GB Rocks!

We're having too much fun back in the UK! We've spent the last two weeks catching up with different folk and enjoying being back in Bristol. Brizzle really feels like home!!

We've darted from Bristol to Brighton to see Steve celebrate his marriage to Helen. Many congrats both, it was great fun celebrating on Brighton Pier with posh fish and chips and candy floss. We caught up with Andy and Julie:

Then on to Hemel to see Kathryn and Richard's new house. We had a lovely evening toasting their new place:

Then Marcala coffee with my Mum in Wheathampstead, before heading to London for drinks with friends in Holborn Whippet and lunch at our old haunt Il Posto with our old bosses Mike and Richard:

Finally on to Birmingham to see Charlotte, Nev, Bev, John and Sara. The pork roast being the clear highlight! Yum!

Flying off to Sydney to do some long train journeys and see some serious wide spaces. We're thinking of hiring a campervan as well. We'll see how the first week or two goes.........

Should be back into late 20s by the next post.......

That's a wrap!

Things are winding up here in Marcala. We've been finishing off our different projects, saying goodbye to lots of people and having different celebrations, fete at the school, party at COMUCAP and a tour of the town with our English class to name but three. 

Tour of Marcala with English class:

Selina and her team doing Thriller dance at school fete:

The completed mural:

Funny dance at COMUCAP party:

Party boy:

I think both Selina and I are shifting our attentions to our next adventures. I'm looking forward to enjoying the tail end of the Indian Summer in UK and catching up with folk before heading off again in October. We've got a lot of ideas of where to go in October, just need to make some decisions and get booking. I think we are both wanting to squeeze in some more volunteering before next May, but let's see what occurs......

Bye Honduras for now, it was fun...

Homestay

What an experience! We got to spend two nights in the home of a family living in neighbouring Chinacla. A really eye opening experience and one to treasure.

Chinacla is a tiny place which feels very cut off from the world. Anita is a single Mum living with her two kids, Danelis 13 and Anton 8, in a very basic home. The house has no electricity. There is a main room divided with curtains to create a sleeping area. There is a separate kitchen. The toilet is outside with a curtain to protect your modesty. The shower is basically a bucket of water used over the toilet. All the water for everything is taken from a big trough next to the toilet. You wash your hands, teeth, dishes and take water for cooking from there.

It's difficult to convey the simplicity of their living. The pace slows right down and everything revolves around life's simpler aspects: eating, washing, playing, sleeping. It's a calming experience.
  

We have the whole place to ourselves at night as the family are staying with relatives nearby. Fascinating having the run of the house all night. Sooooo quiet, unlike dogs and chickens in Marcala (although the latter should be a bit quieter now as apparently the dog guarding our apartment ate three of the chickens living in our garden the other night!). Our biggest challenge is trying to keep a one month old stray puppy out of the house with the help of a brush! The views across the valley at dusk and dawn are stunning, with clouds slowly crawling inside the valley, and the stars at night are so crisp in the dark dark sky.

It's dark by 6.30, only light comes from strategic candles plus occasional torch use. By 7.30 it feels more like 11! Bedtime by 9pm. Sleep on a mattress made of string with blankets on top. Alarm set for 4.45am. 

Morning ritual involves washing maiz which was cooked on residual heat from cooker previous night and then grinding it to a paste for half an hour. I now understand why the women have big arms, it's knackering! Cooking breakfast takes ages but is elaborate, tortillas (made from maiz paste), frijoles (beans) and fried egg. No simple cereal! Leftovers are given to stray dogs who wait patiently as you eat and leftover raw maiz given to Anita's chickens. You get a real sense of symmetry here. Very interesting. 

Anita has never had guests before and we feel really privileged to have had this insight.

Copan

I spent this week painting maras graffiti off a wine factory, planting new broccoli plants on Alba's farm, helping the local masons re landscape the office and teaching the school children the Michael Jackson Thriller dance for our school fair next week.

As a reward for all the hard work, we got to spend 2 nights at the Copan ruins on the Guatemala border. We had a stall in the central market and spent one morning marketing COMUCAP to local people and tourists. We then spent an afternoon at the ancient Mayan ruins which were fantastic. They were much bigger than I was expecting, but there were hardly any tourists there, unlike Chichen Itsa in Mexico where you couldn't move for tourists.

You were able to climb up the ruins and scramble around like at Angor Wat in Cambodia, there were lots of trees and tree roots which were distorting the stones, but made it more atmospheric, especially in the cemetery at the back of the ruins.

We also managed to fit in a visit to Macaw Mountain, a bird sanctuary at the top of a hill! Macaws are the national bird of Honduras, and in Copan there were dozens. They were releasing them back into the wild at the ruins.