The great carnival at La Ceiba

We arrived in La Ceiba at 2:30PM, at which time we took another bus to our hotel, located thirty minutes from the city near a place called The Jungle River. On that day, in that part of the country, the weather was incredibly hot.

As Fred had stressed us to get up early in the morning so we would have the evening to party in town, we were quite surprised to see that no-one was planning anything for the night. We sort of happened to slowly figure that one out after realising that everyone was staring at the candle, watching junebugs die in it’s flames for a few hours or so. We really had a great night alone at the hotel, it’s a good thing we had gotten up early in the morning.

The Jungle River Lodge Hotel offered a really nice white water rafting package for a small price, and so the next morning, exhausted as we were from our previous night, we went up the river with our rafts and instructors to get ready. To get to the top of the current, we had to cross the rapids on foot, climb on boulders of great heights and dive from ten-meter-high cliffs (the scared off girls had the option to jump off a lower ledge). It was really great fun.

At the lodge itself, we had a very scenic view of the steep surrounding mountains, and had at our availability the river to swim and dive into from a tall rock. The lodge was very nice, and its employees were dressed in the fashion of Tarzan and Jane, including the massive hairlocks. They had good music playing all night long, and it seemed like too short a time had passed before we went off in the shuttle back to La Ceiba.

When we got to La Ceiba, we met a new friend from Mexico who helped us get around to the Hotel California (that proved to be much of a challenge, since there was no sign at the entrance, and no one seemed to have really heard of it before). The streets of La Ceiba were filled with half a million people from all around the world, there were cultural displays present in the streets, peddlers were selling their wares at fair prices all over the place and some really popular latino bands were playing at every intersection from the main street.

We soon found out why we had not seen any pretty girls during our stay in Honduras: we had not gone to La Ceiba yet, and there seemed to be most of them. I sipped at the most expensive Scotch Whiskey I could find all night (a meager USD $30 for twelve year old stuff) and we really had a good time.

For a fair amount of time there was to be found in the streets of La Ceiba parade floats of dancing women sponsored by large corporations and important investors. People living in higher appartments were throwing out bead necklaces from their balconies to a craving crowd. Occasionally a man would throw out a few Lempiras out of the window, and people would be driven mad for it.

The general sense of excitement and ecstasy was perpetuated throughout the night into to small hours of the next morning. At that time, all my friends happened to be either sick or really tired, and I wondered in the streets of this unknown city in search of a nice club to pass some time. I eventually found a very nice place called Le Pacha, which was a two-storey discoteca built under a sort of tent roof, with a decorative indoor pool. The cover fees were set to LPS. 200, which is quite high in Honduras. The drinks were cheap, and there I danced (or tried to) with new friends until 5:30AM. I basically got no sleep at all, but I had the greatest night in a long time.