Trip to Honduras...getting warmer....

To start off the New Year, I headed down to Honduras with my friend and roommate Kate to visit her old site and friends. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer about 9 months out of service. She invited me along with her to visit, which I am sooo grateful for because it was a wonderful experience and I learned a ton...not to mention had plenty of time to practice up on my Spanish skills (which I must admit need a lot of practice!).

Our first adventure was out to the campo in Buena Vista. Kate had worked on engineering plans for a water system to bring water into the town and to the houses. She worked with members of the rotary during this project and we met them and they drove us up to the community from the city of Santa Barbara.

It was verrry muddy, its a wonder we made it a few hours up a windy steep muddy road....

We were invited in for coffee after Kate had met with the men working on the pipe lines. This is a picture of the coffee mill which de-shells the coffee beans which grow in this area.

We stayed a few days in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara. This is where Kate was during her Peace Corps service. All the people were overly hospitable and invited us in for coffee and cake usually. Everyone was truly excited to see Kate, and you could see that she was loved and respected by her community. We went by her host family's house and they invited us in and we all chatted a while, we were then invited us to stay in one of their apartments for free while we were there, which was great!

This is our lovely morning breakfast...yummy coffee cookies given to us by a girl's mother Kate knew in the community. Cornflakes with milk in a bag, pancakes and our freshly brewed coffee sock coffee.
Here Kate is in the room on the roof where the family makes their tortillas and there's me having my morning coffee and looking out on the beautiful view of Santa Barbara below.

After a day of adventures through the city we came back to the apartment. I went to use the bathroom and was surprised to find a little furry friend frantically running around the rim of the toilet trying to stay above the water. So I told Kate, though she didn't really think it could be true. She checked, screamed, then flushed...which just gave the mousey a lil bath.
So we told the owners and in comes our rescue with a piece of wood, which she proceedes to kill our furry little friend with :( Well at least it gave the lil kiddies a good scare which was funny hehe, and I think the cat enjoyed the find.


We visited with Kate's old co-workers. Everyone there was great. I tried to have a conversation with some of the guys for a while in which I managed to embarase myself to no end...I think I'll be laughing at myself a lot more than usual these next few months!

This is the central park in Santa Barbara which had recently been renovated. They had a nice little bridge with tortugas turtles and a large nativity scene (common in the area for Christmas). To the left is Oscar a boy Kate had taught English to, we all went to the one vegetarian restraunt in town which was quite delicous!

We went down to the southern part of the country on a 7 hour bus ride to Lange to visit Laura a friend of Kate's. While we were there her host dad took us on a hike in the mountains. When we got to the top we could see a Volcano in El Salvador and Nicaragua across the water. Seeing 3 countries at once isn't something you get to do everyday, it was beautiful up there.