Day 12 – Monday May 7

The birds woke me up at about 4 o’clock this morning, but I tried to ignore them and go back to sleep. Shortly thereafter, I started hearing the neighbors playing their music and some sort of loud metal banging noise, that I now realize is likely just the chickens jumping up onto the roof of our hotel. I heard that noise throughout the night, and wondered what it was. 

I finally rolled out of bed at 7 AM, and decided to pack up and get ready for the trip. We’re leaving at 8:15, so I think I’ll go down to the little grassy area in front of the hotel, and enjoy the ocean breeze for a bit.

The lagoon is calm this morning, and the sun is already hot. But the breeze feels good, and the view from our hotel lawn is beautiful.

Our good friend, and driver, Celso is picking us up, and will take us to the airport. After we drop our bags off at the airport, we’re supposed to go by the ICF office, (the Forestry Service) where Celso, Tomas and Juan Carlos work, and talk to their boss to let her know what a wonderful job they’ve been doing on this project. I think they could do a lot more if the higher ups in the Forestry Service would let them participate in a greater capacity.

At 8:30 am, we checked on our luggage at the Puerto Lempira airport for our 11:30 am flight, just as our guide suggested. 

When we finished there, we stopped by the Forestry Service, and then went into town to look in a few of the shops. Puerto Lempira is small, so we literally were just a few blocks away from the dirt airstrip, and had time to kill.

The shops are much like you would expect them to be in a small Latin American town. Some had fresh meat hanging in the open air, as workers shooed the flies away, others were inside butchering the meat for customers.

Other stores had a little bit of everything, from toiletries, to bottled water and snacks, to bicycle tires, and hardware. Still others, were mainly clothing stores, with goods that were imported from other parts of Honduras. And, of course, you had plenty of locals selling their wares on the side of the street in the park area.

One thing that struck me, for a town with so much character, there’s a lot of trash just laying out in the open. People here don’t seem to care too much about keeping things neat and tidy. In Mabita, you saw some of that too, although the villagers their kept their yards pretty neat. I saw many of them raking up the pine needles, horse manure, and other debris from their yards on a daily basis.

After we looked around town for about an hour, it was time to head back over to the airport, and wait to board our plane.

It’s amazing to watch the local traffic on the runway, as if it’s no big deal. We saw pedestrians, people on bicycles and motorcycles, farm animals, and even children playing on the dirt airstrip. I guess you have plenty of time to see if a plane is coming, and move out of the way. The airport only has one commercial flight coming and going three days a week, plus a private plane, so I guess the odds are in their favor.

The flight from Puerto Lempira went smoothly, and we arrived in Tegucigalpa in time to have lunch at the Truckeria taco truck by our hotel. It’s hard to believe it had been 11 days since we ate here last.

After lunch, I took a little cat nap, and then logged the interview that we did with the prosecutor in Puerto Lempira yesterday. Then we went out to one of the neighboring hotels for dinner. I was pleased to see that they had Coca-Cola light, which is still not as good as Diet Coke, but it will do. I ordered some guacamole and plantain crisps for an appetizer, and then had a margarita pizza for dinner. It was pretty good.

I thought about working on the script for this documentary some more today, but I decided to spend the rest of the evening in the room of our quaint hotel checking emails, and posting some photos of our trip on Facebook.

Tomorrow, our flight leaves at 1 PM. So there will be plenty of time for sleeping in, and relaxing, on our last morning in Honduras.