Captain's Log

Double click on any of the pictures to enlarge or view all pictures in the Road Trip Photo Gallery.

September - December 4, 2004:  Honduras Road Trip

September has arrived and we will be flying to Houston in just a few short weeks.  We are working on a long list of projects that we want to get completed before we go because when we get back there will be another list to complete. 

While in Houston we stayed with our good friends Linda and Richard.  They have a welcome back party for us when we get there and it gave us a chance to see a lot of old friends and catch up with what’s been happening with everyone.

How time flies!  Greg’s two-week stay is over and he is headed back to Honduras.  On his flight back he met a group of missionaries that were going to put electrical wiring in an orphanage in San Pedro Sula.  He volunteers to come back and give them a hand with the electrical work.  After he arrives back at the boat and checks everything out, he catches a bus back to San Pedro Sula and meets up with the group to help them complete their mission.  After four days they get it completed.  Greg has a great time working with all of them, but it’s time to head back to the boat in La Ceiba.

While in San Pedro Sula, Greg met Martha who lives in Tegucigalpa and has come to work with the group as a Spanish translator.  Martha tells Greg to let her know if we get a chance to get to Tegucigalpa and she would show us around.

Greg returns to the boat in La Ceiba and starts to work on his list of projects.  Only one week passes and Judy arrives back in La Ceiba after a month in Houston.  Together we work on several projects, but the time has come for some fun so it’s time for a road trip.

On November 9, 2004 we rent a car and we are headed out to tour the country of Honduras.  There are only two highways in all of Honduras to travel on, the rest of the roads you need a four-wheel drive vehicle.  As we head west toward Tela there are miles of pineapple and banana fields.  All of these are part of the Dole and Standard Fruit Companies.  Tela is a traditional Central American city with its narrow streets and sidewalks.  The road out of Tela is just a two lane and the other drivers on the road are wild and crazy.  They make a three-lane road out of a two-lane and pass when ever and whereever the want.  When a car is coming toward you on your side of the road you just pull over as far as you can and the car being passed dose the same and somehow the car doing the passing squeezes by without having an accident.  It’s crazy!

We travel past a high mountain lake called Lago de Yojoa.  It is known for its great fresh water fish and there are many small restaurants all along the shore to serve them up for you.  We stop at one and had a great lunch.

It is getting late in the day so we decide to stay in Comayagua for the night instead of going into Tegucigalpa late at night and after dark.  We contact Martha, our mission friend and let her know that we will be there in the morning. 

We get an early start and head for Tegucigalpa, the largest city in Honduras and the capital of the country.  We don’t have any directions to get to Martha’s home so we call her and she meets us at a gas station.  We spend the rest of the day with Martha and tour the city.  The city sits in a very mountainous area; so all the streets are very narrow and very steep.  The homes are built right into the hillsides.  Many of them made out of rocks and tin and many of them do not have electricity or running water.  We tour a museum, and visit a park that overlooks the entire city.  This is where the statue of Christ is. 

We end the day going to Martha’s home and seeing where and how she prepares the food to feed the 250 children in the hillside village.  Quite a production!  We are going to help the next morning and go with Martha to deliver her food to the children.  Martha takes us to a hotel close to her home and we get a good night sleep so we can be at Martha’s by seven to start preparing the food

 A lot of the food for the next day is prepared the day before.  The beans are cooked and the juice drinks are made and put into plastic bags.  Yes, drinks are served in plastic bags in many places in Central America.  You just bite a hole in the bag and you suck the liquid out.  It’s different, but it works.  Each morning the beans are blended in a blender to prepare them to become refried beans.  About 100 eggs are scrambled up.  Some type of meat is cooked and pieces of cheese are cut.  Then it all gets assembled into tortillas.  There is a woman that makes 900 tortillas for Martha every day.  Two tortillas are laid down on the table then the beans, meat, eggs and cheese are placed and two more tortillas are placed on top of that.  Each assembled tortilla is then placed in a plastic bag and put in a cooler to keep them warm till they are delivered to the children.  By about 9 A.M. all the coolers are loaded into the back of a four-wheel drive compact pickup truck and we are headed for the mountainside village.

We drive on the dirt road past homes made out of sticks and rocks and tin on the roofs.  The roads are so washed out that you think the truck will slide down the hillside.  We cross a small river that runs down the hillside and winds through more homes to get to the school.  The school is the only building in the village that is made out of wood and painted with a metal roof.  It has dirt floors and desk and chairs.  The children sit two to a chair and four or five to a desk.  All children in Honduras must wear uniforms or they cannot go to school.  For the people of this area it is a hardship to spend money on uniforms, but somehow they manage to get the uniforms, but there where many children not in school as we passed by them on our way here.

The teachers stop class when we arrive so that we can pass out the food.  The first and second grades are first.  Before the food is passed out the children all sing a Christian song and then they pray to bless the food.  We got to help pass out the food and all the children were so grateful.  Some would drink the drink and eat only half of the tortilla and we were told they would take the other half home to share with a brother or sister.  On to the third and fourth grade room and then the fifth and sixth graders.  All of the children were so polite and grateful for what they received.  After all the classes were given their food and drinks then we went out to a group of small preschoolers and a few older children that were not in school for some reason.  These children gathered in a circle and sang songs and prayed and were given food also.  Then it was time to leave.  As we drove off the children would wave and smile.  On our way down the mountain we stopped and gave food to children that Martha knew about that were not in school, but needed to have some food.   Wow!  What a program!  Martha and her group are really making a difference for these children every day.  What’s funny is that Martha told us that she is not a cook and she doesn’t even like to cook, but she prepares 250 meals a day for all these children that she loves so dearly.  What a great day!

When we finish with the feeding program and get everything back to Martha’s home we all head out to the Valley of the Angels.  Martha is our tour guide again.  We walk around this beautiful village that is nestled in the mountains and have a really nice lunch and visit shops that make local crafts.  Nearby is a mission house that we stop by and visit on our way back to Tegucigalpa.  Martha had been told that the woman that lives there, Sylvia, was very sick and Martha wanted to stop and check on her and her daughter Stephanie.  We found the Sylvia was feeling better and on her way back to a full recovery. 

That evening we all went out for pizza at a beautiful mall close to Martha’s home and our hotel.  We were headed out for Copan in the morning, but told Martha we would stop by and give her a hand in the morning preparing the food.

The next morning we were at Martha’s early to help and then we headed out for Copan.  Tegucigalpa is in the south central part of the country and to get to Copan which is in the far west end of the country you must travel back north almost the length of the country to get to the highway that goes to the west.  It’s an all day drive to get to Copan.

We arrive in Copan at about 3 in the afternoon and found a hotel.  The place we stayed at was very nice and very clean.  The cost was $15.00 U.S. per night.  What a bargain!  The hotel was a family business and the son, Darwin, spoke very good English and told us about horseback rides and the tours at the ruins.  He made arrangements for us to meet Charo in the morning for a horseback ride to the ruins and he arranged that his uncle, Julio to be our guide at the ruins because Julio spoke very good English and we would enjoy his tour very much.

All went like clockwork the next morning.  We met Charo and his horses, who took us high into the mountains on our ride, ending up at the entrance to the ruins. Where we met Julio and there was another couple, Chris and Mia who wanted to share our English speaking guide.   Julio was very knowledgeable about the ruins of Copan.  He told us that he started working with the excavating team when he was just twelve years old.  He learned to speak English from the teams that would come to work on the ruins.  We would guess Julio to be about forty-five years old so he has worked at the ruins for over thirty years.  It was a really long day and we were pretty beat at the end of the tour.  We hopped a cab back to town and to our hotel.

At the hotel we took a much-needed Cerveza break and noticed that while we were gone all day that Darwin had washed our dirty little rent car.  These people are just so wonderful to us.  The name of the hotel was Hotel MarJenny and if you ever go to Copan we would highly recommend it to you.  Darwin had also recommended a restaurant called Llama del Bosque.  We ate there three times and had a great meal every time.

It was Sunday and we decide to head back to La Ceiba.  We don’t have to return the car till Tuesday morning, but we decide to spend the night on the boat and get an early start the next morning on the highway that runs east to Trujillo.  We got to La Ceiba early so decide to head south out of La Ceiba on the dirt road that goes along the Rio Cangrejal into the mountains for a Sunday afternoon treat at Expats Rio Restaurant.  Expats has become our favorite place to spend Sunday afternoons because it is so beautiful to sit at the open-air restaurant that overlooks the river, waterfalls and mountains.  We know several friends that like to go there on Sundays so we are hoping to run into them and we do.  We have lunch with Phil and Martha Council, who live in La Ceiba and Ed Stone who is on a sailboat named Callisto at the same marina at the shipyard that we are at.  It’s a cloudy rainy day and the waterfalls are flowing very heavy.  The fog and rain make the jungle so beautiful!         

Early Monday morning we head out for Trujillo. It is about a 2 ½ hour drive to Trujillo thru lots of mountains and farms. About two miles out of Trujillo there is a “y” in the road north past Trujillo on a peninsula is Punta Castilla, which is the east most port that is accessible by road.   About an hours drive east of Trujillo the highway ends and the rest of the country of Honduras is only accessible by boat.  There is a very poor dirt road that requires a horse, mule or four-wheel drive to travel on, but we can go on this road with our rent car.  Puerto Castilla is across the bay from Trujillo and is a protected bay from the easterly trade winds.  The Spanish settled the area in the early 1500’s and a fort to protect the bay was built in 1525.  This port was where the Spanish brought all the gold and silver mined in the interior of Honduras to be shipped back to Spain.  The area is very rich in history and used to be a huge tourist area until hurricane Mitch hit in 1997.  Much of Honduras is still suffering from the damages caused by Mitch. We spend the rest of the day in Trujillo touring the fort that they are restoring with a small museum. Then had lunch at a local restaurant and checking out some of the local shops.   

We headed back to La Ceiba after our weeklong travel around the country of Honduras.  It is truly a beautiful country, but it has a lot of poverty and a very low economy.  The countrysides are full of poor farmers and the cities; especially San Pedro Sula has lots of industry and factories that can hire laborers at very low wages.  Some of the factories we saw were Toyota, Levi, Jockey, Dickie and Reebok to name a few. 

Out of all the cities in Honduras, La Ceiba is the most different.  The fruit companies out of the United States started La Ceiba.  The city is more like a city in the southeastern part of the U.S. with wide streets and sidewalks.  The Dole Company Honduras headquarters is here and the building and homes that are located at the headquarters campus resemble more of a southern plantation in the old south.  Most of the school here are bi-lingual, again because of the North American influence.  La Ceiba has become one of our favorite places that we have traveled to.