Day 10 – Saturday, May 5th

Today is the last day we will be with our friends in the beautiful village of Mabita, Honduras. We begin our 3 day journey back to the United States tomorrow, and so today we want to make the most of our time here!

This morning, at 5:00, Art headed out to see the Macaws, and take one more shot at capturing some good footage of them. He put the drone up to try and film them in flight at their level – needless to say, they did not like that strange bird at all. On the plus side, they didn’t attack the drone. They just flew around in circles angrily screaming at it.

When we finished filming the birds, Art and Silas shot a bit of a patrol with two of the local women who sometimes go out checking nests and looking for poachers. We needed some footage of women doing something other than domestic work, which is mostly what they’ve been doing since we’ve been here. (washing clothes in the river, carrying water, cooking, cleaning)

Our next scheduled shoot wasn’t until 5 pm, so we asked our guide, Hector, where we might go to sightseeing, and one if the places he suggested was to check out the Rio Coco, which is the river that separates Honduras from Nicaragua. 

Poachers have been coming into Honduras from Nicaragua, and there have even been some traffickers from China boating up and down that river asking to buy macaw eggs and chicks. So, we doubled dipped and got in some beautiful sightseeing, and shot a bit of footage of the river for our film. 

Bonus: we get to say we’ve been to Nicaragua.

We chartered a boat, which was a unique experience itself, since the boat was carved out of a single tree trunk. There are no joints or seams of any kind, just a hollowed out tree with some seats built onto it.

The driver took us about 30 minutes upstream to the small village of Las Piranza, Nicaragua. There wasn’t much there, but the people were nice and we got to enjoy a gorgeous view of the river and an old Catholic church atop a hill. Art fired up his drone to fly over the river showing how close Nicaragua is to Honduras, and all the village kids came running. Silas said he’s like the Nicaraguan pied piper.

Along the river we saw many of the indigenous people panning for gold along the shore. Some had quite the setup. The gold here is just tiny flakes, not big nuggets. But one family we talked to said on a good day, they can find about 1 gram of gold, which they can sell for $50.

After our boat ride, we drove back to Mabita, where we spent s couple of hour recharging our camera batteries and logging field tapes.

Oh, and we had lunch. Some leftover deer meat, and beans and rice.

At 5:00 PM, we went to count birds with the children, which is always a fun time for them. LoraKim let’s them use her binoculars to identify the birds as they fly over, and she keeps a tally on her notepad. 

At 6:30 we ate dinner, fresh caught fish, tortillas and beans and rice. Oh, and we had a surprise treat- Alicia made is some cake, which tasted a lot like sweet cornbread, but better. And Hector surprised us with some real Coca Cola! I had been sampling some of the local knock offs, but they don’t have caffeine in them. So Hector surprised me with the real thing. It’s not a Diet Coke, but I’ll take what I can get! Also, I had asked Santiago for one fresh coconut for tonight and one for tomorrow- since they are so delicious. And, he brought us several! I drank the milk out of one tonight, and I’ll eat the other for breakfast tomorrow.

Goodnight Mabita!