Visiting Jeanette Kawas National Park

Jeanette Kawas National Park is one of the most popular sights on the north coast of Honduras, and excursions are arranged through Garifuna Tours, an ecologically conscious agency which runs half-day trips. The park is named for the Honduran environmental activist whose tireless and brave campaigning on behalf of the natural wonders of the Tela region ultimately resulted in her murder, most likely by government agents who viewed her activism as a threat to the hegemony of private interests. But Jeanette did not die in vain-the national park that bears her name was saved from logging and luxury development because of her efforts and sacrifice. Jeanette Kawas, my parents assured me, is like a tropical paradise, with several distinctive micro-environments, each with their own unique flora and fauna, spread around an area of 600,000 acres. To get there, we first went with our group of twenty by high speed launch (which sometimes felt like it had a shoddy engine) across the Bay of Tela, to a disembarkation point at a lonely beach on the lush peninsula which juts out into the Caribbean and forms the most prominent landmark of the park. The spine of this peninsula is hilly, and the summits of several sizable hills were visible from the water as we made our approach to the beach. Also visible, quite suddenly, was a troop of howler monkeys, languidly perched in a cluster of mammoth palm trees, seemingly without a care in the world. It was the first time my father had seen a monkey in the wild (my mother witnessed them on a trip to Costa Rica last year, which made papa very jealous). The troop of monkeys was silent, not a single howl emanating from their eerily humanoid mouths, so it was obvious that our little launch was not very threatening to them. After making a smooth landing on the beach, our guide, a fairly inexperienced and silly young French woman who spent half her time on the trip flirting with the Garifuna boat crew, "led" us on a magnificent jungle walk through some dense canopy to a sheltered inlet on the other side of the peninsula. Along the way, we saw some fortress-like anthills, many species of gorgeous orchids, numerous broad-trunked ceiba trees with a riot of vines hanging from their muscular branches, and some quick moving birds that we could not identify. We also had to walk fast in a vain attempt to outpace the armada of mosquitoes that welcomed our presence like we were prodigal children who came back home. Once we reached the inlet, which was serene and whose water was quite muddy, we headed back on part of the trail we just took, then bore to the left, going up, up, and up, over one of the sizable aforementioned hills, then snaking back down onto yet another beach, enclosed in another inlet, this one leading directly out to the vastness of the Caribbean sea. Our silly guide, who could not answer any questions about the park's flora and fauna with confidence, told us it was time to get back on our launch, which magically appeared on this beach like it was dropped from the sky. We were going to head back around to Playa Cocolito, where we could swim, along the way surveying the thick jungle of the peninsula for more howler monkeys, and glimpsing the complexity of the mangrove swamps that form one of the micro-environments of the park. On to Cocalito, Capitan...