Celaque

“One of Honduras’ most impressive national parks, the Montaña de Celaque is a lush, steep cloud forest, just over 6km from Gracias. It boasts El Cerro de las Minas (2849m), the highest peak in Honduras – a good, tiring hike.” (Celaque, as described by the Lonely Planet guide book on Honduras) Steep and tiring are the two adjectives that stand out to me the most.

Back in February we had a 4-day weekend over Valentine’s Day, and Cassidy, Lori, and I decided to spend our break climbing Celaque. Who needs rest and relaxation on their break? Not us fools! We had heard that it was the tallest peak in Honduras and a beautiful hike so we thought it would be worth climbing. Unfortunately, no one we talked to or no information we read about the mountain was sufficient in describing just how dang hard that hike was! I suppose it was better that we did not fully know how difficult it was prior to hiking because then maybe we would not have even attempted it.

Our journey began with the 5am bus out of La Unión to Gracias. Once we got to the city at 8am, we went straight to Hotel Guancascos to meet our guide; the owner of the hotel had graciously been setting everything up for us (the guide, equipment, transportation, etc.) in advance. (At the hotel, a poster for the hike says that the difficulty of it is rated ‘medium,’ see how we were blind sighted?) We ate a quick breakfast (sadly, not the breakfast of champions) before taking off in the back of a truck to the park’s entrance. Our actual hike started at 10am. It took us about 25minutes to walk from the vehicle entrance to the visitor’s center (and we were already sweating!). There, we signed a guest-log and paid the park fee; the man on duty gave us a map which did in fact say that the hike is ‘difficult’ and there were a few wild animals to be on the lookout for, but we innocently ignored those details.

The hike up took us 5 hours. When we reached the half way point, we were foolishly mistaken in thinking what we just completed was the challenging half. The switch-backs up until that point were brutal – each switch-back was brief but steep and kicked our butts. After the guide told us that it would get worse later, we realized we would have to kick it into gear to survive the second half. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the first rest-stop, just minutes after leaving our half-way resting spot, we felt doomed. We ran into a Gracias teacher who was doing the mild, waterfall hike with her parents, right before the trail branched off into the nice or the just plain mean, and I was sure Lori was going to turn around and walk back with them. But! she did not quit and we marched on.

I cannot accurately describe how exhausting the rest of the hike was. We were each drenched in sweat from head to toe. Every time we stopped to catch our breath we were instantly swarmed by mosquitoes. We were grabbing onto anything solid – trees, branches, posts, rocks – to help pull our tired bodies continually upward. At various points we were all reduced to crawling up the slope. A sigh of relief and a “praise the Lord” were the first sounds out of my mouth when I finally stumbled up to the campsite. The camp site was just short of the peak, so we would still have to climb to the summit the next day, but we could not have been happier to be there. We threw off our packs and ripped off our soaked clothes for the most comfort we could manage. The cool part about being so high up and isolated was that we were allowed to drink straight from the streams without having to worry about purifying it or extracting a stomach bug.

We spent the evening huddled around the campfire drying off and then staying warm once the sun went down. We were joined by an elderly couple and their hiking posse – those two old folks did not look disheveled or exhausted or sweaty whatsoever! I guess they did have the advantage of some young, strong men carrying all their gear up. We did about lose it when we saw them pull out a melon from their sack and proceed to enjoy a nice picnic together. Contrary to their etiquette, we were all eating our ‘meal’ with our grubby hands and using our fingers to dig tuna out of the pouches it came in. Also, earlier in the day we decided against bringing a tent with us because we knew there was a shelter at the campsite and no one volunteered to carry it in their backpack. In reality the tent would have only made a difference IF there were critters; but thankfully there were no little friends that we needed protection from. However, everyone else brought tents and were flabbergasted that we opted not to. The men even discussed their concern for us at length before concluding to do nothing to help us. I will have you know that we were cozy all night; we just huddled together (huddled… spooned… what’s the difference?) in our sleeping bags, put on every layer of clothing we brought, and slept on the hard wood floor. We went to bed around 6pm and hardly slept a wink, so when the sun finally popped up we were more than ready to get the day started.

It took us a little under an hour and a half to reach the peak. The climb had a lot of ups and downs: with each up we were hoping it was the last one, only to be disappointed with another down. Finally we realized we were reaching the top and there was mild rejoicing again because we were dying. To be honest, the view from the top was underwhelming. The altitude of the peak is not high enough for trees to stop growing so our view was limited by Mother Nature herself. We could not see much through the branches other than the clouds. It was a cool feeling to be above the clouds. And we accomplished what we set out to do: we hiked all the way to the top of Celaque! What is more gratifying than that?

We did not spend much time up there – just enough to take our pictures and then be on our way. It took us a little less time to descend the peak and return to our campsite. We ate a second breakfast then to give us enough energy to make it all the way back down the mountain. It took us 4 hours to ‘hike’ down. Remember how steep it was coming up? Well, it didn’t get any less steep for the way down, only this time we were sliding down it. There were moments when we stood at the top of an intense downward slope and wondered how we ever made it up in the first place. It had rained a little the night before so at some spots where the trail was covered entirely in leaves, we were playing on our own slip-n-slide. We all started the journey down with walking sticks, but those all eventually broke from the stress we put on them. I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say that my buns were on fire the whole way day and my thighs were slowly turning to jell-o. In the beginning if I slipped, I could catch myself; but by the end, I was too physically exhausted so I would fall down every few minutes and have to pull my limp body back up and wait for the next tumble. I say we ‘hiked’ down only because we probably spend more times on our rear ends than on our feet.

When we finally reached the bottom our guide said we had the option of waiting for a moto-taxi or walking back to Gracias. Without hesitation I laughed in his face and told him that we would absolutely not be able to make it back to the city on foot. He quietly waited for the taxi with us. We spent the rest of the weekend recovering (in reality it took us a solid week to feel 100% again) and soaking in the fact that we survived Celaque. We ate a feast of Chinese food for dinner that night (followed by an excellent weekend of fine cuisine), we took spectacular showers in which we all washed every part of our body at least twice, and we snuggled into cozier-than-life beds and slept like rocks. “Sore” does not even begin to define how much our legs hurt or explain why we were walking so funny for days. Stairs became my worst enemy, and I’m certain a poor soul on crutches could have walked faster/better than me. I waddled for a week. Despite the intense pain afterwards, the pride of starting AND finishing the hike, and the memories we created from sleeping in that shelter, eating tuna with our fingers, and using our limbs in any way possible to finish the hike, made our intense journey completely worth it. Would I ever do it again? Absolutely not.

This week be praying for perseverance. Reminiscing on this break we had actually makes me a little sad. We all just returned from our spring break and now we are in for a long haul. We have no more breaks until the finish 2 months from now. Pray that we do now burn out and we continue to give our all into our jobs. It will most likely be hard after some weeks, and without a break to look forward to, the weeks will seem to stretch on forever. Pray that the Lord re-energizes us each and every weekend so that we persevere to the very end.