Blogs from Western, Honduras, Central America Caribbean - page 31

Our store got off to a great start last week…we built it and the people came! We’re getting the word out about the women’s craft co-operative in the Mayan villages and people have been buying the crafts and other local art in the store. We’re paying the rent by selling my clothing designs, made by a local Honduran seamstress for 25% more than her asking price, in great cotton fabrics that I bought in Guatemala. I’m also selling my jewelry and photos. Andy made all the furniture and Arielle’s been a huge help with setting things up. I’ll be teaching English to the kids in the back of the store and they will also have Chorti (their native tongue) lessons during the time that we meet, taught by a local teacher. I’ll be helping the ... read more

Sooo, last week was Samana Santa, Easter week. Quite a big thing this section of the world. Basically, it sucked because everything was closed the whole time. Even our beloved internet cafe! (Mind you it did open once or twice). I've become an avid reader within the past week. I finished my book and swapped with Gaelyn. Now i'm reading ''A Walk In The Woods" which is pretty funny. About hiking which i may have to try sometime. On a larger scale than D of E. Other than reading i've just been hanging out with people. We built Monday-Wednesday because the family are too poor to go away for the week. Friday Gaelyn had a free house so I went to hers and we made vegetable soup. So good! Except we had warm juice because ... read more

The Mayan ruins at Copan are only a few kilometres from the town, so bright and early on Tuesday morning we began the trek out to the site. We were rewarded for the effort by being two of the first people there - it was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed having our first wander through the site without anyone else around. The temples themselves are very impressive, and the carvings that are still at the site are a real testament to the skill of Mayan carvers. The themes of death and war are very strong in the art at the site, and many of the carvings are of skeleton faces and larger-than-life animal figures that were clearly meant to intimidate! The huge trees growing out of the the temples soften the impact a bit, ... read more

Parque La Tigra was a great adventure...the park is a described in our guidebook as a cloud forest about an hour outside of Tegucigalpa by bus, easily visited as a day trip, so we set off on Sunday morning for what we thought was a 7am bus. After arriving at the departure location (a gas station), we checked out each bus that came and went, but none of them seemed to be heading to Jutiapa where the park trails begin. Three other travellers and us eventually came together to see if we could pool our knowledge and figure out where to find the right bus. Everyone we asked kept telling us it would arrive soon, but in the end we didn´t leave until 9am. We should have known better than to expect any Central American ... read more

We’ve had a crazy couple of months since we got to Copan in January. Andy came down with Arielle and I for two weeks, then went back to Toronto to finish up his work. He was there working for a couple of months, but is back home again. While he was here in January we spent time getting our house set up again and went to the beach for a few days. We stayed in some Garifuna villages(they are the Afro-Caribe population who live along the coast) and camped on the beach for 2$ a night! I found a great house for us to move to, which we did in February. The house is in the same neighborhood, but much nicer and quieter. There’s also a great yard with GRASS ( like gold here)and two ... read more