Cuero y Salado Refuge

West of La Ceiba is a small town called La Union where you get on a tiny tourist train called El Trencito Turistica. Take the train to the Cuero y Salado Refuge and get a motorboat tour of the lagoon system there. Go early enough to beat the heat and see more wildlife.

On the way to Cuero Y Salado refuge we got lost. We could have driven around looking for the place until the cows came home. Wait! There they are!

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In the small town of La Union where the train station was located, a group of schoolchildren was making its way down the road. Some of them held large collection jars. It appeared that they were asking (beggin?) the townsfolk for money. We saw this in La Ceiba, too. They weren't even trying to sell anything.

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A house by the parking lot near the train station had a cat in its yard.

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El Trencito Turistica, or "the tiny tourist train," was a whopping 2 cars including the engine. The passenger car held 16 people on 2 pairs of opposing benches. The engine held fewer than that because the driver needed extra space. Well, that's how many people could fit sitting semi-comfortably. At least on the trip back there appeared to be no limit to the number of people who could cling to some part of the train for a ride.

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The view out the front of the trencito. The tracks go through the small town before emptying into farmland.

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El Trencito Turistica, or "the tiny tourist train," was a whopping 2 cars including the engine. The passenger car held 16 people on 2 pairs of opposing benches. The engine held fewer than that because the driver needed extra space.\n\nThe engine that actually powered the train was from an old Toyota pickup. It used 1st and second gear. The train had no official schedule - whenever it showed up, you could get on. If you couldn't wait for the train, it might have been possible to pay some boys to push you down the track on a handcart. I'm glad we didn't do that - it was a long trip.

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Wife and kid on el trencito. It was actually a really fun and pleasant ride. The people were quite friendly. A pair of army men got on the train with us. Everyone was all smiles.

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Now why did he cross?

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Off we go on El Trencito. The track is quite straight for much of the 9.5km journey. It took at least 40 minutes.

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The views are wonderful from the steady-paced trencito.

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Hey, look out! Get those horses out of the way.

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Some sort of heron flies over the trencito.

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Bridge repairs. We went slow over the bridge, and all the workmen watched intently as if they were half expecting something to break.

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An unknown fruit dangles from a tree. Our guide said the fruit is not edible by humans, but the monkeys like it.

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El trencito goes through a coconut plantation. All the coconut trees were wiped out by a virus after Hurricane Mitch. These are transplants.

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El trencito goes through a coconut plantation. All the coconut trees were wiped out by a virus after Hurricane Mitch. These are transplants.

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Still a ways to go down the completely straight track.

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I couldn't figure out why someone would call a national refuge "leather and salty." I thought I was mistranslating something. Turns out that these are the names of two rivers that join up here.

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The boat dock at the Cuero Y Salado visitors center is conspicuously empty when we arrive quite late in the morning at 10:00. We were supposed to get here a lot sooner. After all, we left the lodge around 6:40. An hour to the train station, then a 40 minute ride should have gotten us here much sooner. But we had to stop at the airport to drop someone off. Then we got quite lost. Then the trencito wasn't there yet.... Omega Tours is not the place to book tours from if you want to see animals. They just don't get it.

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A peculiar monument to a destroyed chainsaw. I can only guess what this means...

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A pretty water lily grows in a docile pond at the Cuero y Salado refuge.

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A pretty water lily grows in a docile pond at the Cuero y Salado refuge.

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Pretty water lilies grow in a docile pond at the Cuero y Salado refuge.

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Since we had to wait for the tour boats to come back in, we decided to take a walk to the beach. On the way we passed a tree with a vulture in it.\n\nWhen we got to the beach there were so many sandfleas it was impossible to stay. We had to turn back. So we went into the visitors center and had an early lunch.

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Finally the boats returned and we were on our way. The reason they were out was because they were taking other tourists around the refuge. Those tourists were from Pico Bonito lodge. They got here early enough to be happy with the wildlife they saw.\n\nPico Bonito rises in the background of the lagoon and forest.

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Not too bad. We just motored directly across the lagoon and found this jacana.

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Next to the jacana was a small heron.

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This was the wildlife we saw the most of - cormorants. They are pretty neat birds, but I wish we could have seen more variety.

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Now this was cool. A family of bats camped out under a bent palm tree.

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We got really close to the bats.

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We saw a single howler monkey on the trip. He didn't make any noise, though. We saw a spider monkey later in the tour, but is was so obscured by trees that I couldn't even tell what it was.

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The mangrove forest that surrounded the lagoon was quite lush.

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The mangrove forest that surrounded the lagoon was quite lush. Here there are so many branches finding their way into the water that this little tributary will be closed off very soon.

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The mangrove forest that surrounded the lagoon was quite lush.

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A fisherman tries to catch something in the heat of the day.

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Another cormorant. They let us get close, too. We saw a few kingfishers here, but they wanted no part of us.

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It was interesting when the guide motored into a dense cove of mangroves and turned off the motor. We were completely engulfed in trees in all directions. They even covered the sky above us.\n\nYeah, it was interesting for a couple of minutes until the mosquitos figured out we were there. Then the guide flooded the motor so it stunk of gasoline while he tried in vain to restart it. And without the breeze created by jetting through the water, the heat was starting to get to us. Neat for a while, but once or twice is enough.

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Our daughter sits on the front of the boat admiring the scenery. Or her shoes. One of the two.

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Our 4-year-old took this picture of my wife and me. Pretty good, huh?

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With a digital camera you can take all sorts of pictures without concern of wasting film. I took about 40 shots of butterflies floating across the water and this was the best one. I just pointed the camera and held the shutter down in rapid-fire mode hoping that a few of them would turn out.

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This cormorant is looking for food in the water.

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A rat's maze of mangrove roots.

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A lot of times the wildlife can be far away, so it's good to bring a pair of binoculars.

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Cormorant relaxes on a branch.

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The steady rocking and vibrating of a motorboat is no match for a sleepy child.

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Now this little guy was cool!!! We saw him after we got out of the boat at the end of our tour. Incredible color I've never seen before on a lizard.

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Now this little guy was cool!!! We saw him after we got out of the boat at the end of our tour. Incredible color I've never seen before on a lizard.

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On the trencito back to La Union where our jeep was parked. I pointed the camera towards the engine and just shot off a picture. Very crowded coming back. One guy was hanging off the side like a trolley car holding his bicycle!

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Our daughter hangs around on the jeep while we wait to go back to the lodge. A pretty fun day, but it could have been MUCH better if we would have gotten there earlier.

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