Tela - Ponta Sal

Friday morning I took a tour to a national park at a place called Ponta Sal - which losely translates as exit point.

About sixteen of us set off across the bay on a quick 45 minute boat ride over to the park where we dropped off at the beach.

After a stroll through the jungle we came to a place where Captain Morgan the famous pirate used to hide his ships when he wasn't out raiding - apparently every so often people come here with metal detectors looking for lost gold, no one has had any luck yet...

Just around the corner on the beach we were able to see some panther (or is it jaguar? I forget now) tracks!

Another walk through the jungle past various spiders and very small biting ants that seemed to take a fancy to everyones ankles we came to another beach where the boat was waiting to pick us up to take us to another beach for lunch.

Whilst we waited for the boat our guide found us some howler monkeys. Hopefully I'll get some better pictures on my tour of mosquitia. Apparently the monkeys are very territorial and if they don't like you they'll throw poo at you. If you really unlucky they'll wee on your head.

On the way to lunch we passed some rocks. These rocks used to be just one rock but during the war with El Salvador (known as the "Football War") the rock was used for bombing practice and now there are several rocks.

After a bit of hair raising ride past/in between more rocks we stopped at a small Garifuna settlement for lunch and relaxation.

It was then time to come home as the water gets quite choppy towards the afternoon. On the way back we passed through a bunch of jellyfish. Out captain kindly fished a couple out for us: