An adventure in Trujillo

Trujillo

In the center


More horses

Church in Trujillo

Plantains

Dinner on the beach!

Hiking in the jungle

Our hotel

View from the top!

Thumbs up..

Slowly going back down

See the tiny little water tower on top? That's where we hiked to!

These are out of order..but this is another from the top. The high point of the trip :) If you click to enlarge you can see the tiny town wayyy down by the water!


For those of you who have read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, you might be slightly skeptical of the name of this little city just as I was, but it's actually a quite pleasant town if you can actually make it there. If the curse really exists, it must be on the public transportation to and from which is not highly recommended. Actually, not recommended at all.

The way there consisted of three hours on a hot rickety charter style bus. It was bearable until the last hour or so on a dirt and gravel road. Luckily I don't easily get car sickness, but the left side (window side) of my sweaty body was quickly covered in dust. Ew. More on that later.

Once we were there we walked through the town to find our hotel. Shannon and I both really liked the town, it's bigger than where we are living in El Porvenir, but smaller than La Ceiba. There were a lot of people outside and the streets were lined with clothing and food shops. Everyone seemed friendly (and helpful when we got lost) and it had an overall upbeat feeling. I kinda wished there was an English school in need of volunteers there!

We found our hotel, which was right in the center of town and it was very nice and very much worth the $7 each. We dropped off our stuff and explored a little, but only because we felt like we had to-all we really wanted to do was go swimming after being on that hot bus!

The beach in Trujillo was a little nicer than our beach here. The water and sand were clearer and there were actually locals swimming, unlike in Porvenir. It felt amazing to cool off! After swimming we went to the store to buy some lunch for the next day, then showered and went to dinner. We ate a restaurant right on the beach, our chairs and table were actually in the sand. It was right before sunset and so beautiful!

Our little room had a tv and I actually found a show in English. I haven't watched TV since i've been here so it felt kind of exciting :) We went to sleep early though and woke up at 5am yesterday for our hike.

The hike....I kept thinking I wish I could watch a video montage of my hike to the top. Like when you watch those shows that show clips of someone working really hard and struggling and then finally reaching the end result. It's so satisfying to see the end and how much was accomplished and you barely had to see the process and struggle they went through to get there. Ok, that related more to my situation when I thought it inside my head, but basically, it was difficult, and very hot, but the view at the top was worth it!!

It took us about 3 hours to get to the top, and we were walking swiftly and only stopped once for about 5 minutes. The way down took a little over 2 hours and was much easier, but I got quickly bored and wanted it to be over with when we still had about 45 minutes left. It was a pretty neat experience though, we were hiking through the jungle so we were surrounded by huge palm trees and different kinds of flowers and wildlife. The view at the top was of the beach which was cool to see from so far up. Once we got back down, we couldn't believe looking up at the mountain how high up we had been. We were pretty proud :)

After that we had to hurry back to the hotel to grab our stuff and then catch the last bus out of Trujillo which was at 1:00. Unlike the day before, we had to take what people call a "chicken bus" back to La Ceiba. We debated whether they are called that because of the fact that people are stuffed on like chickens, or because people actually carry their chickens on with them, and we learned that both were very true. Basically it's a old yellow school bus that a school in the States decided was unfit to use any longer so they shipped it to Honduras to use for long distance trips with too many people. (of one of them actually said "Franklin County Schools.") Now, I remember back to my bus riding days, always feeling like my legs were too long for those seats. Imagine how I felt on the 1:40 minute ride (until we switched buses) filled with people (in the seats and standing) and me and my almost 6 foot body stuffed on the inside with my huge backpack and barely any air. NOT FUN. Add in climbing a mountain just a few hours before. UGH.

Anyway, we finally switched buses, and the second one was better but we soon learned it was not a direct bus and made a bunch of stops. So we were on this bus for about 2 1/2 hours. Then we were back in Ceiba but still needed to get to Porvenir. We had JUST missed the bus to our house so we hopped on another that took us to the entrance to Porevnir off of the main road. From there it's about a 1.5 mile walk which we were willing to do to get this commute over with. Thank god one of the families drove by in their pickup truck and offered for us to hop in the back and they drove us in. (Riding on the backs of trucks is common here, in Porvenir they do this instead of use a school bus).

So we made it back! And minus the transportation, we agreed it was a pretty cool trip. I've never climbed a mountain like that so it was a good experience!

Today I had my morning class and afterwards I took the kids back to do some crafts on my porch. There's one little boy, Rigo, who is very shy and never talks or plays with the other kids. Right when we walked up to my house, our kitty ran out and he picked it up and started petting it. He held it almost the whole time we were over. He was reluctant to let it go when he left and I almost wish I could have offered for him to take it home, but that wouldn't make sense. It was very sweet though, I'm glad he made a connection :)

It's been raining almost all day here and there is supposed to be a tropical storm tonight..not sure what that entails.

Tomorrow I'm not going to my own class because I'm going to help with the littler kids for a day. I'm very excited for that!!

I'm going to attempt to add some photos. Talk to you soon!!

xx