Erin had to work for our next five days, so we left the coast on Sunday evening with the sun setting dramatically, giving us a lovely tropical glow out of the bus window as we headed for Siguatepeque.
We stayed in a nice bed and breakfast in town, as did Sarah, Geoff and Ishbel (Ellen’s folks) and the odd night Erin and Ellen joined us. We visited the school and sat in on some of Erin’s classes. It was great to meet some of Erin’s teaching colleagues and we were introduced to a number of the children too . The atmosphere at Del Sol is friendly and relaxed; the children seem happy and appear to be having fun. The classrooms are decorated with colourful posters and pupil artwork. Maintaining discipline is hard at times. Some seven and eight year olds are attentive and engaged, but as every parent and teacher knows, there are others who will do anything but sit and work - fidgeting, dropping pencils, asking to go to the bathroom, eating a sandwich, chatting, laughing, dreaming and wandering around. Erin remained patient and good natured with them all, but it was clear to us that the rewards of this work were unlikely to come in the classroom itself. Many of the children clearly love both Ellen (who teaches the tiny reception kids) and Erin and despite the rather chaotic set-up, they are both making a big contribution to the life of the school.
Sigua isn’t a pretty town. It doesn’t even get a mention in the guide books. The hotels there cater for travelling salesmen, taking a break off the main highway between the capital Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. Describing it to my brother back at home, I said its UK equivalent would be Croydon perhaps, although with a population of only 23,000 it’s really more like Penge. There’s a good supermarket where you can get everything, with its own restaurant, where we ate (pretty well) one night, and a local market and small colourful streets of stalls selling fruit, vegetables and local produce. (Photo )The banks and petrol stations all have armed guards on the doors, with frightening looking sorn-off shot guns, but it was the machetes that took most getting used to. The men seem to finish off their normal working outfit with a cowboy hat and large, two foot long machete tucked into their belts. Fine for working in the fields but more alarming as they strolled around town.
Although the town itself was short on charm, the surrounding countryside is very beautiful and we saw this at its best in April, when all the flowering trees and shrubs and the wild orchids were at their loveliest. The landscape is mountainous and wooded, with large pine forests in between the coffee and fruit plantations. We spent two days out by Lake Yojoa, staying at the D&D Brewery Lodge. Recommended by the girls, it is a great place, with cabins and camping around a restaurant and a micro-brewery, run by a young, engaging American who came to work with an NGO in Honduras, fell in love with the country and stayed, buying this business. On arrival Sarah, Geoff, Barry and I felt about 30 years too old as everyone appeared to be backpacking students. But as the place filled up, we met some delightful older travelers, some from California, some from Europe, and we arranged to do a full day hike with a large group and a guide. This was a treat: through beautiful countryside, past an old gold mine, sleeping volcanoes, through pretty little villages where we were greeted with shouts of “Gringos! Gringos!”, through coffee plantations where we learnt about its harvest, fields of bananas, through lush jungle, where beautiful orchids sprouted from the trunks of trees. We were taken to pretty waterfalls and finally had our late lunch beside a big waterfall with a man-made pool beneath it, for a freezing but gloriously exhilarating swim. Keen to get onto the lake itself, we got up at 6 am the next morning to go out bird watching with a guide, some binoculars and a rowing boat. We spent a magical couple of hours as the mist evaporated and the sun rose. Our guide was a genius at spotting and pointing out the birds. We saw fabulous herons, including the least bittern (the smallest heron in the world) and a wonderfully stripy tiger heron. We saw kingfishers, a Limpkin- a snail-eating crane, warblers, orioles, kingfishers, toucans, a snail kite swoop down and get its prey, lovely blue-winged teals, and many pretty little hummingbirds. It was just beautiful out on the lake, with a few fishermen casting nets from their dug out canoes, and the big yellow waterlilies just starting to come into flower.
When I think of our week in Honduras, it is these two days that summon up the beauty of the place for me. Erin will take away so much from her year there. It not a country whose rewards are yielded easily or obviously to the tourist: it is poor, with terrible drug-related problems, hideous crime statistics (although I never felt unsafe) and very little culture to admire. But the trees, birds and flowers are stunning and the people are warm and pleased to see visitors, and delighted and humblingly grateful to the girls for volunteering in their country. And if you spend longer there, as Erin and Ellen and the other PT volunteers are doing, I can see Honduras will have enriched them all immeasurably and permanently.“
