Thursday, April 19, 2007

Semana Santa, Ingela arrived and travel woes!

My Semana Santa (Holy Week) adventures will be in several installments.


Some of you may be asking, "What IS Semana Santa exactly?"
Well, lucky for you, I am going to tell you.

Semana Santa is the week preceding Easter Sunday. Each day is a Holy Day, but Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are the big ones. Offices and schools are generally closed all week. Banks are only open Monday and Tuesday. On Friday, most everything (stores, salons, etc.) closes down. For example, the salon I go to closed on Friday, but was open Thursday and Saturday. On Friday, almost all the stores in the mall were closed too. La Ceiba is where a lot of people go to get out of the cities, to party and go to the beach, so restaurants, bars, and the like normally stay open all week long. While some cities have a lot of traditional religious processions and activities for Semana Santa, CeibeƱos typically prefer to party. In the Zona Viva (the area of Ceiba where most of the bars and clubs are located, down by the beach), a huge area was set up for Semana Santa outside on the sand. Hundreds of tables and chairs were set up, with several bar areas, and a big stage, and this was apparently THE place to be at night during Semana Santa. Ingela and I went Thursday and Friday with my friends. Beer there was also ridiculously cheap. Generally, a beer in Ceiba goes for about 20 Lempiras, about a dollar. In order to get in, you had to buy a L. 12 beer. Then, once inside, you could buy buckets of beer (6 total) for L. 65 ($3) and L. 85 ($4). Since the whole area was sponsored by one of the local brands of beer, Salva Vida, those buckets were cheaper. But, wow, right?! I have a few pictures that I will post later.

So that, for Ceiba, at least - is Semana Santa. Now onto the travel woes.

Despite some minor bag delays, both us and her bags made it safely to Roatan on Saturday (her bags arriving a mere 6 or 7 hours after she landed in Ceiba). Roatan is the island we went to off the coast of Honduras, on Saturday. But barely. The ferry-yacht-boat that runs between Ceiba and Roatan is a very nice, but the waters were very rough on Saturday afternoon, and I was very sick. I didn't think ahead to take any medicine to help prevent motion sickness, and the boat was rocking left and right pretty badly. Therefore, I got very sick. Ingela managed to keep all of her lunch inside her stomach, but well, let's just say that she was the lucky one. Don't worry though, they give out little bags and paper towels pretty generously.

2 comments:

luz said...

katrina can u tell me what the schools over there require to teach english? how did you become a permanent resident? what's the easiest and cheapest way to do it? how much per person? is it really as violent as they say? thanks....

luz said...

i'll be going to yoro this saturday for semana santa