Things I love (and hate) about Copan

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Things I love about Copan:

1. The people are amazingly friendly and helpful. I cant believe how just absolutely sweet people have been to me. My host family especially. The mom cooks with soy milk for me and always is offering me cakes or sweets or pinol and asking me how I feel. There is a young woman who lives next door who has adopted me as her friend and always talks with me, no matter how horrible my spanish is. The dad at my family helped me make my hotel reservation in San Pedro Sula this morning. People go out of their way to point out interesting bugs and flowers and stuff if you show interest... which i do!
2. Everyone says the food in Honduras sucks. But I havent had that experience. Maybe it´s because I have dietary restrictions and cant eat mantiquilla, etc. But I sure do love pupusas, licuados, limonadas, pinchos, black beans, all the millions of types of bananas/platanos, the fresh mangos, and pinol.
3. All the beautiful flowers. There are orchids, helleconia, gingers, all sorts of things that I have seen in pictures and now cant believe I can see in person. Lots of birds of paradise. And huge frogs, lots of butterflies, tons of cool birds, caterpillers, and beetles.

Okay, and for things I hate about Copan (maybe just things I miss about the US) :

1. You can´t flush the paper. Don´t forget this. I really hate putting butt-wipe paper in the trash. I just want to flush it and forget it.
2. Oh I miss clean water. Not just clean water that you can drink.. I can deal with the fact that you cant drink the water here. But, Sometimes, after the rain, the water is laden with silt. And the water in the shower (which is VERY slow to drain) is, um, brown. And my hair doesnt really get clean because of that sometimes. Ugh.
3. I hate to admit it. But I love dryers. Here my clothes are all... "wongo." they dont fit right because they havent been dried in a dryer. They´re loose and a lil´ crunchy. And it takes forever for them to dry because of the rain.

All in all tho, its great--really. Yesterday I went horseback riding with some friends. It was fabulous. We rode up one of the little mountains to an indigenous village, La Pintada. At La Pintada they make little muñecas and flowers from corn husk and the children sell them in the streets here in town. When we got off our horses at La Pintada they mobbed us--about 25 kids surrounding us, each trying to sell us a little doll for 20 lempira (1 dollar). So, yeah, I bought a few. I want to buy enough for all my nieces, because they are cute and why not help out the village, but if I do I will have to buy another piece of luggage.....

Some Pics.

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Photos

Making Tortillas at La Pintada
Apparently I wouldn´t make a very good wife. My tortillas were really crappy. But this lady is an expert.

Gross shower drain.
ewwwwwwwwww.

View from La Pintada
That is the Copan river in the distance.

Comments

[Tcharly]

What kind of trip ?
OK, here's what's been burning my lips lately. I'm soon about to travel around central america. And so, I fervently read every new blog entry on the subject. Still, I haven't been able to found any kind of 'backpacking' blog recently, nothing that I could read and identify my trip to come with. Anyway, my question is this: what kind of trip are you doing? How do you guys get adopted by these local families all the time ? I'm just trying to grasp the nature of your trip. Please enlighten me, a fellow traveler, Tcharly