Helene,
on the far east end of Roatan, well away from the main population
centers, is not frequently visited by cruisers. We came in our usual
quest for out-of-the-mainstream adventure, thinking that the reefs
might be pristine and the land worth exploring. Well, we haven't
gotten into the water at all, but we definitely have had an
interesting time.
The sail along the south side of Guanaja, inside the reef, was a pleasant reach on flat water, but the wind and seas built after we got into the open sea. When we turned behind the cay which forms the south side of Helene Harbor, the wind was up around 25 knots. (And it hasn't gotten below that since!) The shore was lined with wooden shacks on stilts, more of a settlement than we were expecting. Since we weren't thrilled about anchoring close to town, we attempted to anchor behind the cay, but that proved impossible due to the hard coral bottom. While we were working on it, a black man with dreadlocks paddled up in a dugout canoe. "No, man, you don't wanna anchor here, dis no good. Come into Helene, man, I show you."
We don't particularly like people bugging us while we're anchoring, and it reminded us a bit of the boat boy situation in the eastern Caribbean, so I was trying to figure out how to say that we had just decided we were going to continue into the main harbor but we didn't need his help, when he said, "Don't worry, I ain't asking you for money, I just help you get dere, get youself into da harbor." So we tied his canoe on, invited him aboard, and he "piloted" us in -- we could read the water just fine, and his waving arms were more in the way than anything else, but we figured he meant well.
With the anchor down and holding, it was time for a drink. Our guest declined a beer ("I ain't a drinkin' man") but accepted a Coke, and introduced himself as Ordelin Bodden. About half the people in Helene, he said, were Boddens, and he figured he was related to just about everyone in town. From Ordelin we learned the nature of the back of beyond we'd found ourselves in.
The Bay Islands -- Guanaja, Roatan, and Utila --were originally owned by England before they became part of Honduras, and many Bay Islanders don't consider themselves particularly Honduran. Helene, which is actually separated from the rest of Roatan by a canal through the mangroves, doesn't even consider itself part of Roatan. There are no roads to, or in, Helene. Other than a handful of white North American missionaries, who operate a clinic and church, the population consists of English-speaking blacks, mostly fishermen. They have as little to do with the rest of Honduras as possible, and the Honduran government returns the favor. A government school (education is in Spanish, so it's locally called "the Spanish school") teaches children up to the 6th grade level, but other than that, they are on their own.
Ordelin told us that there were caves in Helene, and trails around the island, so we arranged to meet him the next day for a tour. We began by walking through the town. The "road" was a dirt path close to the water. Small skiffs, dugout canoes and what the Helenans call "motor dories" -- long, narrow open boats with an external rudder and a small inboard engine -- lined the shore. We saw a sort of store, about half the size of a one-car garage, with a hand-lettered sign: "pliese ask what you want I get it". There are a few houses which are almost nice, painted cinderblock or wood, but most people live in decrepit wooden shacks with tin roofs, on stilts either over the water or along the hillside. The area under the stilts, in the houses not over the water, serves as a sort of veranda, where people conduct business -- we saw a hog being butchered under one house -- or just sit on benches in the shade, relaxing and talking with each other.
Our overwhelming impression was of trash everywhere. Garbage is piled along the beach and peeks out from the tall grass by the side of the path, soda cans and plastic bags, bottles and sodden paper, rags, planks, junk. The edges of the harbor, where outhouses and hog pens on stilts dump filth directly into the water, are even scarier. The stench is impressive.
We
escaped the miasma by following Ordelin out of town toward the caves.
Just as we left the last houses behind, an agitated man came out from
behind one. "You going to the caves? I the tourist guide,
you got to go with me! You pay me ten dolla!" He waved a clipboard,
covered with a sheaf of messy-looking papers.
"Don't mind old Tuna, he mad," muttered Ordelin. "He just drinkin' again."
Tuna gave Ordelin a dark look. "You don't go to the caves without you pay me! You don't go to the fuckin' cave!"
We didn't know what to do, whom to trust, so we walked back toward town. Tuna continued complaining, yelling obscenities. "He tell you I crazy, I ain't crazy. Listen, lady, I the Minister of Tourism here." He danced around us, at one point picking up a plank and looking like he was going to whap Ordelin with it. A small crowd of people gathered.
"That man crazy," said one. "He don't have nothing to do with the cave."
Another woman pointed to a man that Ordelin had stopped to talk with. "He a Bowen, he the heir to the caves. That all Bowen land. Tuna think he da boss, he ain't the boss."
(Later, as we headed back from the cave, an old woman in a wheelchair waved at us from a balcony and asked us to come up. She shook our hands and welcomed us to the village. Her name was Rhoda Bowen. "I hear the commotion. I tell you, those caves are on my land, Bowen land, and if you want to come back any time and go to the caves, I say you can. Any time.")
So
we set off again with Ordelin and Dale Bowen. The caves weren't far,
a brief hike on a decent trail. We could see limestone rock all
around, good cave stuff, and very different from the granite and
limestone of Guanaja just a dozen miles to the east. The entrance to
the first cave was a barely noticeable shelf, but we slithered in
behind Dale and it opened up to a sloping tunnel. We only had one
light, so we didn't explore far, but we saw ropes hanging here and
there, and Dale and Ordelin told us that gringos from some university
frequently visited with caving equipment, working on a study. Indian
artifacts had been found in the caves, they said. The caves had also
been used as hurricane shelters by the villagers, before sturdier
buildings were built on high ground.
On our way to the north side of the island we stopped at the clinic, a fine wooden building that looks more like a summer camp dining hall than a medical facility. Over a hundred villagers sheltered here during Hurricane Mitch. The missionaries are mostly young American women. One is a nurse and another a physician's assistant, and a third is working to set up a new school. They run regular office hours for minor things, and have doctors and dentists visit periodically for major work. They invited us to stay for lunch, and late that afternoon several came out to the boat for a visit despite the howling wind that made it a wet dinghy ride. (They told us that maybe two or three yachts a year anchor by Helene!)
We're leaving tomorrow for French Harbor even though it's likely to continue blowing. It's downwind and not far, and the harbor there is far more protected than this open bay. It's also a real town, with grocery stores and restaurants and stuff like that -- things to keep us occupied while we wait for better weather.