Cayos Cochinos - a Caribbean paradise

After an awesome 2 months back in Utila, I was definitely ready to leave (though Cassie was a little harder to drag away) especially because I knew we were getting closer to our next adventure in South America. We had a week before our flight was to leave Honduras, so we tagged along with some friends from Utila, Carlos, Irina and Helene to head to Cayos Cochinos (the Hog Islands, a chain of islands just off the Honduran mainland that are quite heavily protected and still retain their Garifuna traditions. The Garifuna are descendants of African and Carib people who live in Caribbean communities from Costa Rica to Belize. The Garifuna of Cayos Cochinos speak a mix of Garifuna and Spanish, live from fishing and, to a lesser extent, tourism.  The island that we stayed on, Chachauate, has a population of approximately 150 people and is made almost entirely of palm or clapboard huts. We stayed four nights on the island and we could have had our camera with us the whole time - there were so many amazing photos to take, and we did take hundreds, but here are just a few.

Our first stop on the way out to Chachauate was this island with one small store on it where we had to get some Guiffity - the Garifuna drink of rum infused with herbs, roots, leaves that sometimes tastes amazing, other times it's awful. This particular Guiffity wasn't too bad - I was extremely hungover and managed to keep a shot down. 

The following shots are of Chachauate, the island that was to be our home for four nights. It really was an untouched paradise, with very few tourists and locals who are simply living their lives, fishing, laying in hammocks and listening to their old-school radios.

The following photos capture the happiness and easy-going nature of the Garifuna people.  Everyone on the island was friendly and more than happy to have a chat to us, and it was an odd sight to see a child who wasn't smiling, laughing and content.

The school boat comes back from the main island.

Nancy, our chef for four days, taught us how to cook a tradition Garifuna meal, Machuca - a meal consisting of a ball of plantain paste served with coconut bisque fish.  

The kids invited us out to learn the Punta - the traditional Garifuna dance. 

While on the boat out to the islands, Carlos told us that he had brought a surprise for us and the community.  He had visited the islands a number of years ago, so brought with him printed photos of the children and their families for us to distribute around the island.  We had to play a 'scavenger' hunt type game and asked the children to help us find all of the families that were in the photos.  This was great fun, and the kids just wanted more and more photos taken of them in the hope that we would be back one day with printed copies for them. Cass and I are going to look into making a photobook to send back to the island for the community to share. 

 Here the children are planning their route around the island to all the families in the photos. 

We took a day trip out to the main islands in the area where there we took a quick hike to see the pink boa constrictor, a species indigenous to Cayos Cochinos.  Here is a juvenile asleep in the tree.