Thanksgiving weekend in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras

Last week our school celebrated Thanksgiving by having the kids put on yet another presentation complete with songs and dancing. Why they celebrate an American holiday in Honduras I'll never understand, and what makes it even more ironic is that none of the teachers and students know why either, actually none of them even know what Thanksgiving actually is or what it celebrates. Nonetheless, Sara and I joined our classes together to sing a Thanksgiving song put to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and taught our kids hand gestures to go along with it. Our kids made turkey feathers to wear on their heads, even though most of them thought they were Indian feathers. The picture above shows our kids practicing.On Thursday Sara and I decided to change our plans to go to one of the Bay Islands (Roatan), and instead visit Honduras' capital city, Tegucigalpa. The rainy weather would have made it impossible to enjoy the beaches that Roatan is most known for, and we decided going more inland would help us escape the rain for a few days. After taking the 6 hour bus from Tela to Tegucigalpa, I stepped off the bus to find myself a little bit disoriented. Tegucigalpa (or "Tegus" as they call it) is a huge city, with so many more buildings, streets, and alleys, cars, and just about everything than Tela, all crammed together. It was a huge change of atmosphere from the more spread out and rural aspects of Tela. We took a taxi from the bus station, which was in a Comayaguela, a nearby neighborhood (the two pictures above), to the center of town where we were planning to find a hotel. After some walking around and exploring, we found a perfect hotel. It was called the Hotel Iberia, and it was located right in front of a beautiful church called the Igelsia de Delores. You can see it in the background of the picture above, the inside of the church was even more beautiful than the outside. It is definately my favorite chuch I've seen since being here, and I even got to attend a Mass on Sunday (mom, I know you would be happy about that!:). The hotel was in the center of all the museums, parks, shops, and other conveniences, plus they had HOT WATER (we have to take ice cold showers at home), towels, and the people there were very friendly and helpful! Even though the hot water was only from 6am-10am, it was a nice step up form the showers at home. All this for only 110 lempira (about $5) each per night for a private room and bathroom! In the picture above you can see our hotel (the yellow building) and the church right behind it. After settling in a bit at the hotel, we headed out to try to find a place to have our Thanksgiving dinner. Since Tegus is the capital, as well as the largest city in Honduras, there are tons of American restaurants and fast food places (and an extreme amount of Dunkin Donuts for some reason).

The closest American fast food place to Tela is an hour away, and though I love that aspect of Tela, it is nice to see a familiar place or restaurant every once and a while. So once we saw a Pizza Hut we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner there. Why not celebrate an American holiday away from home and family, in an American restaurant in Honduras?? We enjoyed a cheese pizza and salad bar, yum, yum...it's been a while since I've had anything American in my stomach! It was an extra treat because I've been craving salad for so long, and we don't have any of that in Tela, or any salad that I would trust eating for that matter!(and yes of course I had to include a picture of the pizza!:))I know it's probably not anything special to you, but I was pretty excited about it! After dinner we found ourselves in one of the only open bars in the area where we had a few drinks and had the lovely opportunity to sample some of Honduras' finest vocalists have a go at karaoke (sense the sarcasm in my tone?!).

On Friday we headed out with our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook to do a walking tour of the city. Thank goodness Sara is way better with directions than I could ever be, and she was able to make some sense of the confusing maps in the book. We were eventually able to find our way through many museums and parks. The walk started in central park, where there is a large cathedral (the picture above). Then we continued to the National Art Gallery (the smaller picture above), where they had everything from old religious artifacts and paintings to modern art exhibits displaying a TV/fish aquarium, and a ceramic foot surrounded by peanut butter and peanut shells!

After this museum, we headed to the Museum of the National Identity. This was a much larger museum that had extensive exhibits on Honduran History, displaying many artifacts, pictures, maps, and even showing videos. Too bad everything was in Spanish and I couldn't catch most of it! No cameras were allowed inside, so we couldn't take any pictures of the cool exhibits. We saw an amazing black and white photography exhibit that had various photos of Tenochtitlan, Mexico taken by Francisco Mata Rosas. This was my favorite exhibit, it even had a video showing that helped to link all the different photographs together in a sort of story, it was amazing! Sara and I spent a good amount of time watching, and probably could have stayed there all day! To see some of his work or even watch the video, click on this link:
http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/matafco/index.html

After seeing these museums, we started we decided to look for La Leona Park, to get there we had to walk up a winding, narrow road. We passed many different kinds of houses on the way. It was weird to see really nice houses, brightly painted, complete with beautiful gardens full of flowers overlooking the city, right beside dilapidated buildings, some barely having windows with paint cracking everywhere (some weren't even buildings, but rather shacks) as the smaller pictures show.

Finally, at the very top of the winding road, there the park stood, overlooking the entire city of Tegus below, the view was gorgeous (that's the picture below). The park itself was small, but really cute. It seemed like it was nicely kept up, there were pretty plants and flowers, many park benches looking out towards the view, a small fountain, and even basketball courts, where kids were playing a game. Sara took a video of the view from the park, you can click on this link to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_kR_X8OJqQ

After leaving the park we stumbled across a military museum where we were given a tour by a very friendly, borderline creepy older man, who was a retired officer. He was really nice and showed us a lot of old guns and various weapons, uniforms, pictures, and medals. But the creepy factor came in when he continuously commented on Sara's painted toenails, and how he wanted to lick them! At first we weren't really sure what was going on, and it was so completely random, that the first few times he said it, I just nervously laughed it off, thinking that I must have heard him wrong! Who in their right mind would say that?! But sure enough after the fourth and fifth time, Sara and I took it as our definate cue to leave. After that, we walked a little bit away from downtown, and into a neighborhood called Colonia Palmira. This was a very cute area with many little gourmet cafes and restaurants, most were very nice, but pricey. We finally ended up at a place called Gourmet Grill. After all the walking, we decided we just needed to eat some good food soon. This was definitely the first meal of its kind that I've ever eaten in Honduras. When we eat out, most meals consist of tortillas, beans, plantains, and not much else. It was the first time in four months that I've seen a menu that served things like apple pie a la mode and hummus! Needless to say, I HAD to try both these things! I had the apple pie and a hummus and eggplant sandwich, complete with a alfalfa sprouts, a pickle, and fries!! Sounds silly, but in a world of nothing but top ramen, eggs, toast, tuna and PB & J sandwiches, to eat something so different, was heaven!! The bill was more expensive than we were used to spending (about $7 each instead of the usual $2), but it was worth it because the food was delicious!!!
Later that night we ate dinner and had some drinks at a hostel/bar/restaurant called The Tobacco Inn where we met two other really nice travelers, a guy from Germany, and his friend, a girl from Canada. They had been traveling around Central America for a while, and had met during their traveling. They gave us a few tips and info. on places they've been, and places they recommended that we try to visit while living here. It's always nice to meet and talk to other young people traveling, and to share funny and amazing stories and experiences. Plus, it's always nice to get insight on different places from people that have just visited these places, it helps you try to figure out what you want/ don't want to do and places that might/might not interest you.
On Saturday we found a cute little little stand/restaurant to eat breakfast at. We met the nicest older couple that worked and owned the stand, and I ate a delicious typical Honduran breakfast, beans, plantains, fresh tortillas, eggs, avocado, and a sort of "sour cream" (basically the same kind of food you find EVERYWHERE here, and food we eat every day, but it was still good!) Plus, the friendly service made it all the better. I wanted to do a little Christmas shopping so we headed to a small town about 30 minutes outside of Tegucigalpa called the "Valle de Angeles" (Valley of Angels). It's a cute little historic Spanish mining town that has cobblestone streets, and many little artisan shops, and restaurants. It had a small church, and for some reason an extremely bright blue fountain in the center of town( the picture below is the fountain, with the church behind it). It reminded me a lot of the town of Copan Ruinas, which I wrote about in my last blog. After leaving the Valley of Angels, we went to find another park called El Picacho which had a zoo, which we TRIED to visit. Near the entrance to the zoo, we stopped to admire yet another amazing view of the city below: After paying for a taxi and for an entrance fee to the park, we were extremely sad to find out that the zoo (located inside the park) had already closed for the day! No matter how much we begged, they wouldn't let us in. The worst part was that the guy at the front gate knew we were coming to see the zoo, and he took our money for the entrance fee anyways, without even bothering to tell us the zoo had already closed for the day! And even after we complained, that he should have told us, and that he should give us a refund, he insisted that it wasn't his problem and that he couldn't give us our money back! What a jerk! So sadly defeated, Sara and I paid for another cab ride back to the hotel. There's a small picture of the entrance to the zoo, sadly the only part we got to see! Later that night Sara and I went to see our first movie in Honduras, at an actual movie theatre! The tickets were only 30 lemps ($1.50) and there were only three movies playing (all really old), but it was a nice treat to actually sit in a dark theatre and watch a movie on the big screen, instead of crouching over our laptops, which is how we usually watch movies! We were two out of the four people sitting in the theatre, I don't know how the place makes any money! We watched Saw IV, or as the title here said "El Juego de Miedo" which means the game of fear. Luckily the movie was in English, with Spanish subtitles.

The next morning, Sunday, after taking the last of our nice hot showers, we packed up to go back home to Tela. After searching everywhere for a place to eat breakfast (apparently nothing is open on Sunday mornings) we had to settle on eating breakfast at Wendy's, it's really wierd eating fastfood after not having any for so long! Then it was off to the bus station to catch another bus to take back home. Luckily, this bus driver drove a little faster, and we only made one stop, so we were able to get back to Tela in only 5 hours, instead of 6. As soon as I got back to Tela I was able to begin the countdown until Christmas, and when I get to go back home for 2 weeks.....December 21 here I come! I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!