Reconnect and more

Last week I met up with the Business Project in a semiannual event called Reconnect. It was a chance to catch up with Volunteers from my group and meet those from the group before us, while also sharing experiences and ideas on business projects. It was really nice to see everyone from my group, all 15 of us (nobody’s left yet, amazing!), and to enjoy a few days in a national park near the lake. After Reconnect I went with a few other volunteers to my friend Katie’s site in Las Vegas. Yes there is a Honduran Las Vegas, with much fewer casinos (i.e. no casinos) and more mountains. Katie took us around town and we marveled at the amazing park, the bank, the paved streets, the availability of fruits and vegetables and the storefronts with glass windows and MANNEQUINS! Friend Molly, whose site is just as small as mine, actually commented that it reminded her of a European town. This confirmed that we’d been in our sites too long. But it was really nice to buy food, to watch DVDs and have reliable electricity despite a huge rainstorm. I never thought I’d measure quality of life in the form of Sex and the City DVDs.
The last day in Las Vegas we went on a hike to the water source, which ended being a short but incredibly nerve-wracking trip. The trail led us through a maze of streams, slippery leaves, slippery mud and slippery rocks, and at one point my foot went through a dead tree branch and into a huge muddy pit. But I’m not complaining; this hike was nothing compared to the following day back in San José, when a coworker from the mayor’s office took me on a six-hour hike to the highest point in the municipality. We STARTED with a walk barefoot through a river, then an hour walk to the aldea closest to the mountain, then two hours more up what seemed like a vertical mile. Also the trail was totally feo since the hurricane that passed through last week had knocked down a bunch of trees, so we were forced to climb trees and dodge branches and prickly plants for the majority of the hike. It was neat to see the whole municipality and the mountains that stretched as far as El Salvador. It was really cool to see all of Las Delicias, an aldea of San José that’s bigger than the urban center of San José itself. We got to eat guama and guayaba fruits straight from the vine. However after that I didn’t feel like walking anywhere ever again. I guess I’m not the outdoorsy type.