We finally ventured out......

A gathering of all the business volunteers in Honduras finally got us out of our house and away for a few days. We had been a bit paranoid about leaving the house alone after the break in, but eventually things will call you away and you just have to do it! We travelled to the other side of Honduras, to a town called Gracias.

Each project (remember, there are 6 – business, health, water and sanitation, protected areas management, youth development and municipal development) meets each year to talk about what we’re doing and share ideas. Here is a picture of us with the business group:

And this is only 1 of 6 groups! (There are a lot of peace corps volunteers in Honduras –it’s the 2nd largest post in the world.)

After that we decided to attend the “Noche de Fumadores” (Smokers’ Night) in a nearby town, Santa Rosa de Copan. (It’s a festival celebrating the town’s cigar making heritage.) We weren’t the only gringos who decided to go; only about 50 other peace corps volunteers went so we took up a long table at the event:

Getting crazy with Marcus:

Despues….we had to do one more “fun” thing before heading home – hiking Celaque, the tallest mountain in Honduras. At about ~9,000 ft it wouldn’t turn heads back home but that is sort of tall for a Central American mountain. Anyway, it took about two days so we had to backpack in. It was cold and wet up there near the top (its cloud forest up there) but it was well worth the swollen knees and sore calves (and the bit of pica pica that I got into again). The view from the top was amazing.

“TEAM SUMMIT!” (Heading out on the trail with friends Annie and Luke). That is Celaque in the background:

Cloud forest:

At the top of Honduras:

The view from the top:



And when we made it home, everything was fine. Apparently the barbed wire, reinforced door frame, Conor spending the night a few times AND hiding everything of value before leaving worked!