Friday, Saturday, and Sunday April 16, 17, & 18

April 16, 17 & 18

Friday
Friday went fine at school; I feel more laid back on Fridays because I get to wear jeans and it’s the last day before the weekend. After school, Tad and I went down in town to use internet since it wasn’t working at the house because of the weather. First we tried Guancascos and the internet wasn’t working there; so we went to Don Juans and it wasn’t working there either! After a few tries, it started up. I had assumed and heard that if you bought something, like a drink or whatever, then you didn’t have to pay internet. We bought a few drinks and then dinner later since it was getting late, but when we went to pay, we ending up having to pay for internet and dinner and our drinks. Not doing that again!

Saturday
This weekend I took a trip to Lake Yojoa, which is one of the biggest lakes in Honduras. I’ve heard it’s beautiful around there. There’s also the only microbrewery located just outside the lake. Jacki and Kirsty had been here over Semana Santa and raved about it, saying how the food and drinks and surroundings were amazing, so that’s where I went! The unfortunate thing about Honduras is that what would take about 3 hours total if there were direct roads and we had a car takes about 6-7 hours via public transportation. So the trip started at 5am with a mototaxi ride to Gracias to catch a bus to Santa Rosa, to catch a bus to SPS, to catch a bus to Pena Blanca, which is near the lake. After arriving in Pena Blanca, you take a 10 minute mototaxi ride to the brewery. We arrived at at the brewery (called D & D; it’s owned by a guy from Oregon) around 1 pm. We checked into our room and as we were walking towards the restaurant to eat food, we hear, “Tad?!” Out comes Pat, one of Tad’s friends, Renske (one of the European girls who teaches in La Union) and a few other people. We were like no way. They were staying by the lake, too, at a different hotel, but had come to enjoy the brewery so we joined them for lunch and enjoyed spending the afternoon with them. They had all come with Renske and Laura’s host dad, Alvin, who owns the bus station La Union and is well known there. We had some good conversations in Spanish and English about how Americans are with sending money to developing countries. Do they do it to say, ‘Look how much money I gave to build this one classroom and look what I did to help these poor people?’ or do they do it humbly and let the Hondurans use the money they sent to build not just one classroom, but four? Someone had sent money to the school and only wanted to use this money to build one classroom, when it was more than enough to build four. But the donor said only one. It was just interesting seeing the perspective of a Honduran on that. After relaxing for the afternoon, the whole crew came back to have dinner with us. I really enjoyed talking with Laura and Renske for a bit, along with everyone else. We talked about going on a large fishing boat onto the lake the next day and they said they’d let us know if that worked out.

Sunday
Unfortunately the next day at breakfast we got a call from Pat. He told us one of the other guys who was there the night before, Derrick, had fallen off the back of Alvin’s pickup and cut his head open and had to get stitches late last night. So we wouldn’t be going onto the lake that day. I really wanted to see the lake though because I heard it was beautiful, so we walked almost to Pena Blanca when a taxi came and brought us to the hotel we wanted to go to on the lake, Agua Azul. It had a terrace restaurant with a great view of the lake. It wasn’t the clearest day that day, kinda hazy, but it just added to the beauty and the mystery of the lake. We weren’t quite sure how to make it back to town, but we asked the people inside and they told us to just wait for a bus to take us back to Pena Blanca. It worked. Love Honduras.

Tad and I decided we wanted to go to this waterfall we had heard about and that it was quite a sight to see. So we took another crowded bus to the drop off point and proceeded to walk until we found the entrance to the park. I tried talking to the guy and basically understood what he was trying to say about going in, needing to find a guide if we wanted to see the waterfall, go here, pay here, etc, etc, but I was still so frustrated I didn’t understand everything. I didn’t want to be taken advantage of just because I didn’t speak good Spanish and didn’t know what was going on. Well we decided to pay the guide to take us to the waterfall, so we paid the entrance fee, found our guide, left our stuff in the restaurant (he was like ‘You don’t need anything; you’re going to get very wet’) and headed towards the waterfall. I had no idea what to expect of this waterfall or what exactly we had paid this guide for, so I was blown away when I saw the size of the waterfall. It was about 140 foot waterfall; absolutely gorgeous. We kept walking, went through this gate and proceeded to climb along the rocks right next to the waterfall with our guide. We got close and were getting soaked and then he told us we were going behind the waterfall, but first had to jump into this pool from about 5 feet. We did it, and kept going towards the waterfall. It was so hard to breathe with the water rushing over top of me and getting in my eyes. I just had the guide lead me. Finally we made it so we were standing behind the waterfall; I could look up and see the water rushing over top of me. It was breathtaking and amazing.

We rested in a little cave behind the fall for some air and then made our way back to the cliff we were going to jump off of. Yes, I went cliff jumping (into water). Our guide pointed out the spot we needed to jump to; Tad went first and then I took about 5 minutes to work up the courage to actually do it. The highest cliff I jumped off of was 26 feet high; it hurt when I hit the water and I was freaking out a little in the air because it was a longer hang time. I’m so glad I did it though! I would have regretted it if I hadn’t; this was my reasoning to make myself jump: if I didn’t, when would I get the chance to again. After I went Tad jumped in a second time, which meant I had to as well, but after that I was finished; it hurt too much!

Thanks for reading through this marathon blog...more next entry!