A MONTH IN HONDURAS
1. COPAN
We spent our first week in the mountain village of Copan Ruinas, near the border between Honduras and Guatemala. We lived with a Honduran family and attended 4 hours daily of one-on-one Spanish lessons at Ixbalanque school, a definite highlight of the trip. Copan has both a bird and a butterfly sanctuary, less necessary in a country with abundant wild birds and butterflies, but beautiful all the same.
These Mayan ruins are a short walk from the town. They were discovered by Spanish conquistadors in 1576 but forgotten again for over 200 years. Harvard University finally sent 2 archeologists to begin excavations in 1891. We were surprised to see how many mounds still remain undisturbed and covered with mature trees.
The ball court was used for games played for religious, political and entertainment reasons. You wouldn't want to play too well, though, because the best players were sometimes sacrificed to appease the gods.
This skull belonged to a noble person rich enough to have teeth adorned with jade. It's thought that the Mayans had discovered various forms of anesthetic. Let's hope so!
2. TRAVELS
Here are a few images from out week of travel by van around west-central Honduras.
3. LA BUENA FE AND SURROUNDINGS
We spent our last two weeks at La Buena Fe on the edge of the town of Horconcitos where we were helping the Programa Reconstruction Rural (PRR) to build a community center along with 12 other Canadians. The first two pictures show the wood-burning stove and laundry room of the home where we ate our meals. We stayed in a dormitory on another part of the property. The spiders nest was on the outside of the dormitory, fortunately. We did have geckos and a toad inside, though.
Some days we rode in the back of a pick-up truck on rutted roads like this up the mountain to visit places that PRR had build in past years. This one is a kindergarten.
Mary, from Ontario, brings hundreds of vests and toques with her that friends and neighbors knit to keep mountain families warm.
These people have walked up or down the mountain to attend a clinic where a practical nurse from La Buena Fe doles out dabs of ointment or a handful of vitamins.
PRR built this family a three room cement block home a couple of years ago. Before that they lived in a thatched
hut of sticks.
4. OUR CONSTRUCTION WORK
Some shots of our worksite. As you can see, it was manual labor. By the time we left, only the outside foundation was complete. We're looking forward to seeing a picture of the finished community center.
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