Fresh fish and dried butterflies

Before we got stuck in Lotus Land, we stopped in the city of La Ceiba. It’s one of the largest cities in Honduras, set on the Caribbean coast just across from the beautiful bay islands, with mountains and cloud forests behind it. Our interest was not the lovely setting, but rather lunch.

We had read in our guidebook about Sushi Palmira, a Japanese restaurant with a Honduran twist, and of course we couldn’t resist. It turned out to be fantastic. The menu listed six pages of maki (sushi rolls) created from muchos ingredientes exóticos. Our eyes bugged out and we heard bells ringing, and the arrival of the waitress triggered a frenzy of ordering that left us slumped and panting in our chairs while she murmured, shaking her head, “Es mucho…” as she walked back to the kitchen.

Then we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Quick service is not a watchword in Honduran restaurants in general, but this was extreme. After at least three quarters of an hour, the waitress finally returned, bearing a boatload of sushi. Literally. Okay, it was a small boat, but it took up most of the tabletop, and the sushi rolls aboard were each about five times the size of maki at home. Gulp. Then the waitress brought in another platter with more. She was right–about half that much would have made a hearty meal for the three of us. We girded our loins, fell to, and manfully devoured maki until we could barely sit upright. It was marvelous. One roll was coated in shredded fried carrots with a cane syrup glaze, another rolled in something chewy and bright yellow and stuffed with cream cheese and hot salsa. We petered out after all but six slices of maki, which we wrapped up and ate a few hours later as a chaser.

Our other goal in LaCeiba was the Butterfly and Insect Museum. If you’re thinking about a pretty greenhouse full of colorful butterflies darting about in the sun, forget it.

This is a personal collection of specimens – but what a collection! Retired teacher Robert Lehman, a resident of Honduras for many years, has displayed here thousands of butterflies and insects from Honduras, plus hundreds more from the rest of the world. From the moment we walked in the door, it was clear that Mr. Lehman is a true teacher: the first thing he did was gently offer a stag beetle for Joe to hold.

This isn’t a static museum; as Mr. Lehman walked around the tiny building with us, explaining and describing various creatures, he tilted the cases back and forth to show the shimmering color changes on the blue morpho butterflies, and took case off the wall so we could see the iridescence of the painted beetles more clearly. He showed us butterflies with fake eyes that make predators think an owl is staring at them, and butterflies with little dangly bits on their wings that predators bite at instead of their heads. We saw insects that look like leaves and insects that look like sticks. We saw moths the size of your head and butterflies with transparent wings. And we saw color: shining, sparkling, shimmering blues and oranges and reds, velvety blacks and yellows and browns, and pale greens and creams.

I’ve been a total failure at bird watching on this trip. Birds don’t hold still so you can get a good look at them, and even if they do, they inevitably have markings I can’t find in the field guide, or don’t have markings they should, or just aren’t in there at all. I finally ceded the field, and gave my (rather expensive) Central American bird guide to the bird enthusiast folks at D&D Brewery. But since our visit last week to Robert Lehman’s collection (and the purchase of his very useful photocopied butterfly guide) I have been able to identify a over half a dozen butterflies and insects with reasonable certainty. Woo hoo! That’s about the same number of birds I’ve successfully identified in the past two months.

Here, for your enjoyment, is a Citheraerias pireta pireta, which I spotted while hiking in the cloud forest near Lake Yojoa: