an ordinary, easy to use rowboat like
we have back in the states. The man gave us loops of string to use to
attach the paddles to the rods coming out of the sides of the boat. The
string that the loops were made of were not in good shape, almost
frayed all the way through, but we gave them a try anyway. Brett´s
first attempts of paddling us through the canal had us turning in
circles and heading towards the shore. Little by little, he got better
and we made our way down the canal. Just as the sun was starting to
set, we reached the end of the canal where it opened up to a huge lake
surrounded by mountains on all sides whose tips reached up into the
clouds. There were birds everywhere, some with yellow bellies and lilly
pads on the edges of the shore. Sitting there, floating around in our
little boat is one of my favorite experiences from this trip.
We felt a gust of cool wind and saw a huge black cloud roll into
the sky from the side. As soon as this happened, we saw all the local
fishermen paddling their way back to the start of the canal. One yelled
¨lluvia¨ to us as he paddled away. After this, Brett turned the boat
around and started paddling back as fast as he could. The wooden
paddles had already made huge blisters on Brett´s hands and this only
got worse as we returned. At first the raindrops were small, but they
steadily grew. As the rain got heavier, so did the wind. It was blowing
us back out towards the lake, making it even harder to get back.
The boat started filling up with water so we decided to pull the
boat to the side and wait the storm out for a minute. We found shelter
under a big tree, where we huddled together for warmth and waited about
10 minutes until the rain let up a bit. At this point, we were soaked.
Our bags, shoes and what little clothes we were wearing. We jumped into
the boat and used the bottom of a liter bottle of Coke to scoop the
water out of our boat.
Brett got us safely back to our starting point where we tied up our
boat, grabbed our paddles and trekked back to the shop where we happily
returned our huge wooden paddles. It has been 5 days now and Brett´s
hands are still pink and calloused from that leisurely boat ride. It
was a rough ride, but I wouldn´t have missed it for anything.
-Sophia
