Amapala

(written 4/17/09)

Buenas! This week was probably the best week of training so far! On Monday afternoon we packed up our batallas (the large white Jurassic park looking vehicles that we cruse around in) and headed 2 hours south to go camping on the beach. This excursion was a working trip to learn about sustainable tourism in Honduras by doing some interviews with a few restaurants and then writing business plans based on our interviews. But to be honest no one was concerned with the amount of work involved as long as we got a chance to get out of the classroom and onto the beach! After stopping for our first interview at a zoo/restaurant we continued south until we reached Guayaba Dorada, a private beach that Peace Corps rented for us. All of us were divided up into groups to get all the prep work done, like a cooking team, campfire team, tent team, and games team. However, for some outlandish reason I ended up on the loading and unloading the truck team with one other boy… haha must have been all my muscles. Either way we all worked well together and helped each other out (good thing or more than one bag would have fallen off the top of the truck if it were left up to my rope wrangling skills). After setting everything up we spent the rest of the night swimming, eating REAL campfire food like hotdogs and marshmallows and playing games/ playing the guitar. It was so much fun! The only down side was the overwhelming heat! I literally sweated the entire time I was there. And while it was wonderful to wake up and look out the tent and be only a few feet from the ocean, it was less fun spending the night sweating in the tent.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to tear down the tents and have breakfast at the little restaurant on the beach. It was so gorgeous being only a few feet from the water and being the only ones on the beach! Not to mention this was all part of “work!” After wards we loaded up the batallas and drove about an hour south where we took a little speedboat to an island called Amapala. We took our little speed boat past some beautiful houses to a private beach owned by two families that looked like a long lost beach out of a movie. It was super clean with no houses or people in sight and no amenities at all. It was really perfect. And as a bonus, there was all this volcanic mud because Amapala used to be an active volcano so we collected the mud from the bottom of the ocean floor and rubbed it on ourselves to have the best mud bath ever. Our skin was so soft afterwards and all we could keep thinking was how much something like that would cost in the states. We stayed and swam around for about 2 ½ hrs and afterwards we took our little boat to another part of the island to visit the island’s tourism office to speak with the woman who runs it. Afterwards we went to the municipality where we looked at really old photos of the island and heard a bit about its history. Then we all loaded up on the boat again and went to Playa Burro to do another interview and then have the most fabulous lunch to date here in Honduras! Again the restaurant was only a few feet from the ocean but this time we had a buffet of seafood including cheviche, paella with shrimp and lobster as well as grilled fish and shrimp. We spent a lot of time stuffing our faces and relaxing at the restaurant before getting back on the boat and loading back up in the batallas to head back to Ojojona. Although the trip back was pretty hot with all of us stuffed into two vehicles (about 24 of us) we did get to stop for ice cream as well as stop to visit the Wat/Saners in Prespire which was really nice. We ended up getting back around dinner time, totally exhausted and glad to be back in our much cooler site.

Overall the trip was so amazing! It was so nice to go to the beach and “relax” a little because we have been working so hard in FBT (Field Based Training). Plus it was a great way for all of us to spend time together outside of training and become more of a team. In addition Amapala is a future site so someone will be doing their service there which has more than a few people excited. It won’t be long now (May 4th)!!!