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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
We arrived in Honduras in early March, 1999, after a 5 day passage from the San Blas Islands of Panama. Many cruising friends questioned us about the advisability of visiting this region after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in October, 1998. The news media had reported that buildings and services had been pretty much wiped out, that trees had been denuded or blown over, that the water supply had been corrupted, that bridges no longer existed, that people were dying by the thousands of cholera and other waterborne diseases. In other words, Honduras and Guatemala were supposed to have been thrown back into the stone age, that Belize wasn’t much better off, and that the offlying islands were the worst hit. Even if things were somewhat back to normal, they were avoiding the area to avoid stressing the presumably thin resources. We said that we would report back on what we found.
Our first stop in the region was Conchino Grande in the Cayos Cochinos along the north coast of Honduras. Looking around at our anchorage for the first time, we could see no denuded trees, no skeletal remnants of buildings on this small island. We could see maybe a dozen well-constructed houses, about half of which were down on the water with what appeared to be operational docks. There were a few dugout canoes being paddled about purposefully, apparently fishermen plying their trade. Everything looked healthy and prosperous.
Ashore we visited the small, but delightful Plantation Beach Dive Resort. They have about ten double-occupancy rooms. The week after Mitch passed through, practically all reservations were canceled, and few new reservations are being made. We found the resort in full operation, but with only one room occupied. The manager showed us videos of Mitch in action, and what the island looked like the day after. Surprised at the extent of the damage the video showed, we were even more surprised to hear that the resort was back into service less than a week after the storm passed through.
Hiking around the island we could detect very few signs of a recent hurricane. A few dead trees and branches were lying on the ground here and there, mostly at some distance away from the well traveled paths. But we could see nothing else. Vegetation recoups fast in the tropics.
We spend a day scuba diving with the resort. The reefs were beautiful and the sea life was abundant. The dive master told us that in recent years the reefs were stressed, probably due to water temperature changes as a result of El Niño. The coral was taking on a bleached look and the sea life was somewhat thin. But when Mitch passed through, something changed practically overnight. Diving within a week of Mitch, the divemaster found all the reefs were returning to their normal healthy color. He saw some areas where the coral had broken from the storm surge, and was able to point some of them out to us. But the clutter of coral debris scattered along the sea floor in those areas seemed to provide new protection for sea life. Within weeks he could see a noticeable increase in the populations of the smaller coral-dwelling fish, with other species showing marked improvement in the short weeks that followed.
From the Cayos Cochinos, we headed to Roatán, one of the three main islands of the Bay Islands of Honduras. We first dropped anchor in Coxen’s Hole, the center of government for the Bay Islands. The town was busier than any Caribbean village of its size we’ve seen. There was not a single roofless or blown-over structure. Not a single building was abandoned or boarded up. Grocery stores, hardware stores, pharmacies and other retail stores were all well stocked and doing a brisk business. The only evidence of a major storm we could detect was the condition of the town’s main dock. Most of the pilings were still there in their original positions, but not one pointed directly skyward. Very little of the dock’s framing and none of the top planking existed.
Leaving Coxen’s Hole, we moved over to French Harbour. Approaching from seaward, only a couple of the navigational stakes were missing, and most of the remaining ones were missing their daymarks. Again, grocery stores and other retail establishments were well stocked and doing a good business. We could see no signs that anything unusual had happened recently.
We spent some time talking with the new management of the French Harbour Yacht Club. The club, by the way, has just reopened after more than a year in an ownership dispute. The new manager, a retired U.S. Government employee with a helicopter pilot’s license, helped on the mainland ferrying supplies and people to and from the most severely affected areas in the week following Mitch. He said that things are now much better on the mainland that they were before the storm. Bridges on the major roads were back in operation within weeks, and it wasn’t long before all villages in Honduras were back to their normal accessibility. Some areas of Honduras have had no medical services for years. But with the influx of medical assistance from abroad, nearly everyone in Honduras, at least for a time, had access to a doctor. Thus, the country as a whole has less disease than at anytime in history. He said that there are only a few pockets of the country where health remains an issue, and these are only in remote villages.
The yacht club manager also told us of the other Bay Islands. Guanaja, the easternmost of the three Bay Islands, was the only one to suffer any real damage, and it was the most badly hit of any place in all of Honduras. Most of the trees are gone. Most of the buildings are gone. But the water supply was unaffected and the people are rebuilding very rapidly. The loss of vegetation will be noticeable for years to come. But otherwise, things are almost back to normal there.
The Honduran commercial fishing fleet was in French Harbour making repairs and modifications while awaiting the opening of the next fishing season. Parts were readily available, although the service technicians were hard to get as they were all very busy. We were lucky to find a technician to work on our refrigerator. He told us that he had come to French Harbour a few years ago to retire and maybe work a day or two a week. Instead, he’s working harder than ever. He now works seven days a week while the fleet is in, and six days a week otherwise. He said that the only real break he’s had in the past few years was almost a week long, and that was only while Mitch was still raging.
From the Bay Islands, we went up the Rio Dulce of Guatemala. During our stay we talked with a number of people who were on the river before, during and after Mitch. This part of Guatemala missed the eye of the storm, so they didn’t have the heavy winds and horrendous rainfall that hit other regions. Their biggest problem was the water level of the river. It went up about eight feet or so, covering all the docks and the floors of the lowest lying buildings. Bloated bodies of cows, sheep and, occasionally, people floated downstream with the debris for several days. This was all due to exceptional flooding in the mountains. When the water receded, damage to the cruising boats was found to be minimal.
People along the river and Lago Izabal at the western end of the river were initially worried about cholera because so many of the water wells were inundated above their wellheads in the flooding. But when the water retreated, there was apparently enough residual pressure from the ground water to flush their wells clean within days. Not a single case of cholera was reported. Although we didn’t visit Guatemala City for ourselves, we were told that even there where damage was the greatest in the country, it’s hard to find any evidence of a hurricane’s passage.
We were told that all bridges between Fronteras and Guatemala City were given temporary repairs within a week, so that there was hardly an interruption of road traffic. Likewise, all of the country’s main arteries were back in service relatively quickly. And much of the temporary repairs have already been replaced with more permanent arrangements. As far as we know, all of the country’s existing roads are seeing their normal levels of traffic.
The westernmost end of Lago Izabal, where few cruising boats visit, had some changes. The shallow areas at the mouths of the rivers that empty into the lake are a bit more shallow, and have extended themselves a bit further into the lake. Otherwise, nothing had changed.
From the Rio Dulce, we went to Belize. That country had virtually no impact from Mitch as far as we could tell. We talked about the hurricane to a number of locals. All remembered that there was one in the region, some recalled making preparations, but almost no one could recall anything that had happened to them personally during the storm. And that’s all we could get out of the locals.
Honduras, Guatemala and Belize were wonderful places to cruise. They were, and still are, fully prepared to take whatever visitors would come. If you were put off by Mitch, wait no longer.
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