Delights of Delicias

This past weekend I went with my friend to Las Delicias, an aldea of San José with a larger population than San José´s urban center (where I live). I’d never been to this aldea before, though I’d always wanted to see it since it´s the biggest (with over 2,000 residents) and I was never told much about the place other than it had no electricity and it was really boring. So we went to visit a friend of my friend, so I could see for myself was Delicias was like.

My 2-megapixel camera does not do the place justice. It was truly beautiful, set high up in the mountains with the most stunning views I’ve seen in Honduras so far. The people that received us were very kind, welcoming, and amused that I was there snapping pictures of everything. We walked around town and kids stopped dead in their tracks to watch me, their mouths hanging open. It’s not every day they see a tall white girl like me I guess.

From my time there I took away a few impressions of Delicias. First, there are lots of kids. And I mean LOTS of kids. This year 150 kids enrolled in first grade, so that the teachers had to break up the class into three sections. This still averages 50 kids per 1st-grade class. Ahh!!!!!

Second, it’s beautiful. The weather is cool and the air is clear, and luckily we went on a nice clear day where the views of San José were fantastic.

Third, Sundays in Delicias are boring. I mean, it was wonderful to go there for the day, to get away from the reggaetón music that blasts from every house in San José or (even worse) the Mexican ranchera music that blasts from every cantina. It was really cool to be able to hear a car coming from miles away, or to sit around and shoot the breeze without a TV blaring in the background. But indeed, it can be a boring place. The people that live there joke that boredom and cold weather are the reasons for the 150 kids in 1st grade, and I’ll believe it. When there’s no entertainment, I guess having kids is your pastime.

From what I gathered, on Sundays the girls stay home or go to church, and the boys get drunk. Everywhere we turned there was a staggering bolo, or a bolo passed out on the road, or a bolo arguing with another bolo in a slurred, sloppy manner.

Notice the little blip in this otherwise-perfect landscape? That would be a sleepy bolo.