Coffee, My Adventure in and Around El Palmital, and Viva Las Vegas!

(UPDATED 29 Julio 2006); Picture of my homestay hermano, Daniel and his hula-hoop, he can keep it going for around 10 minutes!

Buenos noches familia y amigos!

First of all, thanks so much for the comments you guys have been leaving on this page! It’s a lot of fun to read the short messages you all leave for me, it’s really encouraging.

Okay, where to start? It’s been a long time since my last entry, and A LOT has occurred since then. Two weekends ago all the trainees got to visit a current Peace Corps volunteer on site. I went to visit a guy named Andrew in a small farming pueblo known as El Palmital. After a day and a half at his site we met up with other trainees and volunteers at a local (and extremely dangerous) waterfall, had an adventure (more details to follow), and then journeyed on towards Las Vegas! Then, this past weekend the PAM (Protected Areas Management) training group took a “field trip” to IHCAFE, a research coffee farm in Campamento.

My volunteer visit was by far, the most fun I’ve had in country thus far. I visited an incredibly cool volunteer who lives in a beautiful site in the mountains near Lake Yajoa (if you’ve got a map of Honduras, it’s the big lake right in the heart of Honduras). Andrew, (known as Andrés by his community), lives in El Palmital, a small town consisting of primarily farmers. At his site I got a good preview of what my two years here in Honduras is going to be like. We met his counterpart, a local farmer with many progressive ideas, who grows all sorts of things on his land; coffee, oranges, rice, beans, and of course, corn. We visited Andrés’ own milpa, where he was practicing many cool farming techniques such as contour lines and live barriers for soil conservation, and no pesticides, a completely organic plot (very uncommon in Honduras). We also just hung out with the people he’s grown to know so well in his community. A lot of our time was spent just chillin’ out; talkin’ to people, walkin’ down the main drag in the town, eating churros (small bags of tortilla chips), listening to the horrible music on the radio (mostly mainstream 80’s stuff), and just being with the community. Andrés had made some great relationships w/ the people in El Palmital, and it was a great privledge to get to see that first hand.

After a day and a half in El Palmital, we went to waterfall closer to the lake, and had an …adventure to say the least. We broke so many US insurance policies my mom would freak (sorry Mom). We paid a “guide” 20 lempiras to “guide” us behind the waterfall. The waterfall was a good 14 stories high, and it’s the rainy season, so it was running extra strong. The guide took us through these great pools that were about as big as a large jacuzzi, but as deep as an olympic sized pool. We dove off of rocks 10-15 feet above the pools and had a blast. After that we pressed on behind the waterfall, most of the time I couldn’t even see b/c there was so much water splashing everywhere. Many times, we just grabbed arms and walked in the direction that the person next to us was pulling. After many “this couldn’t possibly be safe” feelings we made it to a small cave behind the waterfall and talked about how ridiculously crazy we were, then did the same to get out and back to the pools for more jumping a messin’ around.

After our day at the falls, we were exhausted, and decided to go spend the night in Las Vegas! There was a business volunteer (from ATL, Emory) who had his site there, and he invited us to stay there. Las Vegas was definitely one of the larger cities I’ve visited here in Honduras, and I’d say it lives up to it’s name. During the whole time hangin’ out and adventuring in the waterfall I got to know a lot of really cool current volunteers, and it was really encouraging to see that life as a volunteer during the next two years is going to be not only a HUGE learning experience and a chance to make genuine relationships with people living in a community, but a lot of fun as well.

Moving on, this past weekend, PAM visited a coffee research farm in Campamento. We had a great time learning about organic coffee practices and had a good time chillin´out together and getting a feel for our rad PAM team (The Green Team!).

So, I leave the beautiful town of Santa Lucia on Sunday and journey on towards Catacamas for FBT (Field Based Training). At FBT I’ll be with just the PAM training group. The other groups will be in other towns for their own respective FBTs. My living situation looks like it will be much different. I got a paper today describing my homestay in Catacamas, and it said I’ll be living with a couple and their grandmother, and …no kids, I’m kinda bummed about that, but I’ll make the best out of it I’m sure. Catacamas is also very different from Santa Lucia, it’s a dry and bigger city. Apparently, Santa Lucia is a very nice place for Honduran standards, kind of like the Buckhead of Atlanta. More to come…

That’s probably more than any of you wanted to know (except my folks who gobble it up!) I hope all is well, and thanks again for all your love and encouragement.

Hasta Luego,
David