Why It's Called a Rainforest

After a night in a crummy hotel room back in "civilization" I awoke to puring rain. It looked as if a hurricane had landed right on the city of La Ceiba. Not wanting to stay in this particular room all day we braved the rain and set out towards the Jungle River Lodge. This is a place in nearby Pico Bonito National Park, a rainforest/cloudforest depending on what elevation you're at I guess. They promised a free night with one of their tours and that was good enough for cheap backpackers like us! But as we soon found out it was raining much too hard for any busses to make it out there. Nor would any person in their right mind want to be out there at the moment.We had to take a taxi and I think they were mighty surpised when we pulled up - apparently they had evacuated everyone else out that morning. We had the place to ourselves, along with a dog, a cat, and two parrots that could only say "hello." The lodge is right on a the Rio Cangrejal and I have never seen a more intense spectacle. The rain-swollen waters had choked and then flooded the channel, resulting in rapids too frightening to even look at. The water had risen over twenty feet; when we saw the river this morning I didn't even recognize it! We hiked a few miles in the rain the first day and got soaked. Today we did a canopy tour, where you climb up a hill and hook into one of many steel cable "zip-lines". You're about fourty feet up in the tree-tops, and slide down a cable at up to 50 mph. Feels a bit like being a monkey! The weather finally improved, more guests arrived, and we took off for the beach town of Tela. Now I´m hoping to finally see some sun.