Jill and I were ready to leave Utila to do some grocery shopping in La Ceiba, the closest mainland city.
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The Galaxy II (or "the yacht," as islanders call her) pulls up to the dock around 10:45, as it does each day. It's a spacious ship with a cabin that seats at least 120 in air conditioned comfort. |
| We preferred the open air of the top deck. Wave good-bye to Utila!
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The mountains of the mainland grew closer and closer during our hour-long trip across the 18 miles of sea. |
| The port at La Ceiba has a nice terminal building. |  |
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My favorite part of the La Ceiba experience is always the Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut food is competitively priced. For instance, their Tuesday night special was a pizza for two (we had the Hawaiana version with ham & pineapple, yum!) with breadsticks & sauce and two softdrinks for 84 lemps, tax included. That's under US$6! You couldn't eat that cheap at a U.S. Pizza Hut and a lot of restaurant food in LaCeiba is more expensive than that. The pizza was excellent as was the service. The only difference in the pizza is that they use very little tomato sauce compared to in the states. The restaurant looks just like the U.S. version except that they have a playland for kids and sell party packages for birthdays, etc, which I haven't seen that at any other Pizza Hut. |
We did a good bit of grocery shopping at a mini version of a Super Wal-mart. It was mostly grocery store but also sold clothes and other goods. Real up-to-date with scanners at the checkout and everything, including the ability to charge to Visa and MasterCard. We bought stuff that is extra expensive on Utila as well as foods that we just haven't been able to find here, especially tomato sauce. Not a single store has had it on the island! (Tomato paste, yes; tomato sauce, no.) We were surprised that most of the shelf space was taken up by American brands. Some of it is targeted for Spanish speaking countries; for instance, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes are Zucaritas but you still have Tony the Tiger on the box. ("Azucar" is the Spanish word for sugar; the literal translation of Zucaritas would be "little sugary ones." Maybe it sounds as normal as Coco Puffs does to the ears of English speakers.) Anyway, apart from milk, eggs, bread and sugar it seems like almost nothing is manufactured in this country, except maybe clothing for export. (Have you seen a "Hecho en Honduras" tag in any of your clothing?)
| 48 hours later we're back in the harbor of Utila, passing the lighthouse in this photo. (Hard to pose a picture of the two of us by this light house; as you can see, it's totally surrounded by water!) |  |
