We arrived in La Ceiba at 2:30PM, at which time we took another bus to our hotel, located thirty minutes from the city near a place called The Jungle River. On that day, in that part of the country, the weather was incredibly hot.

As Fred had stressed us to get up early in the morning so we would have the evening to party in town, we were quite surprised to see that no-one was planning anything for the night. We sort of happened to slowly figure that one out after realising that everyone was staring at the candle, watching junebugs die in it’s flames for a few hours or so. We really had a great night alone at the hotel, it’s a good thing we had gotten up early in the morning.

The Jungle River Lodge Hotel offered a really nice white water rafting package for a small price, and so the next morning, exhausted as we were from our previous night, we went up the river with our rafts and instructors to get ready. To get to the top of the current, we had to cross the rapids on foot, climb on boulders of great heights and dive from ten-meter-high cliffs (the scared off girls had the option to jump off a lower ledge). It was really great fun.

At the lodge itself, we had a very scenic view of the steep surrounding mountains, and had at our availability the river to swim and dive into from a tall rock. The lodge was very nice, and its employees were dressed in the fashion of Tarzan and Jane, including the massive hairlocks. They had good music playing all night long, and it seemed like too short a time had passed before we went off in the shuttle back to La Ceiba.

When we got to La Ceiba, we met a new friend from Mexico who helped us get around to the Hotel California (that proved to be much of a challenge, since there was no sign at the entrance, and no one seemed to have really heard of it before). The streets of La Ceiba were filled with half a million people from all around the world, there were cultural displays present in the streets, peddlers were selling their wares at fair prices all over the place and some really popular latino bands were playing at every intersection from the main street.

We soon found out why we had not seen any pretty girls during our stay in Honduras: we had not gone to La Ceiba yet, and there seemed to be most of them. I sipped at the most expensive Scotch Whiskey I could find all night (a meager USD $30 for twelve year old stuff) and we really had a good time.

For a fair amount of time there was to be found in the streets of La Ceiba parade floats of dancing women sponsored by large corporations and important investors. People living in higher appartments were throwing out bead necklaces from their balconies to a craving crowd. Occasionally a man would throw out a few Lempiras out of the window, and people would be driven mad for it.

The general sense of excitement and ecstasy was perpetuated throughout the night into to small hours of the next morning. At that time, all my friends happened to be either sick or really tired, and I wondered in the streets of this unknown city in search of a nice club to pass some time. I eventually found a very nice place called Le Pacha, which was a two-storey discoteca built under a sort of tent roof, with a decorative indoor pool. The cover fees were set to LPS. 200, which is quite high in Honduras. The drinks were cheap, and there I danced (or tried to) with new friends until 5:30AM. I basically got no sleep at all, but I had the greatest night in a long time.

This week we met with new volunteers, all but one from the United States. One of them, called Jake, has been volunteering with Global Volunteer Network in the past, and has been making a living recently here in La Esperanza. Not surprisingly, he plans on moving on to bigger and greater places in the near future. Volunteering seems to be more of a popular solution to travelling around the world than we first expected. Just this week we met with seven new volunteers; it’s great to have new people around sometimes.

We have had serious problems with the water from our first day in La Esperanza, and not being able to wash properly was a major hindrance to our comfort here. Along with the project coordinator, GVN has arranged for us to change households to one with running water, provided the city tanks are operational.

As we arrived to our household after getting back from Los Hoyos, we got a call from someone at GVN telling us we were to pack up and get ready to move to a different house. We got to our new house and met our new family, younger at heart and more talkative than our former. Most families here seem to comprise from the whole family tree, and sometimes it is hard to see who is who in regards to another.

We soon found out just how much party animals they were when they asked us to invite our friends over for a night of dancing: since they had heard that Dre, Fred, Victoria and I were also going to the carnival at La Ceiba on the weekend, they figured we might need a bit of help mastering the local dancing. And oh, did we… The next night Fred and Victoria came over and we danced on Punta, Merengue and Reggaeton (I guess the local “pop music”) all night. How embarrassing.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that Elvis, the older son of our family, had something going on for Fred, as he kept demonstrating daring dance moves with her. We found that quite amusing.

The next morning, despite the late night, we were to get up very early again to catch the 4:30AM bus, and again, Fred had insisted we go get her and Vicky at their household before attempting the ‘dangerous’ walk through the city. While I was getting ready that morning to go to their place, my friend Dre was being sick again in the washroom. We were already running a few minutes late when I decided we should wait no longer, and so I left him at our house while I went out to fetch the ladies.

Of course, they could do nothing else than complain at my five-minutes-late arrival at their place while I waited for them to finish up whatever they were doing and gather up their stuff. Five minutes had already passed by when I passed through the gates again, ready to go and regroup with Dre at our meeting spot. However, things could not really run so smooth without one thing going awry; too busy complaining, Fred let one of the dogs out in the street, and we had to wait another twenty minutes as she scampered off in the streets like a wild goose running after the dog, trying to herd him back inside the gates. Fair enough, if she had not cried out the whole time how I should have caught the dog in the first place, awakening everyone in their nearby homes.

When the girls were finally on their feet and ready to go, they ran off in the distance at a trot, with me trailing behind them, all the way to our meeting point with Dre. They had to turn back a few times as I cried after them when they took the wrong turn, but generally, the walk over there went well. Thank god we had taken the trouble of meeting at their place so we could protect them from the rabid dogs. We never really figured out what purpose we served as far as protection went: the girls (ahem, Fred) seemed quite content to walk off at a distance to lead the way.

I just had to write about Fred.

We woke up early monday to catch the bus to San Pedro Sula at 6:00AM because we were not sure if the 7:00AM bus existed. It’s existence seemed too mythical to rely upon.

Back at the Metropolitan Bus Station, we stopped in the food court to get something to eat. Since our friend Fred had been conditioning us to stop spending money from the start of our trip, it seemed natural for me to open up a peanut butter and jelly jar to make some cheap canadian-style sandwiches. As me and my friend Dre were spreading the peanut butter with our hunting knives in the middle of the bus station, Fred went out and bought a fancy freshly-pressed tropical juice along with an exquisite plate consisting of a variety of meats and vegetables, followed by french fries and rice. She did look pretty full afterwards, but I did not dare comment on her spendings.

It just so happened that we had spent our last few weeks in the countryside, and the feminine sightings we had had in those times had been less than up to par with any respectable canadian standards. As we were innocently enjoying our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had this vision at twelve o’ clock of our first really beautiful, incredibly stunning, amazingly gorgeous, astonishingly shapely and perfectly pretty latina walking by with her mother (we are running out of adverbs and adjectives at this point). In all the surprise she had bestowed upon my eyes, I could not help but point her out very discreetly and very very subtly to my friend Dre. He also seemed to be surprised by her rare aesthetics (for the Hondurian standards we had met). As we were chatting away of nothing and everything, she kept spurring our conversation for a good half hour. We had the pleasure of noticing that she also seemed to be looking our way occasionally and laughing with her mother. We sort of shrugged it of as one of those gringo spotting moments.

When we all got up to leave, under Fred’s urgent war-cry-like signal, the girl we had been talking about got up and walked towards my friend Dre. She had a piece of paper, without doubt written out by a friend of her’s, on which was inscribed in English:

Hello! Can I take a picture os you?

Sure, I mean, why not?

Taken aback by the sudden manifestation of a lady we had only seen up to now in the perifery of our vision, Dre smoothly babbled something that sounded like a reply while she took a picture of him with her phone. I don’t know if I could have pulled the same cool he had at that moment. Since he was not very well versed in Spanish, and she could speak very little English, the conversation was limited to a few sputtered words. Our mamasita further managed to ask for Dre’s email address and took my picture. She was disappointed to learn that my friend Dre had a girlfriend.

We found the encounter quite funny, and afterwards always referred to it as the angel 14 girl (inspired by her email address).

We caught back to a seemingly all-too-unimpressed Fred that pushed us to the ticket booth. The drive back to La Esperanza, as with any event pertaining to La Esperanza, was quite uneventful.

We mostly spent our week working on the house in Chiligatoro. However, one evening of utter boredom, Dre, our volunteering friend Stacey and I decided to go on a adventure. We opened up our Honduras guidebook to a page entitled Los Hoyos. It talked of an untouched and never-much-really-before-studied historical site near La Esperanza. The site apparently consisted of a myriad of deep cylindrical holes (hoyos) in the ground. Fair enough, we went on a two-hour hike up the mountain to Los Hoyos.

One thing I learned from the hike up to the site, pertaining to bodily functions, was that the rate of belching was not only dependant on the ingestion of carbonated beverages (such as Banana Tropical), but also on atmospheric pressure. The hike was very scenic (pictures to come) and exhausting.

On our way back from Los Hoyos we hitchhiked from the back of a truck. Back in town, as we were getting down from the truck, we met with a bunch of schoolgirls in their uniforms. Opening scene of The Giggling Schoolgirls, Episode II.

They asked for our names and made us speak in french. One girl told me I had nice eyes, and the pack went giggling away. We could still hear them crying out in ecstasy in the distance after being seperated for a few minutes. Admittedly, they were probably not the same girls we had encountered in Episode I, but they fit rather well in the same category.

That was the end of that Episode.

We knew before arriving that the Copán ruins were quite a touristic attraction for Honduras. We knew when we arrived just how touristic the Copán village was compared to what we had seen of the country. As we got down the bus, I could swear we got at least half a dozen offers for the best hotels in town at USD $5.00. Seeing as we already had reservations at a similar-priced hostel, we had to steer away from the hordes of assaulting marketeers. Our friend Dre had quite a different idea and was trying to put the prices down to USD $4.00 (after which, if they agreed, he proceeded into trying to bring it down to USD $3.00, and so on…).

We found our hostel very quickly — called En la Manzana Verde (In the Green Apple), it looked like a dirty shithole from the street. We looked back to the other nice hotels nearby in deep regret, and braced ourselves while we walked through the gates in the private garden. There it looked fairly decent, with a nice porch and a very tall mango tree in the center. The hostel really was not that great, but we had running hot water and a kitchen, should we want to cook some food.

There we met some very interesting people from all around the world: there was a girl from Switzerland that had very droopy eyes and a nice mellow accent, a guy with short blonde hair from the UK, another from Holland, a blonde girl from Australia that happened to be a scuba diver, and a couple from Canada who were teaching English in Tegucigalpa, the capital. The latter two stayed longer with us, and we later learned that the man was going to Harvard in political science and that his lady was going to Browne University in drama.

The village of Copán is built near the mayan ruins, and fancies well-cobbled streets and lots of tourist shops. Most of the city is distributed around (and down from) the city square, which features some plant gardens and a fountain. The shops mostly sold the same things — hand-made Hondurian and Cuban cigars, stone sculptures and mayan artifacts, cheap wooden jewelry and local coffee. Some of the fancier shops had more expensive kitchen wares and jewelry made of gold and silver. Gemstones such as jade are quite popular there, as the Mayan used to control most of the jade traffic in Central America.

We had a few plans for our stay at Copán, the first of which consisted of a hike through the mountains up to a good spot where we could see the city. At dawn, we went in search of sunset. The view was beautiful, and as with the rest, I will put up pictures when I get back home, or as soon as I get a chance.

The highlight of our trip to Copán was the visit of the ruins. It took us a few minutes to walk down to them. There we purchased our tickets and a tour guide. I have honestly no idea how to sum up whatever the guide told us about the ruins. They were great, arranged in big pyramids around a large flat field, and perfectly straight. This is really where pictures are worth a thousand words. At the entrance to the ruins we have seen and taken photographs of the Macaw bird, the national bird of Honduras.

The next day, we drove up to some hot spings fourty-five minutes from the village. The drive there had the most splendid view of the Honduran scenery we have seen yet. Unfortunately, none of us had our cameras with us at that time. The hot springs are a natural source of hot water arranged for tourists in a fashion as to provide hot baths (up to 50 odd degrees Celsius), ‘steam baths’ and a natural sauna. It really was an incredible experience, and we all enjoyed it very much. The view and overall feeling of relaxation was epic.

Back in Copán, we met a friendly fellow who just happened to be a drug dealer. No mom, we did not buy.

After much perusing of the city shops, we found one really worth it’s weight in gold — litterally. La Casa del Jade, hidden away from the town square, contains some of the most valuable jewelry of Honduras. Since the area is reknown for its jade trade, and since it is, after all, called the house of jade, it featured many pieces of jade. It also had very high quality pearls, opals, turquoise, gold and silver.

At that store we met with a really cool woman (who was trying to sell us her stock). After a while, we started speaking in Spanish and had quite a lenghty conversation. We have learned that she puts sugar in her milk and that there are about ten ways to say “filthy spying wrench” in Spanish. We talked with her until the store was about to close, at which time my friend Dre, not very experienced in Spanish, wanting to say “You go home, your shift is done for tonight”, said “Vamos a ti casa anoche” (We’re going at your place for the night). Yes, very well done indeed, Dre.

Two times there we ate at a fancy restaurant. Wanting to save money, the first time I opted for just a salad and a Sprite. The salad contained two slices of tomato, two slices of cucumber, two slices of radish and one piece of avocado, with no actual salad. It cost me around 95% of a full meal. Thinking I was just very unlucky, the next day I ordered only drinks. I bought two shots of Black Sambuka (two for the price of one), which ended up costing me LPS. 110. With just LPS. 10 more, I could have had a full meal. I think I gave up on fancy food after that. On the upside, the waitress was fantastic and very charismatic.

The drive to San Pedro Sula, our first destination (and main transfer point for the national transit system), was quite scenic and enjoyable. I slept the whole way there.

My first sight of San Pedro Sula, reknown as the industrial capital of Honduras, was its famous and new Metropolitan Bus Station. We got out of the bus and into this massive building to find ourselves in awe of its size. It reminded us more of an airport station than a bus station, not only for it’s size (a number of times larger than Moncton’s airport), but also for the excessive availability of chain stores and a food court.

Our friend Fred then frantically proceeded into rushing us to the other side of the station, where we boarded our next bus thirty minutes early. The drive to Copán city was quite scenic and enjoyable.

We found ourselves going through eight roadblocks along the way. At one of them, the bus was stopped and parked on the side of the road for a few minutes. After a little while, we saw some very heavily armed policemen mounting it and searching it’s passengers (presumably for cocaine). All my friends handed over their passports to the policemen, who looked at them for a long time blankly before handing them back over to each of us. As I was not carrying my real passport with me at the time, I handed over a color photocopy to the policeman, who seemed baffled by the piece of paper. He asked for my real passport, which I could obviously not provide. I had to do the next most obvious thing and hand him out my canadian driver’s license. He accepted that and moved on to the last one on the bus, our friend Fred. She had no idea she was soon to be arrested for terrorism. Neither of us did.

As she had not seen wise to bring her real passport with her, she produced a color photocopy just like mine. The same police officer, with a hand resting on his AK-47, seemed just as baffled by Fred’s paper as he was by mine. Maybe it was a black and white copy? Seeing as Fred had not thought it wise to bring other proof of canadian citizenship or identity, the police officer was insisting that she could not hand over a photocopy as an official document. He called over another man, with his finger resting on the trigger of an equally impressive firearm (I presume they weren’t fucking around). The pair was trying to communicate with Fred verbally (at least for now), but since she had not thought it wise to learn Spanish, they were quickly becoming aggravated by the minute. I thought the scene was rather funny.

The two men then called up their superintendant for help. He came up into the bus and down the cramped alley towards us. They were all speaking very fast, and I guess the jist of it all was that Fred should not travel without her passport, if she really had one. I thought the whole scene was even funnier than before, but at this stage I could not help but giving Fred a hand (only figuratively, as I could not reach her between all the firearms). I calmly explained the leading officer that we were all volunteers working in La Esperanza to build homes for a family in great need. We were a group from Canada visiting the Copán ruins over the weekend. He grudgingly handed over Fred’s copy back after warning us on the importance of possessing a real passport with us at all times while traveling in Honduras.

Minutes later, as I took a peek at the nearby seat, I could still see Fred shaking and furiously writing a diary entry. Good thing she was there to lead us to safety once more.

Admittedly, I can’t always be so smooth. Five minutes from Copán city we passed by the ruins and the bus driver indicated it was our stop. I made my way to the front of the bus and got off to wait for my friends. After a few seconds, I was getting a bit anxious, as I thought they might have missed the bus driver’s directions. When the bus started moving along, I totally freaked out and ran behind it, catching up with it and walking back down the alley to my seat in silence and embarrassment. (Someone could have said something, perhaps?)

Our second week at La Esperanza also happened to be our longest. It was filled with yapping dogs at night and the sounds of our croaking parrots at home. We slept very well for those four days. We spent most of our workdays digging trenches for the house we are building in Chiligatoro.

One notable event of those four days was the discovery, at the Mercadito Melissa, of a two-for-one deal on galletas de Oreo, as they say over here (They don’t seem to know what an Oreo cookie is). Unfortunately, when I brought my four packs of 48 cookies for LPS. 90 at the counter, I found out the offer was only valid for the paquetes amarillos — the chocolate ones I am allergic to. On the spot, I was quite irritated, so I declared I would write about it in a blog post. Well done.

Later on that week, as we were taking a walk around the city, we had our first encounter with the Giggling Schoolgirls. We wanted to check out a small clothes shop at the other end of the city, and as we entered it we saw a pack of them at the snearby school’s gates, pointing at us and crying out to us. There was nothing of notable interest in the store. However, when we came out twenty minutes later, we found the same girls still there waiting for us to come out. They were now clearly crying out for my friend Dre “La camisa azul, camisa azuuuuuuuuuuul!” (Blue shirt, blue shiiiiiiiiiiirt!). He was obviously enjoying it, for he started waving and laughing at them as he blew a kiss at a distance. By that time they were all chanting in english “I looove youuuuuu!”. I thought that may have been the highlight of our week. End of The Giggling Schoolgirls, Episode I.

Our short stay at La Esperanza was nearing to an end that week, and we decided thursday night that we were too lazy to pack up our stuff for the next morning — we were to wake up at 2:30 AM the next day, throw some stuff in our bags, and leave for Copán city.

We woke up the next morning at 3:00 AM, threw some stuff haphazardly in our bags, and left for Copán city. The moment we got out of the house (after savouring our Corn Flakes sin leche), we realized the walk to the bus station might just not be as much of a breeze as it had been in the past. We could see nothing of the street under our feet: they were a mass of black darkness marked by the faint moonlight on the walls of the surrounding houses. It would have made for a pleasing stroll if not for the presence of rabid starving dogs in the middle of the street. Usually, they are quite calm and restful during the day, but a certain quality of the night seems to bring them to life at dusk. We walked the streets with our knives out and ready (Dre was equipped with his steeltoes) to the house where our other two friends were staying.

Once again, we had to wait after them for a while, as they were not yet ready.

We made our way to the bus station a few minutes early, and in doing so encountered the usual drunkards of La Esperanza, some more dogs and very little light. Thank god our friend Fred was there to lead us to safety. /subtle sarcasm

I have been staying in a small city called La Esperanza for over a week now, and my first impressions of Honduras have since been altered ever so slightly to accomodate a few previously undiscovered aspects of the people, their culture, and the way they live.

The internet cafes here are actually quite numerous and decent; some have webcams I can use to talk with friends and family a few times a week. There are two large markets here, quite popular, that carry everything from fruit to fake brand name leather belts. The city of La Esperanza is much larger and busier than I would have thought earlier.

However, if I could sum up everything I know about this place in a few words, I would have to say it is the dirtiest place I have ever lived in. I have learned from my stay here that if the country is not covered and filled by dust, it is saturated and impregnated in mud. One could say that, as a general rule of thumb, it rains every day after midday here; to be fair, we did arrive just when the rain season was unleashing its first thunderous roars and soaking rains.

After a long and breathtaking drive through the mountaneous terrain of Honduras, we have come to live with a local family in this small city, and I have to say that the friendliness of the Hondurian people is incredibly sincere. However, I have found, much to my surprise, and quite notably, that the stereotypical image of the obese American is outweighed (no pun intended) by the standard hondurian person. People here are generally enourmous, and feature none of the attractive features north americans have come to expect from “brazilian babes”. Everyone eats the same thing and no healthy food can be found in the supermarkets. Everything they eat is deep-fried, and I have even had deep-fried ‘plantin’ bananas.

The family we are staying with is relatively friendly, but we rarely get anything other than corn flakes (sin leche, in my case) for breakfast. We rarely eat something that is not deep-fried (beans and juice seem to be an exception to the rule, but I am not sure about the beans) and we always eat the same thing. Me and my friend have found a scarce supply of whole wheat bread to complement some peanut butter and jam we have bought in the local supermarket. Whenever we have a bit of extra hunger, they provide us with a taste of our own good country.

Driving to work each morning is quite a pain; Paulo (sp?) comes to pick us up in his old and rusty truck at 7 every day. The drive to work takes around 45 minutes of pothole-dodging (although Paulo does not seem to be very good at that) on a rugged dirty old sinuous road. The volunteers over there have just finished building a kitchen for a local family, and we are now digging down the foundation of a second house for another family whose drunken father drowned in a nearby pond.

Our job usually consists of digging a level foundation for the house and filling trenches with rocks where the walls will eventually stand. This week, we have been mixing different types of dirt to somehow fill what used to be the trenches up to a 50 cm stub of a wall. The tools we use are the traditional pick-axe and shovel, and we mainly work with what material we have onsite — we get sand and rocks from surrounding lands, and previous volunteers have brought water over from a distant cascade.

The weeks are generally uneventful: some days we get down in the city to shop (not much to shop, really, but we try our best) or buy fruits at the market. We are still practicing our Spanish, but are getting slightly better at it each day. The weekends are what really brings this country to life!

Our first weekend trip was to a waterfall near el Lago de Yojoa. We took the 7:30 bus (which departed at 7:15) in the direction to San Pedro de Sula, meaning to drop off midway to el Lago de Yojoa. There, unfortunately, my pair of Diesel shoes were stolen by an older-looking man wearing a sombrero. Fortunately, I have insurance that covers stolen goods up to a certain amount, so I am confident that I will be able to sort the matter out no problemo. The bus driver dropped us off at the lake, which, in the midday sun, was shining in all its splendor. We were to stay at the D&D Bed and Breakfast and Brewery hotel, so we asked around for directions, to no avail. Slightly discouraged, I found it a good idea to purchase a Pepsi at a store nearby. To much of my American suprise, the only store which was advertising Pepsi only sold Coca-Cola. Another of the Hondurian pecularities I have discovered in the last few days.

After a bit of reckoning of our travel guide, we found out that we were dropped off on the wrong side of the lake. We started walking in direction of La Guama, the next small town on our way. After about an hour, it became clear that we would need to hitchhike our way to the other side of the lake, as our skin and water supply was no match against the equatorial sun.

Unseasoned hitchhikers as canadians may be, we managed to get into a caravan heading the same way as us. There, we caught a sursaturated bus to Peña Blanca. Our book directed us towards La Mochita, and again we caught a school bus on our way there. After quite a lot of time, we walked deep into the woods to D&D, a famous American hotel in Honduras. Much to our surprise, however, we found out shortly thereafter that there were no available rooms for us four. The girls apparently responsible for the caretaking did not speak a word of English, and the owner, Robert Dale, was nowhere to be found. After much debating, we were finally presented to a single room with a bed and a toilet. We could not stay here, but we did not know what to do or where to go.

Me and my friend had a LPS 34.50 beer (they did not have any amber ale, so we had to do with a paler brew), which amounted to about CND 2.50$. Let’s just say it was not the best investment I have ever made. Quite amusingly, the lady serving the beer had to whip out a calculator for 40 – 34.50 (not that that had anything to do with our frustration at that point).

We found out, pleasingly, that there was a very nice private hotel just next door that would give us two rooms and two washrooms, with a small lobby, for just LPS 1200.00 total a night. After a bit of negotiations, we brought the price down to LPS 1000.00, which brought us each down by around USD $12.50. It was the first time since we arrived in La Esperanza that we could get a proper shower; with running hot water, it was a dream come true. All of us were happily enjoying the moment, while trying our best to ignore another of our friends, which kept whining over our expenses — come on, at $12 a night… are you for real?!

We went back that evening to Peña Blanca, where we took a bus to the waterfalls. They are apparently located in a relatively touristic site. After some more wishful walking, we got to the site and purchased a well earned burger meal and beer. We got a guide to help us down to the fourty-three-meter-tall waterfalls. We were able to make our way through the rocks and under the crashing streams of water, into hidden caves and back. A few times to move on we had to make an impressive jump down heaps of rocks, one of them fifteen meters high. It was one of the most fabulous adventures we have had in ages.

Getting back to good old La Esperanza the next morning was a breeze, as we were now seasoned explorers in this part of the country. That morning we were treated to all-too-american blueberry pancakes from the D&D restaurant next doors. On our way back, we met with a particularly ill drunkard (these are too frequently found around town, face down in the mud, but we had our moment with this guy). We had a good time ignoring him while he stood at eye level with us, speaking spanish rubbish at what gringos we were. He was begging for water, and had quite a drool on the two girls with us. My friend Dre had a good time teasing the man, who was offering ‘favours’ for water (and that’s an understatement).

As much as we had a sunny and hot time away from the city, as soon as we came back we were faced with the incredible reality that in this town, it always rains. The streets were muddy to the ankles again and we trotted miserably to our homestays. Our eventful weekend was a lesson for all of us, and we soon booked all our accomodations for the next few incoming trips. We plan on going to the Copán ruins, go to the international festival in La Ceiba, and visit the marvelous caribbean beaches at Roatán.

I am writing today on an oldschool 56k modem from a country I had barely heard from before. This all started when me and a few friends from university decided it would be a good idea to enroll on a volunteering trip to a third world country. We would enroll, invest a few thousand dollars in the trip and for preparations, and that would be it! The idea was to take part of a building project just outside La Esperanza; it would look great on our resumes, and would serve us well for our medicine interviews later on. We were eager to be a part of a humanitarian effort, and the excitement did nothing but grow as the date of departure approached.

I had all my preparations taken care of and was to drive down to Halifax on the third of may, whereupon we would embark for New-York, Miami and Tegucigalpa the next day. The day of my departure from home was not without any surprises, however! As we were boarding the plane at Halifax at 1:15 PM, I had planned on departing at 9:00 in the morning. Plans changed quite fast when in the midst of my sleep I received a call from one of my friends who was coming over to pick me up within minutes.

We arrived in Halifax very early, with our parents and dearest friends. The flight to New-York was relatively uneventful, but there we found a plethora of shopping corners in the airport. I have probably had less than five hours of sleep in the last two days, hanging around in JFK or Miami International. We stayed a few hours in JFK, but we had a full 13 hours of wait in Miami. Our sleep was all to frequently interrupted by the automatic announcements they had in Miami.

Me and another of my friends, baffled by the carelessness of US security agents compared to their Canadian peers, and motivated by a sort of mischief spirit, exchanged passports to see if we would be intercepted at the gates. As the airport incessantly cautioned over showing proper identification papers when crossing the gates, we were surpised to see that the security agents saw no difference between our curly and straight hair. It did not leave the strong impression of security that we were led to believe from the US.

We found, very unfortunately, that most of the people at the US airports were rather reluctant to talk, or outright impolite. However, when we boarded the airplane from Miami to Tegucigalpa, we found out that we were going to stay with a nice people. We were immediately surrounded by Spanish advertising and newsletters, the air flight attendants seemed to talk Spanish better than they did English, and we were there, practicing short sentences in our seats. I will finally get the immersion I was looking for to master a third language… hopefully I will have time enough in four weeks of stay here.

Getting down just outside of Tegucigalpa was not without its difficulties, and we had quite an interesting experience there. Although there are currently to the best of my knowledge no officially reported cases of the Swine Flu here, we were greeted by a number of employees with masks urgently pressing us to sign some papers alledging we were free of the symptoms of the virus. There was a long lineup to get through the gates and the quick checkup that extended beyond the lower floor lobby and, quite problematically, into the escalators. Quite amusingly, people were piling up at the bottom of the escalator with all their luggage!

There we met with a nice lady from Argentina with whom we talked about Honduras and our own beloved country. She proved to be extremely useful (and nice!) later on when we tried to get through the gates. As we slept through part of the flight, me and another of my friends were missing some papers which the distributed in the airplane duraing the trip. We were trying to get our hands on a copy of those papers, to no avail. They were not letting us cross the gates, and we were going to be stuck somewhere between Honduras territory and international territory! Kinda reminded me of the movie The Terminal…

We were afraid we would not be able to cross the gates, as the agents there were not being very helpful to us, when this lady we met earlier came back and told us “you are my nephews now, quiet and follow me! Hide what papers you have beside your passport!”. She spoke to a few security officers, which in turn led us inside the gates. We went through without much trouble, and I daresay we might have had some if not for her.

We met with Nicholas (sp?) at the Terminal, who led us around Tegucigalpa and around the city. Let’s just say the people here do not drive like we do in Canada! We ended up rolling on a huge nail and getting a flat, so we had to drive slowly in order to preserve what air we had in the tires. We filled them up at a gas station on the way, and finally reached a roadside mechanic. That did the job for us!

We are currently staying at a 16$ a night hotel, which is surprisingly nice, with a large pool in an indoor court. I ate a typical dish from this region, and I would venture to say that it was the greatest piece of food I have had in days, if not weeks. It looks like my allergy problems will not be of much consequence here, but hey- who know what the future holds!

This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and I would glady share some pictures here, but I fear the internet connection is rather slow, and I had to try for thirty minutes just to get my WordPress blog to load at all.

I will keep posting as frequently as possible, but now time flies by too fast and I need to try out the shower.