Kelly and Ben in Honduras

September 2007

To the right is one of the taxis that we had in Managua going between Granada and Leon.  Notice anything unusual about the design of the dashboard?

The rest of the photos on this page are of Kelly’s Environmental Group with the high school.  Their big project of the year was to develop and give talks about the environment to 4th-6th graders in the local schools. 

Although water system designs might seem hard, it is nothing compared to organizing a group of about 12 high schoolers (but really middle schoolers in terms of age) to teach younger kids about the environment, especially at the end of the school year when everyone is thinking about finals and graduation.  (The school year goes from February-November in Honduras so that their break corresponds with coffee picking season, when all ages earn money picking coffee.) 

The fact that Hondurans like to do things in the last minute made the month of preparation quite challenging.  I think Kelly said she was just going to call it all off and not do the talks like 5 times.

During September we took some time off to see parts of Honduras where we had not been and travel around in Nicaragua.  The Honduran portion of the tour consisted of stops in the cities of Santa Rosa, Gracias, La Esperanza, El Pariso and Choluteca.  These were places were friends of ours live so we were able to stay with them and see what their sites are like. 

With a brutal civil war and buzz word like “Sandinistas” and “Contras”, Nicaragua is not usually a place that people think of when they are planning a vacation, but perhaps they should—we really enjoyed it.  We spent time in the cities of Granada and Leon, and the beach town near Leon.  Leon and Grenada were the main colonial cities during Spanish rule and have a lot of well preserved monuments.  Both cities have a lot of backpacker travelers and are pretty easy to get around.  So far Granada gets our vote for the nicest Central American city—the capital Managua …...well we did not spend much time there.

The surrounding photos are all from Leon which is kind of the cultural capital of Nicaragua.  The city is in the middle of the most volcanic portion of Central America and has a population of about 200,000.  There are colorful murals throughout the city with depictions of the civil war, art museums, and universities.  The city was founded in the early 1500’s and was the capital during colonial rule. 

The cathedral above is the largest in Central America and construction took over 100 years.  For fear of having the actual plans rejected Leon’s leaders came up with a bogus set of plans to submit to the imperial authorities back in Spain for approval.  The plans however did not take into account people taller than about 5 foot (see cathedral back doorway to left).

This guy on the bike in the photo below ran into us shortly after the photo was taken.

While in Leon, Hurricane Felix hit Nicaragua and Honduras.  The hurricane was a category IV (which is about as strong as they get).  Fortunately, the hurricane made landfall on a relatively unpopulated area between the 2 countries.  As such there was minimal damage and not a large loss of life.  Leon where we were at the time was pretty much bright and sunny the whole time so we were never at any risk. 

The eye of the storm traveled directly over Copan but by the time it got that far inland the winds had died down.  It did drop a lot of rain which caused some damage including landslides and washouts along the rivers.  The photo to the right is of some typical damage associated with the storm which we saw after getting back home after our trip. 

These photos to the left and right are of Poneloya, the beach town near Leon.  The beach was about perfect, and except for the surfers we were pretty much the only people there.  This area is on the Pacific coast and thus the waves were really big. 

The photo to the left is the view from our hotel room where we stayed.  It was well worth the $10 cost per night.

Following our days in Leon and the beach we headed inland to the city of Granada.  Granada was founded at about the same time as Leon and during colonialism was in rivalry Leon for political supremacy of Nicaragua.  Granada was the conservative seat to Leon’s more progressive politics.  Unlike many of the other Nicaraguan cities Granada was not significantly damaged  during the years of civil war.

Today Granada is really clean (after traveling around Central America this is something that really stands out) and the buildings are colorful and well preserved and maintained.  There are tons of sidewalk cafes and restaurants and the food was perhaps the best that we have had after almost couple of years of being here.  Granada is surrounded by volcanoes and el Lago de Nicaragua the largest fresh water lake in Central America.

Despite its cool aid-esc color the photo below is actually the juice from a local fruit called……………….(we cant remember)

The photo above to the left is of Choluteca the site of our friends Levi and Meghan.  Choluteca is in the far southern part of Honduras and everyone talks about how unbearable hot and dry it is all the time.  We apparently were there during the nicest time of the year.  We passed through on our way back from Nicaragua.  Choluteca is not actually on the coast but it is an hour or so away by bus—so we decided to check it out for a day and get some lunch there. 

Levi and Meghan are one of the other married couples in our PC training group.  Originally there was 4 married couples but after a year and a half in Honduras there are only 2 couples left—us and them

Once a year there is what PC calls a project workshop.  This is when all of the volunteers from each of the projects get together for a few days to learn about new things related to their projects and meet the newer volunteers in their project group.  You listen to people issues and experiences working at their sites and there are a variety of speakers that come in to talk about different water related subjects.  This was our second project workshop which made us the veterans of the wat/san program.  It also gives everyone a chance to catch up with each other.  It is pretty much the only PC sponsored reunion during the year. 

Our project workshop is at the same time as the health program and there is a tradition of an evening talent show, or in some cases un-talent show.  Sarah, the closest volunteer to us, (who is a talented musician) has won the talent show the last two years and surprised us with writing a song about us.  The photo to the right is us on stage with her during her performance.

In the end the talks turned out really well, and now there are materials and trained kids to give them next year, maybe in some of the villages.  We’ll see if anyone takes the lead to organizing them.

The picture above is of the entire environmental group.  Now Kelly is planning a field trip with the group to a National Park about 5 hours from Copan.  Its supposed to serve as kind of a reward for their hard work and a learning experiences.  None of the kids have been to this or any national park, for that matter.  Some of the kids have barely left Copan.