Thursday morning we dropped the kids off at school at 8am and then I was off for the weekend! I got off early because whenever we have to work on a government holiday we get an extra day off. Since Soraya had to work Thursday I spent the day relaxing, doing absolutely nothing, surprisingly it passed very quickly. Friday I slept in and at 1:30ish me, Soraya and Kristen left for Tegucigalpa. I haven’t wrote an entry about transportation here in Honudras, but it’s very interesting. To get to Teguc we either take the bus or jalón. Mom, I already mentioned jalóning to you, so you shouldn’t be too freaked out. Jalóning is hitchhiking, but everybody does it here, so it has a very different feel than in the states. Most people here drive pick-up trucks and then just pick people up on the side of the road to sit in the back. There is also the bus, but that sometimes feels equally as unsafe as jalóning. The public buses here are old American yellow school buses. Me, Kristen and Soraya jalóned to Teguc (a lot of the time it’s just whichever comes first). To get to Teguc you either take the bus or jalón to Cerro Grande, which is around an hour from the ranch. Then from there you either get another jalón, or take a colectivo, which is like a shared taxi, to the center of the city. Once we got to the center me and Soraya parted from Kristen and stopped at the bank before taking a taxi to Hospital San Felipe. This is where we got the bus to Valle de Angeles, where we stayed Friday night. Valle de Angeles is a town around an hour outside of Tegucigalpa which attracts a lot of tourists. It’s a really cute town with lots of vendors selling their crafts and a really beautiful town square. We stayed in Valle de Angeles Friday night because the place we stayed in La Tigra was only available for Saturday night. In Valle we stayed at this really nice hotel in a cabin, we decided to splurge since we couldn’t stay at the place we wanted to in La Tigra. We checked into our cabin at around 4:30 and then went walking around the town. Once we got into the center we passed an Espresso Americano, this is like the Honduran Starbucks, they are everywhere, but it’s really really good coffee. At Espresso Americano we ran into a German family that is volunteering at the ranch! They recommended a “Spanish” restaurant in town, which we went to. But when we got there me and Soraya could not see a difference between the “Spanish” food and typical Honduran food, which we are getting a bit tired of. Either way we enjoyed our meal and then headed back to the hotel early. We got back at around 7:30 and watched an hour of TV and then fell asleep at 8:30. Haha, we are leading a very different lifestyle here from at home.
Saturday morning we woke up at 6:30am and by 7 we were on the side of the road trying to pick up a jalón to San Juancito. To get to La Tigra you have to go to San Juancito and from there it is an hour and a half walk to El Rosario, a small mining town which is where the park is located. The road from San Juancito to El Rosario never has any cars unless they are going to La Tigra, it is a really steep, uphill, dirt road. We got a jalón going to San Juancito really quicly. I am always a little scared getting a jalón, but we were really lucky with this one. As we were driving along me and Soraya were amazed at the clouds that filled up the valley we were driving past. We started taking pictures. Then we got a little confused when the truck pulled over, but it was only because they wanted to take pictures too. They turned out to be a group of really cool, young people and they were going to La Tigra too! Because they were going to La Tigra we didn’t have to walk the 1.5 hour walk from San Juancito to El Rosario, they drove us there.
Our amazing jalón.Once we got there we parted from them and went off the find the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at Saturday night. We found it pretty easily, and I’m sorry to say that word would not do justice to this amazing place. Basically it is not describable, but I will try. It is a B&B owned by a German couple, basically built into the side of the mountain, overlooking a valley. It is as if they came to La Tigra, saw this amazing natural landscape and thought “it would be so cool to have our dream home here” and then they actually built it. Every detail of the house is very specific and non-Honduran and you can tell that they worked really hard to design it. Their home is surrounded by their garden where they grown lots of the food that they cook for you. Yummm. Next to their house they have a cabin with two rooms, one with two single beds and one with a double bed. Since our room was still occupied when we arrived we just left our stuff at the house and then set off for our hike in La Tigra.
Before starting we got breakfast at the El Rosario Pulperia, greasy beans, eggs and what appeared to be spam. We also took some food to go, for lunch, but that was probably not a good idea, since we didn’t like the food. We hiked through La Tigra from around 10:30am to 4pm. It was amazing. We did a trail that leads to a beautiful waterfall. I think we did it pretty slowly since we kept stopping to take pictures and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. It was great for me and Soraya to just be alone in a forest. Even though we are roommates we never get to talk, but with 5 hours of walking we had lots of time to talk about all sorts of things. I wish we could do this every weekend.
Pictures from La Tigra:
At around 4:30 we got back to the B&B. We were soaked because it had rained for the last few hours of our hike. After showering we brought our wet clothes to the main house. Jorge (his wife Monika was in Germany) was warming up the brick oven for pizza, so he said we could lay our clothes out to dry by the oven. We sat by the oven drying off and drank delicious, hot coffee. At around 6:30 we sat down to dinner, Jorge ate with us. He made the most amazing pizza, with lots of foods I have missed, like olives and mushrooms. After the pizza we drank lemongrass tea, made from lemongrass from the garden. After the tea he offered us fruit sherry, also made from fruit from the garden. How could we say no. After all of this we were getting pretty tired, so we headed to our cabin to sleep. We went to bed at around 9 or 9:30. At 5:30 we woke up to watch the sun rise and then went back to sleep until 7:30. At 8 we went to the house for breakfast. Homemade bread and fresh jam made from fruits from the garden. Also, more delicious coffee. We ate pretty slowly, but by 10 we were ready to leave. Jorge gave us a ride to San Juancito (of course for an extra 200 lems, but it was worth it). Once we got to the road we saw a bunch of people waiting for the bus and they told us a bus for Tegus was coming. Buses from San Juancito to Tegus are really rare, but we decided to wait with them. We waited an hour and the bus finally came, but when it came it was sooooo full that we couldn’t get on. We started getting worried because it was getting really late. We started trying to jalón, but there were no cars going towards Valle de Angeles because it was Sunday. We were waiting with this one lady who needed to get to Valle de Angeles for a class she had at 1pm. Finally we got a jalón, but it only took us halfway. We got out and started walking towards Valle. The woman we were with said it was like an hour walk, but at 12:55, she looked at her watch and decided she wouldn’t make her class in time. She turned around and started walking back towards San Juancito as me and Soraya continued towards Valle de Angeles. Finally we got another jalón, which took us the last few miles into Valle. Once we got into Valle we started looking for the buses back to Teguc. We stopped two nice looking women to ask where the buses were and they turned out to be Americans who were teaching at a bilingual school in Teguc. They told us where the buses were and we went and got the bus back to Teguc. Once in Teguc. we ate a quick lunch, did a HUGE shop at the supermarket and then headed back to the ranch. There is so much more I could say, but this post is way longer than any post I could ever image, so I think it is time for me to stop. I hope this all makes some sort of sense. Now I must mentally prepare myself for work work work.
Our amazing B&B:
The sunrise:
This picture is terrible, and does not do this house justice.
Yummmmm
