- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
- Messages
- 9,786
Phew its hot in my room at the moment. Yesterday was the crazy travelling day from hell. I woke up at 6:15 am, ate breakfast at the hotel in Chetimal, drove 5 hr back to Merida where we just caught our plane to Mexico City. Had the 5 hr layover where I wrote my post of last night and flew out to Guatemala City, arriving at our hotel at 11:15 pm.
I then had a whopping 3.5 h sleep, woke up at 3:30 am, caught the 4:15 am shuttle bus back to the airport and caught the 6:00 am flight to Tegacilgapa, Honduras arriving at 7:30 am. We taxied it to our hotel here, ate breakfast and then attended another 2 h laboratory assessment meeting. Let me say, it wasn't our liveliest of meetings. Usually I can catch about 25% of the spanish apart from my friend doing translation, but I think I retained 1/10 of that today. Plus the Honduras speak like they are on triple speed. Even my Mexican colleague has a bit a of hard time catching everything they say.
I've been trying to stay awake, at least until 9:00 pm before going to bed. I have another early morning flight (7:00 am) tomorrow morning where I'll have the rest of the weekend free in Guatemala City - Whippee!
Okay - so not many wilderness shots. Tegucilgalpa is about 1000 m up, quite hilly and absolutely stunning from the air. Unfortnately no shots from the plane as my camera was buried during my flight.
The city proper is a bit of a hole though. The buildings are really scrunched together and you get a little claustrophobic walking thorough the city streets.
We had a recommendation for lunch at this place, which serves more traditional Honduras fair. From what I can tell, it is basically very similar to Mexican food but more toned down in heat. They tend to eat softer, lesser aged cheeses as well. All the bigger buisness have armed private guards providing some suggestion of high crime rate. Here is our guard carrying a sawed off double barrel shotgun in front the patio of the restaurant. I guess the owners watched pulp fiction!
A cool little church facade we walked by in the market area.
As we walked along the side of the above church, trying to turn ourselves back into the market area, the scene suddenly got ugly. Drunkards staggering in doorways, hagglers egging us on and a Honduran prostitute offering to me what was later translated by my Mexican colleague as 'kisses for 2 Lempiras". The currency (Lempiras) is 20:1, so I was beeing offered kisses for 40 cents. Now I have committed a new personal rule, whenever someone offeres me kisses for 40 cents, its time to get my butt out of that place!
I then had a whopping 3.5 h sleep, woke up at 3:30 am, caught the 4:15 am shuttle bus back to the airport and caught the 6:00 am flight to Tegacilgapa, Honduras arriving at 7:30 am. We taxied it to our hotel here, ate breakfast and then attended another 2 h laboratory assessment meeting. Let me say, it wasn't our liveliest of meetings. Usually I can catch about 25% of the spanish apart from my friend doing translation, but I think I retained 1/10 of that today. Plus the Honduras speak like they are on triple speed. Even my Mexican colleague has a bit a of hard time catching everything they say.
I've been trying to stay awake, at least until 9:00 pm before going to bed. I have another early morning flight (7:00 am) tomorrow morning where I'll have the rest of the weekend free in Guatemala City - Whippee!
Okay - so not many wilderness shots. Tegucilgalpa is about 1000 m up, quite hilly and absolutely stunning from the air. Unfortnately no shots from the plane as my camera was buried during my flight.
The city proper is a bit of a hole though. The buildings are really scrunched together and you get a little claustrophobic walking thorough the city streets.
We had a recommendation for lunch at this place, which serves more traditional Honduras fair. From what I can tell, it is basically very similar to Mexican food but more toned down in heat. They tend to eat softer, lesser aged cheeses as well. All the bigger buisness have armed private guards providing some suggestion of high crime rate. Here is our guard carrying a sawed off double barrel shotgun in front the patio of the restaurant. I guess the owners watched pulp fiction!
A cool little church facade we walked by in the market area.
As we walked along the side of the above church, trying to turn ourselves back into the market area, the scene suddenly got ugly. Drunkards staggering in doorways, hagglers egging us on and a Honduran prostitute offering to me what was later translated by my Mexican colleague as 'kisses for 2 Lempiras". The currency (Lempiras) is 20:1, so I was beeing offered kisses for 40 cents. Now I have committed a new personal rule, whenever someone offeres me kisses for 40 cents, its time to get my butt out of that place!
