I live in La Ceiba, Honduras, the town was founded around the end of the 18th century.
It's growth started after 1899 when Standard Fruit Company made it it's headquarters for
Honduras. It developed very rapidly and was promptly full of foreigners, North Americans,
Europeans, people of African origins called Garifunas, and English speaking blacks from
the Caribbean Islands, a few Chinese and other Orientals and the Palestinians who cornered
commerce in the town. Many industries developed including, shoe factories, liquor factories
lard, margarine, soap, soda bottling plant, brewery etc. All of these eventually closed or moved
to the major industrial city, San Pedro Sula.
La Ceiba was for many years the third largest city in the country, with lots of jobs, and a
very busy night life, lots of commercial enterprises. It was a real great place, but then
after the 1980's this all changed, industry moved, the exporting business ceased. There was
a commercial wharf where Standard Fruit (Dole) exported bananas, pineapples, coconuts and
grapefruit on a daily basis, these operations were moved to another port, and La Ceiba was
left with a small pier called muelle de cabotaje which serves the Bay Islands and the Mosquitia,
commerce of course dwindled.
Today the city has about 250,000 inhabitants, lots of unemployment and of course we have crime
like the rest of the country.
Despite all of this it is a very nice place, the people are very friendly and right close to
the city you can find great beaches, mountains up to 8500 ft high, of course all kinds of fauna
and flora, the Garifuna towns were people live as they have for centuries with their unique
culture and there are many other attractions.
This was the export pier, it used to be 1400 ft long, today it has been reformed and is a popular place to stroll.
Notice the Christmas tree is still up, I guess they figure they might as well leave it there, that way they won't have
to put it up again in December.
These two places are adjacent to the wharf.
This is a picture of the largest mall in town
Ok, the pictures aren't great but I took them with my phone's camera which isn't that great and also I have elemental tremor so I have slight tremor in my hands, that's why I have never been much into photography.
Hope you enjoyed this.
