This Thanksgiving, since the usual family get-together was impossible, in order to cheer ourselves up (and catch some rays), we decided to take a trip to the north coast to the beach the locals here all recommended: Tela. We sped off towards our destination Wednesday exactly as school let out with our traveling buddies, Mike and Mavis. With hearts singing, we enjoyed gabbing and talking about how glorious the beach was going to be after a long, long, long semester. Even the construction traffic of over an hour didn't zap our enthusiasm. We stopped for the night at one of our little motel spots on the lake. When we awoke, all we could hear was major rain. Surely it's not raining in Tela, we hoped. We drove through the rain, and arrived at our destination in the midst of the downpour. Maybe this will stop tomorrow, we dreamed.
This was on the way up--a bridge had been built right next to this one to replace it.
Our dream did not come true. It rained the whole weekend. There was a short break in the storm the morning we left, so we took a short walk on the beach, and saw some wildlife (below). The storms had brought tons of litter all over the beach. Not so much as one shell! Or even a dead jelly fish. I would have settled for the dead jelly fish. Or driftwood...
Buzzards await an easy day's catch. They kind of reminded me of the angels in "City of Angels" standing there with their black wings spread. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who thought so, but I was working on positive thinking.
We stayed at this fancy resort. We should have known why the prices were 50% off the regular. Rainy season isn't called "rainy season" for nothing. But we couldn't leave without going down this slide about 20 times. And so we played in the rain...we really did keep up the positive thinking. And we were really glad to be away from the city for a few days, rain or no rain.
This resort is called Telemar--all my students recommended it. The rooms were amazing. I was glad to share with our friends in order to have super comfy beds. The guys did a lot of napping on our rainy vacation, while the gals read books and talked on the porch. It's a good thing we all like each other. There's not too many people you could be happy cooped up with in a hotel room on the beach front during two full days of rain.
Floods of water covered the road, but these Hondurans were quite used to it. Check out his boots.
Front yards? Most of the houses are built on stilts.
On the return trip, we stopped off at the lago again. There, we walked a 5K boardwalk where there were fragments of the Mayans over which to ponder.
We found such dense jungle on our walk. And mosquitoes. No me gusta.
Mavis and I in front of Lago Yojoa.
Some Hondurans enjoying a bit of fishing on the lake (there's no swimming in this lake due to pollution).
Mayan ruins. Apparently, this led to some kind of worship site (but this was all there was to see).
On the sunny ride home--which only took 2 1/2 hours from the lake. No traffic today due to the elections (which Colin's going to be blogging about as soon as we know the results). It was a fantastic drive. Bummer that the rain followed us to the beach, but we'll figure out something else to do for fun for Christmas break. It's only three weeks away!
2 comments:
Wow, in that picture Mavis looks so much like Elisa. Do you look like sisters in a closeup?
Do not go so long between postings, I was getting worried about you. So they get off the same time we do for Thanksgiving? MOre about what they celebrate, please.
And please tell your festive friend about Christmas decorations down there, and do they have a parade?
Dianne Fielder
We don't look much alike in person, but we do have an affinity for the same things. Sorry to worry you! We will try to be more consistent again.
The American School follows the American calendar. So, we do have Thanksgiving off, but for most folks around here, no one celebrates the holiday. Christmas is front and foremost in their minds--and decorating begins as early as October 31st. Christmas music was playing at Halloween.
Christmas is HUGE down here. But no one buys real trees. All trees are fake. Apparently a law was put into practice several years ago due to de-forestation. Christmas decorations are taking over the grocery stores, our school, our classrooms, and we even put a few lights up in the spirit of the season. I'm going to miss having a real tree. As far as parades, no parades that I know of yet. I'll let you know about that. In this city, there's always a celebration going on, but I'm not sure if they have a traditional city-wide parade. There's plenty of road for it, but I'm sure it would result in some casualties. People don't make wise decisions crossing the roads around here. Thanks for keeping up with us! -Elisa (on Colin's account)
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