The Old Wharf

The old wharf of La Ceiba, Honduras was constructed by Standard Fruit Company during the second decade of the twentieth century. It would eventually be 1400 feet long and would be receiving fruit vessels every day apart from all the small freight and fishing boats that worked the Bay Islands, Mosquitia, La Ceiba route. It was a very busy port, like all water fronts it was full of vendors, eateries, bars and all sorts of commerce, people lived off of this place by the thousands. But then about 1985 Standard (Dole) decided to move part of it's operations to Puerto Castilla, as they were moving to container shipments and La Ceiba's wharf could not handle this. La Ceiba received fruit from the farms via railroad in box cars and these were sent to the wharf for the fruit loading. So after containers came, this wharf was only used for fruit going to Wilmington, Delaware and Europe and the ocassional ship to Russia.

This is a really old picture of the wharf when it was busy

Then in 1989 catastrophe struck, a very strong gale hit and a freight vessel partially destroyed the wharf, the government in 1990 decided to repair the wharf, but at the same time started building another smaller port at a river mouth 5 km from town that would serve only the small freight and fishing boats, at the same time Standard decided to move all it's operations to Castilla, thus the old wharf became a white elephant, only used by boats that needed fresh water, no maintenance was given and eventually another gale destroyed about 2/5 of the wharf, so the city lost all the jobs that this wharf provided and the railroad went bust. It became a derelict and people started living under the part that was on land, homeless, drug addicts and even a few criminals, the only people who went to the wharf were fishermen, who by now would get almost nothing as the abundance of fish when the wharf was busy was partly because of the food leftovers thrown overboard by the crews of the vessels, it became a very dangerous place.

This is the wharf after being abandoned for a decade

Then in 2012 a group of people decided to repair what was left of the wharf and create a place where people could go and have a nice time. Here are some photos of what it looks like today.

Box car at the entrance

Here you can see one of the posts of the original wharf in the background

So this is the new Tourist Wharf in La Ceiba, it is very safe, there is a police station at the entrance, also a restaurant and on the wharf itself there are several kiosks thats sell ice cream, snacks, sodas etc. Of course you will still find fishermen here.

It is mostly visited at night, when there is a cool sea breeze, it is well illuminated, I guess I wouldn't call it much of tourist attraction as I don't know anyone who would come here because of a wharf, unless they are wharf freaks, but it is much better than what we had 5 years ago.

I took the pictures of the repaired wharf today, it is an overcast day as you can see by the pictures and in fact it is raining now.