Christian In His Natural Habitat: A brief description of my lodgings and the iron shore

Well I said in the last post that I would get you a few pictures of me diving, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for me to post them along with my superb experience with two hawksbill sea turtles yesterday. In the meantime I figured I could talk about where I’m staying on the island and one of the local places I have been on the island.

First where I’m staying. My professor, Dr. Stephen Dunbar, secured lodgings for us from a local Honduran by the name of Berk. He runs a number of cabins year round, and happened to have one that could fit four people in it (for me, my fellow researcher Dustin Baumbach, and the two volunteers who will be joining us Sunday). The houses are designed in the typical Honduran fashion of slapping random boards together of various shapes, sizes, and colors into a vaguely house like shape, and covering the whole thing with splashes of vibrant paint. Inside we have a functioning, if small stove, a small sink, a small refrigerator, and our beds. Oh we also have a table and a few chairs and a working (yeah!) bathroom with shower. You may ask why I mention these seemingly mundane items in the household, but if you have ever been to a third world country you will understand what a true blessing it is to have these comforts. Outside the house, Berk owns a number of mango, avocado, and Cashew trees which we are free to take from whenever we want (Note: frozen mangos are incredible) (Secondary note: the fruit of the cashew has a weird cottony, astringent taste with a hint of spice). Needless to say, I have eaten a lot of mangos since I have been down here, and have put them on everything from toast to baleadas (Baleadas are typical Central American dish consisting of refried beans, cheese, and sometimes meat wrapped in a homemade tortilla and fried). All around the house are beautiful flowers frequented often by hummingbirds, a few young banana plants, and assorted trees that host a number of woodpeckers. I often find pigeons up on the line cooing and even saw a small capybara like rodent (I’ll put the exact name in the blog when I remember it) foraging amongst the bushes (Sorry no picture). Every day a fresh wind blows from the ocean through our house and provides us with our own natural circulation system to deal with the excruciating humidity and heat.

In addition to exploring around the house I have also journeyed off to explore parts of the West End and the beach near the house. I went snorkeling back on Wednesday down the road from the house near the Seagrapes Dive resort, and observed a myriad of different fishes, and even a moray eel curled up amongst a firecoral (Note: don’t touch the fire coral. Did that one time I was here last and took several weeks to heal the scar). The beach along this stretch of the island is a jagged labyrinth of eroded rock and fossilized coral known as iron shore. Sometime in the distant past, this whole are of the island was a beautiful reef below water. Now all that remains of that legacy is the fossilized skeletons of corals and sponges. Back up on land, in the middle of the resort are three beautiful rubber trees brought in from the South Pacific. I don’t at the time recall the specific variety, but the trees themselves looked like they belonged in swampy Dagobah, rather than on sunny Roatán. With twisting trunks that twisted upward like octopus arms and a blanket of twisting roots that covered the driveway, the trees looked like some sort of alien creature from H.G. Wells or Star Trek (and yeah I realize I have just referenced Star Wars and Star Trek in the same paragraph. Shoot me if you want scifi fans). Anyway, they were pretty awesome trees and I have placed some pictures of them below for your perusal. As mentioned earlier, I’ll post an update tomorrow (with beautiful pictures courtesy of my friend Dustin) about my diving adventures yesterday. I’ve already been on 4 dives since I’ve been here and by the time the summer is over will have over 100 dives under my belt, so don’t worry, I’ll have plenty of pictures to put up.

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