A Trip up the Mountain

At the suggestion of Maureen and Chris, we decided to take a couple of days and head up to the mountains by San Juancito, part of the La Tigra National Park here in Honduras. It is about an hour's drive outside of the city, and then another 30 minute or so climb up a pretty steep, rocky incline (and yes, in a four wheel drive vehicle). We got lost a few times on the way, even with a really good set of directions, mostly because you navigate here by landmarks instead of road signs.

A man named Jorge and his girlfriend Monika live in this quaint little house that they had built overlooking the valley below, and the plants that they have surrounded themselves with are gorgeous. They are both vegetarians, and seeing as though there are no restaurants anywhere nearby, you eat all of your meals there in their house. Jorge's a really good cook. He also makes these homemade jams and syrups that are fantastic, which we got to sample for breakfast. We ended up bringing a few of them back with us.

The only bummer was that when we got there, it began to rain, and it rained at times very hard, pretty much the whole 2 and a half days or so that we were there. Plus, we were high enough up that it was frigid. We by chance had brought an extra blanket and were super glad we did.

It wasn't too cold or rainy, though, to take a nice long hike around the mountain on the one full day that we were there. The scenery is just breathtaking. We saw a couple of little waterfalls (see below), huge flowers, corn fields on the steep mountainside, and even an orange tree. After hiking for about 2 hours, we pulled out some of Jorge's homemade bread and some peanut butter and had a tasty lunch which we ended up sharing with the local man working his corn fields. He offered to share his beans with us, but we passed, as beans have been none too kind to our systems.



When we got back, we showered and warmed up before heading down to dinner with Jorge. Upon entering the lovely house, we decided to take our shoes off so as not to track mud on his floor, but as soon as he saw our sock-covered feet, he instructed us to immediately put our shoes back on, mud and all. I guess he has a thing about feet. We thought that was pretty funny. Their adorable and very friendly kitten then proceeded to jump up onto Reade's lap which would not have been a problem except that Reade is pretty alergic to cats. So I coaxed it onto my lap, which is where it stayed, purring, throughout the entire rest of the meal. Fortunately, Reade was not allergic to me afterwards.

What a wonderful time of relaxation, reading, laughing, studying Spanish, and soaking in the natural beauty of the Honduran mountains. We could get used to this.


Adam...


... and Eve