Honduras: An Emotional Week

Although we spent only 7 days in Honduras, I am struggling to formulate concise, accurate thoughts about our time there. And that's not because we were only there for a few days, or because we didn't see enough. But rather because we saw too much . . .

"Had he gotten himself into such an emotional state that nothing meant anything any more, or had too much meaning now entered his life, more meaning than he could handle?"

Honduras: A beautiful mountainous country, scattered with pine trees and quaint rivers meandering through the countryside.

Tegucigalpa: The capital of Honduras. An aspiring-to-be-Mexico City with busy, littered streets; surrounded by shanty towns and extreme poverty; riddled with government corruption, drug trafficking, and political angst. And toss in the residual turmoil from the coup d'etat that occurred a few months ago last June.

While couchsurfing with our friend Dan in Tegus, as the capital is fondly referred: If we stayed at the AguaClara office past sunset, we ran the three blocks home. When we went walking around the city in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon, Dan was careful to only pull his cell phone out of his pocket on certain streets. On our final evening, we went to a music club to grab a drink, and drove the five blocks there so as not to get mugged. Over a lovely glass of Cabernet, Dan told us nonchalantly about how concerts with music containing any political insinuations are routinely shut down with tear gas. The front page of the daily newspaper showed a decapitated bus driver one morning, the next a pile of deceased. Why? That's all hush hush, but you can bet your bottom dollar it ain't a pretty, or simple, story. Yes, our week in Honduras gave us plenty to think about.

Amanda and I didn't even realize the effect the city had on us until we were drinking hot chocolate in an outdoor cafe in the quaint, quiet town of Copan, Honduras, situated just 10 minutes from the Guatemalan border. Our nerves took two days, a long run along the highway, and a couple Salva Vida beers to finally rest easy. And we eagerly embraced being a tourist for a day while we visited the Mayan ruins of Copan - the main tourist attraction in this complex country.

Las Ruinas de Copan boast the "longest pre-Columbian heiroglyphic inscription in America." The staircase here reveals over 2000 hieroglyphs on 63 steps that recall the dynastic history dating all the way back to the first founder K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo. (Don't ask me to remember too many more details than that.)

From Copan, we had a 12-hour travel day - which included 2 microbuses (shuttles that careen through the mountainous roads way too fast for comfort), and a water taxi - to finally get us to San Pedro, Guatemala. We are now getting settled into life on Lake Atitlan: living in San Pedro with a gorgeous host family and commuting across the lake to Panajachel to volunteer at the microfinance NGO Mercado Global. The lake is beautiful, the people are always smiling and happy to stop for a moment to chat, and the work here promises to be rewarding. On just our second day here, we were swept into a relay race around the plaza of the Catholic Church by seven neighborhood kids eager just to hold our hands. Running alongside these laughing children was a wonderful, and much needed, reminder of how beautiful Central America really is.

Back in Guatemala where my love of Central America truly began!