We officially celebrated our first major holiday away from home and came out ok J Thanksgiving was different for sure, considering we were the only people in town that night celebrating. Most know about the holiday, called Día de Ación de Gracias here, but they pretty much see it as a day where gringos eat a lot of food- which isn’t completely false. The thing we were most thankful for this Thanksgiving was that Lauren is an amazing cook and was excited about putting together a feast for us like anything we would have eaten at home. We had turkey (which none of us really knew how to prepare before, but ended up amazing), stuffing, vegetable casserole, cranberry sauce, muffins, mashed potatoes and gravy and of course pies- pumpkin and ice cream. The selection of foods was a far cry from what we’re used to (beans, eggs, rice, tortillas), and our appetites aren’t what they used to be which we didn’t find out until later, but we stuffed ourselves as is tradition and then promptly regretted it. It was a fun night though, and for about an hour while we ate all those delicious foods, it felt like we weren’t actually in Honduras. We celebrated with our boss Amy, her husband Wilson and 2 friends in the Peace Corps that live nearby.
A couple of days after, we headed out of town for our first big vacation… a trip to Nicaragua. I was excited as it was my first time in a different country besides Honduras or the US, and we were headed to the beach for a couple days! We took a 9-hour bus ride south, with no plans about where we were staying or what we were going to do. We arrived in Managua, the capitol city, to find a hot, smelly and frankly scary looking city. We took a different bus to León, a city that looked nothing like any cities we have seen in the past 4 months. A quiet town with paved roads and a number of nice buildings. It was also full of a number of really old churches and cathedrals, including the largest in Central America. We stayed at a great hostel in town where the rooms were cheap and nice, and the food was incredible. The next morning we headed west to Las Peñitas, a beach on the Pacific Ocean. It was a quiet and small oceanside town that had apparently been hit by a hurricane earlier in the spring for the first time in 40 years, some of the damage still apparent. There were a few backpackers there, and very few locals, but we basically had the whole beach to ourselves. We stayed at a hostel-type place owned by a crazy guy from California, in a room overlooking the beach about a 30 second walk to the ocean for $9… an amazing location with clear water, big waves and incredible sunsets. After much harassment by my roommates, and the insistence that the moment be recorded on video, I even had the chance to swim in the ocean for the first time ever J … it was pretty cool. Our time there was great and relaxing, but the best part may have been the nights as we played cards beside the ocean while listening to oldies music from home playing on the speakers and watched the stars since you could see thousands in the clear skies thanks to the fact we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere without any city lights to ruin it. Our next stop before heading home was Granada, another beautiful yet touristy town with colorful buildings and churches and horse-drawn carriages that circle the town. The town had a lot to offer- a lakeside location, volcanoes nearby, islands you could visit which were full of wildlife (including monkeys apparently), but sadly we didn’t have enough time to really take advantage of any of these things. The trip as a whole was great though… we didn’t get lost, we weren’t robbed, I didn’t drown in the ocean, we had a lot of fun and we eventually made it home to Honduras safely.
*Photos to come soon!
**Plus the next installment: The day we were bribed by a cop...
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