solo $5 porque tu tienes el sangre dulce

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HELLO HELLO HELLO!!!!


I just came back from a week travelling around Honduras, which was fun for
the first part and ...really interesting for the rest. Let me start off
by saying I´ve never been happier to sit at a computer and write home, and
give a warning that this may take a while to read!

Last Wednesday Kat and I went to Tegucigalpa to pick up her mom and sister
from the airport. Together we all headed to the Copán Ruinas (the ancient
Mayan Ruins) which was really amazing. The town is built for tourism and
was like stepping out of Honduras and into a carefully carved 1600´s
mountain village. The streets were cobblestoned, the menus glossed over
in Spanglish, gringos (white people) everywhere, no garbage, and aside
from a few hearty staredowns, no one shot¨hey baby´s¨ or marriage
proposals our way.

Kat´s mom booked us a beautiful hotel and we started the holiday slurping
chocolate milkshakes by the pool and eating breakfast, lunch and dinner
off roadside baleada stands (THE honduran dish--fresh baked tortillas with
beans, cheese and mantequilla.)

The Ruins were really cool. The Mayans were around before the wheel was
invented and somehow archeologists uncovered most of their lives and
customs. We got to see the statues the great leaders carved of
themselves, the pyramids where they made human sacrifices and burried the
dead, the royal houses and the ´common folk´ villages up the mountainside.
The royals claimed to be in direct divine contact and would regularly
bleed themselves and smoke their blood to commune with spirits. Every
year a strong, beautiful and spiritually enlightened boy from the royal
family was chosen for sacrifice, and for the year leading up to his death
was given everything he wanted from food to women to whatever else was
around to lust after. After his year was up he was painted red - the
lucky mayan colour - and the whole society held a celebration for his
death.

Our guide Antonio was part Mayan and kept swearing that he was a decendent
of 18 Rabbit, the last great warrior. At the end of the tour he told us
about Gnosticism, a way he gets in contact with spirits and lets himself
go into astral projections. If anyone wants to try it he said the base of
it is SOL, the sun and soul. S-subject-yourself. O-objective-what you
want to discover about yourself or the world. L-location-wherever you are
at the time. You repeat your SOL´s throughout the day while pulling your
left thumb with your right hand. Let me know if you get anywhere with it!



A couple months before coming to Honduras I saw pictures of la Montaña
Celaque, Honduras´ highest peak, and have been obsessed with hiking it
ever since. So saturday morning I said goodbye to my wonderful travelling
partners and boarded the first bus in a long string of them to get to
Gracias Lempira (the town outside of Celaque.) People were really great
in helping me find my way and would grab my shoulder to steer me through
the thick crowds and lines of busses to the right one.

Busses here are all rejected American schoolbusses or old vans that cram
people from floor to roof until their faces smear against the windows.
People hop on and off during the trip to wave bags mangoes, cookies and
coca-cola in front of people´s wallets. I was actually lucky enough to
have an evangelical preacher shower his determined halleleja´s over the
busride-congregation for 40 minutes, until he walked up and down the aisle
to collect everyone´s eager money.

I got into Gracias at lunch time and walked with my big bag of camping
things to a restaurant that I heard rented tents. The little boy behind
the till phoned his dad, Marco, who showed up with a tent a few minutes
later, drew me a little map of how to get there, and told me I could leave
my extra things with some of his friends who live at the base of the
mountain. After another baleada, I bought some groceries and slapped on
my backpack which by then the size of two well-fed children and
threatening to tip me backwards.

Just as I started walking a torrential downpoor opened up and drenched
everything in my bag. My passport curled, my matches dripped and my only
roll of toilet paper shrank to a nice pulpy heap. I figured all great
trips started with a challenge and continued walking the 1.5 hour walk up
the street to the Park in my soggy skirt, sticky tshirt with my money-belt
bulge, tivas, ball-cap and two bags of vegetables and water in hand to
sustain 4 days in the mountains.

After about 30 minutes of dragging myself uphill and 20 rest-stops later,
a farmer came along to ask me if I was going to the park. After nodding
yes, he told me I had over an hour left to walk up steeper uphill and was
actually on the wrong road to getting there. He pointed me over a
cowfield to a short-cut, but suggested I take a moto-taxi instead (red,
3-wheeled little cars). There was a mototaxi right beside us that I went
to ask, but the man said the driver was busy with a woman and he´d wait
with me for another. For the next 20 minutes we struggled through the
most awkward conversation to seem really interested in Canadian and
Honduran geography over the myserious moaning coming from the mototaxi
beside us. At the point where it was really impossible to pretend it was
just background farm sounds another mototaxi came along and saved me from
one of the most uncomfortable, if not funniest moments of my life.

Finally I found Marco´s friends´ house where I unloaded the things I
didn´t need and ate more baleadas with their family. Then I made the 40
minute walk up to the trail to where the abandoned visitors center is in
the woods. I thought my legs were going implode in only that first little
bit, so I took out some of the food and water and hid it in the bushes to
grab on the way down. I set up my tent, and even though I was pretty
scared about being there on my own and starting to doubt how smart it was
to be camping on my own, I fell asleep at 730 and didn´t wake up until 10
hours later.

In the morning I realized I left the batteries for my camera with the
people down the road, so I packed all my things up and walked down and
then walked back up again to start the hike. The rest of the day was
really nice but probably one of the most gruelling and sweaty hikes I´ve
been on. Aside from that, it was really beautiful. The trees were
dripping with vines and ferns and other trees that popped out like
branches. The trail was a series of switchbacks that led up through
mini-waterfalls and little streams all the way up.

After about 5 hours I started to get worried because I hadn´t seen anyone
on the mountain all day and was pretty sure I was the only one up there.
There were 2 areas to camp, Campamento Don Thomás, which apparently had a
little abandoned hut that was described by my guide book as ¨reminicent of
the shack in the Blair Witch Project¨ and another a couple hours from
there, which was near the top and the nicer of the two. When I was
starting to wonder when Don Thomás would show up, thunder literally
started shaking the mountain, lighting flashed up and the light drizzle
again turned into torrential downpour. I felt like I was pretty close and
luckily only walked another 5 minutes through it until Don Thomás showed
up in all it´s crumbling glory.

The original ecstacy of finding shelter from the storm quickly turned to
fear when the rain didn´t stop and I realized I was going to have to spend
the night in the breaking down shack (part of the wall actually fell off
when I touched it.) The roof was patched with clay tiles in a few
corners, but aside from a spot that was luckily the size of my tent, it
wasn´t much better than being outside. The night was spent huddled in my
sleeping bag in conclusion that coming there by myself was definitely one
of the stupider thigns I´ve done. I tried to block out the thunder and
wierd sqwaking and growling coming from the forest around me by running
through the Sound of Music soundtrack in my head and pretending I was
really lying on the beach.

After waiting all night for the sun to come up, I embraced 'the journey over the destination' mentality and packed up my things to head down the mountain...no longer interested in
reaching the top of Celaque. The rain stopped and even though I was on
a mission for a fast return it was really cool walking through the forest
in the early morning clouds. Two armadillos scampered away on the
path and I saw a puma running away from me through the woods! (very glad it wasnt the other
way around.)

I ended up getting down way faster than I thought and ran up to Doña
Alejandrina´s house, a little hut a 30 minute walk into the woods where
she serves meals to hikers. Alejandrina looked to be about 150 and her
kitchen was half the size of my very small bathroom. I crowded in with
about 15 of her sons, nephews, grandchildren and grandnephews, who were
all up for breakfast as well before working down in the river for the day.
She slapped together tortillas on the iron sheet above a fire and served
up the most delicious bowl of kidney beans I´ve ever had.

I was SO happy to be around people that I ended up staying there for 2
bowls of beans, around 20 fresh baked tortillas, 6 cups of coffee and
talked to the workers who rotated turns to sit at the table and eat their
meals. By the time lunch rolled around and all the workers came back
again I was still there and so ate a bowl of potato stew with them too.

Then I went back to Gracias, got a hotel and woke up in the morning
to come home. There weren´t any buses running to the main exhange 4 hours
away so I tagged along hitchiking with another local woman who needed to get there as well. We hopped
from one back of a pick-up truck to another, through all the little
mountain towns along the way there. There were bars on the trucks to stand
up and hold on to while the trucks whipped around the skinny dirt
roads...it was actually the funnest travelling I´ve ever done and felt
like speedboating through the forest.

Anwyays....LONG story short, I´m happy to be back at the hogar. And
congratulations if you´re still reading this far down, I know this is a
very long email so no pressure to read it all in one go. I´m thinking
about all of you and hope everyone is well and happy!

LOTS and lots of love,

Sarah

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