Triunfo de la Cruz

Beach of Triunfo de la Cruz
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From Utila and La Ceiba we took a local bus to Tela and from there a taxi to Triunfo de la Cruz, a Garifuna village on the north coast of Honduras.

All the black communities living on the Caribbean coast of Central America are commonly called Garifuna or Black Carib, or as they refer to themselves, Garinagu. Over the last three centuries, in spite of many migrations, re-settlements and interactions with Indians, British, French and Spanish, they have preserved much of the culture from their two main branches of ancestry. The Garinagu are the descendants of Caribs Indians and Black African slaves. The Caribs were originally indigenous peoples from South America. They spoke the Arawak Indian language and inhabited various Caribbean islands but were later pushed out by European colonists and were able to keep only two islands, Dominica and Saint Vincent.

In 1635 two Spanish ships carrying slaves to the West Indies were ship-wrecked near St. Vincent. The slaves escaped and were welcomed and protected by the Carib Indians. Their intermarriage formed the Garinagu people (known as Garifuna today). In 1795, the British took control of their islands to start sugar cane plantations. In 1797, British relocated all the Garinagu prisoners along with some black slaves to the island of Roatan in Honduras. From Roatan they moved to the Spanish fort of Trujillo and settled all along the coast from Belize through Honduras to Nicaragua.

Again, we thought this place was weird. Sure, the beach is great and the sea nice, but the people are so different (we do not know how to describe it really) and the village can hardly be called a village. It is nothing more than a couple of houses scattered around the sea front and a few snack places. Funnily enough, we could not find a single place that sold fresh fish.. So ended up having a hamburger...

Our room was not the best either and we had a whole bunch of flying ants waiting to get into our room that night.

In the morning we had no running water and hostal guests were waiting to order breakfast but the owners were nowhere to be found, so we decided to move on to better places!!