An afternoon in Guatemala

We took a day run into Guatemala because of the Mayan ruins called "Quirigua". It's about a four hour drive from Copan so it was a full day. The weather was slightly irritable and it did rain a good bit of our drive and while we were visiting the ruins. Worse than the rain was the unreal humidity that we experienced. For the first time in my life I actually was unable to keep the sweat from running like a faucet off my forehead. It was a totally new experience for me and one I'm not totally ready to experience again!
Quirigua is a nice ruins group to see when visiting the Copan area as the two cities are tied together through war. The fall of Mayan community in Copan was a direct result of a lost battle with the village at Quirigua. Quirigua also used Copan as a model to build its city so it was interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two. For more information on the ruins you can click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirigu%C3%A1



We also stopped in the regionally important city of Chiquimula and took a quick walk around the town. It was a bustling and busy city that serves as a regional shopping hub. Our driver says that he makes a monthly trip to the city to buy things he can't find in Copan. That seems to be a common thing for the citizens of the outlying areas to do.
For more information on Chiquimula click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquimula

The drive through Guatemala was easy and much flatter, particularly as we got closer to the ruins, than the Copan region in Honduras. As you can see from some of the photos I took from the car the area was very pretty, lush and green.

We didn't spend a lot of time in the country but enjoyed the things that we were able to see. Hope you enjoy the pictures and feel free to leave comments!

Thoughts from Honduras (with pictures!)

Honduras was the surprise of my trip. While natural beauty and outdoor activities are expected in Costa Rica not many people hear about Honduras. Honduras is one of the more politically stable countries in Central America, successfully holding seven consecutive presidential elections (none of them even had to be decided by hanging chads and the Supreme Court!). Of course there was that whole coup d'etat last year but who's counting? The country was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which killed about 5,600 people and caused approximately $2 billion in damage, a total that was far worse in effect than Hurricane Katrina was in the US. For some perspective, the ENTIRE GDP of Honduras was just $33 billion which means that a full 6% of the entire economy was destroyed by the hurricane. The USA's GDP was $14.6 TRILLION and the US govt. estimates that Katrina did $110 billion in damages or less than 1 percent of the GDP here.

Michael and I traveled from San Salvador to the UNESCO sight at Copan Ruinas by KingQuality bus. This was the first of many adventures we had the two weeks we were traveling as the bus blew a tire at the top of a remote mountain and then broke down again about an hour later. We had purchased a ticket to the city of Copan and it actually said Copan on our boarding passes but found out that the bus merely throws you off at Santa Rosa de Copan which is about an hour away. We were lucky that we hadn't missed the ONE bus to Copan that operates. It's a local bus stopping at all the little villages along the way.
After about an hour we made it to Copan and checked into our hostel. There are more pictures of our hostel on my Facebook page if you'd like to check them out. We stayed at http://www.donudos.com/ which was a great choice. The food was wonderful and the staff was warm and truly friendly.
We wound up spending an unplanned day in Copan because we were enjoying it so much. We took a full morning to see the Mayan ruins that gives Copan Ruinas its name. Marvin was our guide for the tour and he was a great addition to helping us understand the complex. For more information on the ruins click here http://www.copanruins.com/.
Also, we took in Macaw Mountain http://www.macawmountain.com/ and the Enchanted Wings Butterfly House http://10000birds.com/enchanted-wings-nature-center-copan.htm and, of course, the zip line!
Enjoy the pictures below!



Some final thoughts from Honduras....

The people are incredible. The warmth and friendliness shown to us was so genuine. It touched me and for that I'm a better person.

I may never be able to eat tortillas again. The ones from Honduras were heavenly! We would find people selling fresh made tortillas on street corners from baskets with blankets wrapping the tortillas to keep them warm. Walk up, pull out a few pennies and get a stack of hot, fresh and delicious tortillas. Also, they're thick unlike tortillas here which are nearly see through. In Honduras and surrounding areas a tortilla is about a 1/4 inch thick and slightly smaller in diameter than what we see here in the US. One can hear the slapping of the uncooked tortilla into the palms of the women who make them all day long. These are truly hand made by incredibly talented cooks.

We were fortunate to meet our great tour guide/driver/interpreter Daniel who helped us enjoy our time immensely. Without his help we could very well still be wandering the mountains bordering Guatemala. Our deepest thanks!

I'd also like to mention the family we met at the Dunkin' Donuts in Tegucigalpa. A father and his two sons were out for the evening at the mall near our hotel and just happened to sit beside of us and struck up a conversation. We chatted for a solid hour and possibly longer as they practiced their English and we practiced our Spanish. Thank you for your warm welcome to the capital of the country and I think both Michael and I look forward to accepting your invitation to visit the city again and spend some time seeing Tegucigalpa through the eyes of the locals!

Honduras was incredibly lush and green. I wasn't quite expecting it and so I was caught off guard by it.

I can't imagine how some of the coffee is harvested here. We saw LOTS of coffee trees on hillsides that were at least on a 30%-35% grades. I couldn't imagine WALKING up the hillside let alone trying to get something to grow and harvested from it.

The people and the land touched me in a similar way that Cambodia did. While not nearly as poor as Cambodia, the Hondurans showed their wealth of humanity through their kindness, smiles and personalities and I'll have that forever.

For more on Honduras... The CIA has a great internet handbook with information on every country in the world. Honduras can be found here https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ho.html

Also Wikipedia has a great entry on the country here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras

El Salvador

Here is the first batch of pictures from my trip. These are pictures and video taken from my camera while in San Salvador. Coming in the near futures, Michael's pictures and possibly some pictures I took with my phone. Enjoy them!

Impressions of El Salvador

Some thoughts on a couple of days in San Salvador-

One must possess the patience of Job and have the absolute absence of fear to drive in this town.

It´s hot. Really hot. REALLY hot. Painfully so. It´s been near 100 degrees both days in San Salvador and it seems we´re in a cool period with temperatures near 43 or 44 celcius in the near future. That works out to about 105-110 in the near future.

Mister Donut seems to use the Starbucks theory of store building here which is if you can´t see one Mister Donut from another then they aren´t close enough together!

The ride from the airport to the city is about 45km. The airport is near the beach and is on a flat and easy to access plot of land making it one of the safer airports in Central America. The ride in is a pleasant one with a very nice four lane highway designed exactly like the US interstate system. The terrain reminded me of West Virginia at times with similar terrain and topography.

It´s still really hot.

The most important thing a person can own in El Salvador seems to be a ridiculously loud speaker so that it can be placed right at the door of a business. This does draw attention to the store but also creates a sound barrier preventing anyone from being able to actually enter the store.

Tourists are rare and when seen should be gawked at until they are completely out of sight.

This is an NRA type of town! Because of the recently civil war and past political instability plus the pretty serious poverty many people face most businesses employ security guards. Now, as most of my blog readers are Americans you are thinking of the security guards at the US malls tht are generally mockable and unable to make it a real police officer. This is not the case in El Salvador. The security guards here are some of the baddest mo-fo´s to be found. Most wear a supremely militaristic uniform complete with pants tucked into jack boots with a full on arsenal slung around the neck. We´re talking shotguns, rifles and semi-automatic long barrel guns not designed just to scare a person (although they do that successfully as well). Strapped around the waist, enough ammunition to keep the bad guys from trying to be bad.

It´s still absurdly hot.

As I´m typing this, the rains have started to fall. It´s raining in torrents, sheets of it. Relief is coming to a city that needs a cool night. This is the beginning of the rainy season in most of Central America and we haven´t had to deal with it yet. I´m sure we´ll get acclomated with it as the trip continues.

I´ll have pictures of our adventures when I get back to the States and I´ll put them in some order and post them. Until then...adios....oh, and it´s hot.

National Mediation Board investigates Delta over behavior during Union election.

By Kelly Yamanouchi

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal labor board is investigating claims that Delta Air Lines interfered in a small union representation election.

The National Mediation Board, which oversees airline labor relations, said in a memo it will investigate allegations by the International Association of Machinists following an election among 91 flight simulator technicians from Delta and merger partner Northwest Airlines. The board sometimes dismisses such allegations.

The union, which failed to get enough votes to win the election, wants a new election using a different voting process. Simulator technicians were unionized at Northwest but not at Delta.

The union claims Delta offered a pay raise to non-union employees; promised a change in work schedules; had supervisors conduct one-on-one meetings to influence employees to not vote for the union; conducted surveillance to discourage discussion about the union; and denied union representatives access to break rooms.

Delta said its pay increases had already been planned and that any statements at issue were both true and protected by the First Amendment. The company denied other allegations.

“We believe the IAM’s claims grossly distort both the facts and the law to support its allegations,” Delta said in a written statement.

The investigation comes as Delta faces likely representation elections among flight attendants and other ground workers, who also were unionized at Northwest but not Delta.