Utila Island
It was very nice to spend the night docked on Utila Island, one of the largest islands of the Bay Islands, once known for its heritage of old English rum and the sugar trade. That is why English remains as the first language, while the locals learn Spanish in school. The Bay Islands of Honduras are surrounded by one of the longest and most spectacular coral reefs in the world.
So while some of us were checking out this town of fishermen some other teams were snorkeling and others were diving in the pristine waters enjoying the diversity in coral, tropical fishes and marine life in general.
The group that explored the island were very impressed by the strong Jamaican influence on the life style of the inhabitants, including there food. Here in the picture we have an example of two very common fruits on the island: bananas and breadfruit.
In June of 1870, Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker picked up a couple of bunches of green bananas while docked at Port Morant, Jamaica. Eleven days later he sold those bunches in New York for ten to fifteen times what he paid for them. This very important crop for Central America had this modest beginning. Bananas were not present in the new world in pre-Columbian times. There are two wild species, one of them is widely distributed from India to the Philippines, and the other one is native in eastern India and Burma.
The common name, banana, is an African word. Most male flowers do not produce functional pollen, and fruits develop without pollination in most bananas. Thus no seeds develop. Each banana plant flowers only once. The colored bracts which conspicuously enclose the swollen terminal bud when it is producing flowers, are soon shed, but new ones form and the terminal bud keeps growing a long time. Bananas may sucker and are propagated vegetatively. The breadfruit originated in the vast territory that extends from New Guinea to Micronesia. It was perhaps introduced to America in the dawn of the conquest but was later brought by the well-known Englishman, Captain Bligh.
After a nice cruise, where dolphins were spotted several times, and we where able to enjoy a lecture on the Maya world, we did our rain forest exploration on the Zodiacs in the Rio Tinto National Park. It was nice to find lots of North American migratory birds still here in the tropics, including a Peregrine falcon, which was flying north, back to his breeding ground. Text: Rafael Robles, Naturalist; Photo:
It was very nice to spend the night docked on Utila Island, one of the largest islands of the Bay Islands, once known for its heritage of old English rum and the sugar trade. That is why English remains as the first language, while the locals learn Spanish in school. The Bay Islands of Honduras are surrounded by one of the longest and most spectacular coral reefs in the world.
So while some of us were checking out this town of fishermen some other teams were snorkeling and others were diving in the pristine waters enjoying the diversity in coral, tropical fishes and marine life in general.
The group that explored the island were very impressed by the strong Jamaican influence on the life style of the inhabitants, including there food. Here in the picture we have an example of two very common fruits on the island: bananas and breadfruit.
In June of 1870, Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker picked up a couple of bunches of green bananas while docked at Port Morant, Jamaica. Eleven days later he sold those bunches in New York for ten to fifteen times what he paid for them. This very important crop for Central America had this modest beginning. Bananas were not present in the new world in pre-Columbian times. There are two wild species, one of them is widely distributed from India to the Philippines, and the other one is native in eastern India and Burma.
The common name, banana, is an African word. Most male flowers do not produce functional pollen, and fruits develop without pollination in most bananas. Thus no seeds develop. Each banana plant flowers only once. The colored bracts which conspicuously enclose the swollen terminal bud when it is producing flowers, are soon shed, but new ones form and the terminal bud keeps growing a long time. Bananas may sucker and are propagated vegetatively. The breadfruit originated in the vast territory that extends from New Guinea to Micronesia. It was perhaps introduced to America in the dawn of the conquest but was later brought by the well-known Englishman, Captain Bligh.
After a nice cruise, where dolphins were spotted several times, and we where able to enjoy a lecture on the Maya world, we did our rain forest exploration on the Zodiacs in the Rio Tinto National Park. It was nice to find lots of North American migratory birds still here in the tropics, including a Peregrine falcon, which was flying north, back to his breeding ground. Text: Rafael Robles, Naturalist; Photo:
