Thanksgiving Guests

This year for Thanksgiving we had two great friends as guests, Paul and Clare!  David and Paul have been friends since high school and we became couple friends around the time of Paul and Clare’s wedding in 2007.   Unlike our first visitors (read about David’s parents visit here, here, here, and here) we had a more “authentic” trip planned for P & C, meaning budget hotels, “chicken buses”, and more time spent in our site, Trinidad.

Chicken buses are the old yellow school buses that are no longer fit for US school children and eventually find their way down here.  They are called chicken buses because it is very likely you will see a local transporting a chicken (or duck, dog, goat, etc) in hand.  Very authentic indeed!

Our old dog friend from a previous trip, Bombero, somehow found us while we were breakfasting in the local market.

No trip to Honduras would be complete without a visit to Copan, home of the Mayan ruins, so that’s where we started.  Although we’ve been to Copan several times we still found new places to eat and enjoy an afternoon latte.  Other Copan must sees include Macaw Mountain bird sanctuary and of course the ruins.

No birds on the head this time

After a few days of “Honduran Disney Land” we headed back to reality – our house in Trinidad.  Our house is rather small (less than 400 sq. ft.) so it was a sharing experience for all of us!  David had a work day planned to head up to a small community and check on their progress with the new chlorination project.  It was fun to show P & C what a workday looks like here and I think it gave them a new understanding of the challenges we face.

Hiking up to the tank in the town of San Francisco

To give our guests a further taste of mountain life here we took them up to a nearby lodge called Estancia El Pedregal.  It is both a lodge with cabins, rooms, and a restaurant, and also a working farm with coffee, beans, and cattle.  The accommodations have a certain attention to detail that is often overlooked in Honduras and it is a totally relaxing country escape.

Exploring the property

Visiting the cows and this funny guy

This little cutie and his brother had fun splashing in the creek with the Gringos

It was rather fitting waking up at the lodge on Thanksgiving morning and seeing these two fellows hanging around our rooms.

Gobble, gobble

After a relaxing night up on the mountain we headed back to Trinidad to make a mini Thanksgiving feast.  Since we’d be leaving the next day for the coast I decided to skip the bird (it would’ve been chicken anyway) and just go for the side items.  I used every measly inch of counter space in our tiny kitchen to produce deviled eggs, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, and of course, gravy!  Everything turned out delicious, thank goodness!

David and I spent one last night sharing a thin mattress on the floor and the next morning it was off to Tela.  More pictures coming soon!