Bruce Northam: Hi, I’m Bruce Northam welcome to American Detour in the North Coast of Honduras.
In 1635, two Spanish ships transporting slaves to the West Indies shipwrecked near the Windward Caribbean Island of St. Vincent. The escaped slaves were welcomed and protected by the local Carib Indians. Their intermarriage formed the Garifuna people, who remained on the island and traded with the French.
There are currently 98,000 Garifun in Honduras living in 43 communities along the Caribbean shoreline.
In 1797, with sugar plantation fever, the British took control of St. Vincent, defeating the pro–French Garifuna and deported them to Roatán. Most of those Black Carib refugees, soon left Roatan and settled along the North Coast of Honduras. These first permanent post–Columbian settlers set the foundation of modern Garífuna culture—broad, smiling people who make celebrity–style cool look easy.
This burst of radical originality and unlikely mixing black blood, created a new language, new customs, and a new New Year's dance. The yancunu dance style is similar to that of South American rainforest Indians, and to music originating in West Africa.
On his fourth and final voyage to the New World in 1502, Columbus reached the Bay Islands and initially named a nearby North Coast town Guaymuras, and then generalized that name to identify the entire colony. The Spanish ruled the region for three centuries, during which a clock built by twelfth century Moors was relocated to the Cathedral of Comayagua in 1636.
Honduras is more than a melting pot; it's re–melted pots. Their National Anthem resulted from a contest won by a Honduran poet in 1904 and scored by a German composer. So their battle–hymn sounds like college football halftime music. They play the anthem before, during and after football matches in stadiums, bars, homes and huge fields full of foldout chairs so people can watch en masse on big screens.
Sam the “Banana Man”, a legendary and somewhat crooked figure who pioneered Honduras banana industry sold the seeds of what became united fruit. He’s illegal but festered reign of banana terror started in 1895 and lasted 65 years.
The Lodge of Pico Benito in the midst of 400 park site acres is nestled between two rivers and near another that is a whitewater rafting miracle. The lodge is also the unofficial visitor center for the 255,000 acre Pico Benito National Park. It’s a merging eco-destination just outside Lasiva has 22 stone and native pine cabins. An open air restaurant undulating hiking trails, canopy topping observation platforms and no in-room TV.
It’s an insomniac cure center until the pre-centralized carillon course of birds, crickets, owls and monkeys compete for a jungle action movie soundtrack. Honduras has as many species of birds as the US in one-seventieth the size. Rain and cloud forest are sculpted by leaf-cutter ants, fanned by butterflies, shaded by canopy and scored by some birds sounding like a lad puffing on a kazoo, a cat vomiting or underwater warble gargling something. All in the zone of the Montezuma Oropendola.
Before departing the North Coast of Honduras, I met a Garifuna man on the beach wearing a cap, clutching a fishing pole, toasting a canned beer, and testifying to the miracle of a Honduras beach sunset. With noteworthy congeniality, he flashed a classic Central American smile, removed his cap with the fishing pole, and nodded to say…"Pride needs no flag."
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