Patrick Allen has joined the Peace Corps and has been stationed in Honduras
Views at Honduras national park worth the hike
Former Salem resident Patrick Allen has joined the Peace Corps and has been stationed in Honduras. Allen will write regular updates on his adventures.
PATRICK ALLEN
March 23, 2004
Time seems to be moving really fast here in Honduras, it is hard for me to believe that I have been here for a month already.
My Spanish has improved quite a bit in my first month, but then again, four hours of class per day and living with a family of patient native speakers will do that. Training had taken up most of my time during the week, but weekend have been left free to explore the areas surrounding Santa Lucia.
Two weeks ago, I went with a group of trainees to El Parque Nacional La Tigre (Tiger National Park — there are, however, no tigers contained therein) which is about 35 kilometers past Santa Lucia on the road up from the Capital, Tegucigalpa. Jon, Silvie and I had a fun trip out to the park. After getting a bus to Valle de Angeles, the next good-sized town up the road, we found that, having left after the rest of the group, we had missed the morning bus and would have to wait for three hours for the afternoon bus to San Juancito, the town at the base of the mountain on which La Tigre is situated.
Faced with a three-hour wait, a 12 km walk or trying to get a jalòn (literally translated: a big pull, but used to mean hitchhike), we went with the jalòn.
After a little wait at the road out of town we got a ride to San Juancito. This however was at best the mid-point of the trip to the park.
San Juancito sits at 1,175 meters above sea level. El Rosario, a former mining village whose old hospital has been turned into the visitors center and hostel for the park, is located at just over 1,500 meters and a 90-minute hike up the hill.
After the hike in the midday sun, we were more than ready for a rest on the porch taking in the spectacular view with music from Nick’s iPod playing in the background.
The next day, I and four other trainees hiked into the park to see the waterfall, and from there continued across the park to the other side, to Jutiapa, a six-hour hike which tops out at just above 2,100 meters.
After reaching the other side of the park, we found that we had been slightly misled. The bus, which was supposed to leave from Jutiapa and take us down to Tegucigalpa, was not running that day, and we had to jalòn halfway to Tegucigalpa, where we caught the bus back to Santa Lucia.
I am in Siguatepeque, a large city of about 70,000 people, now for four weeks of Field Based Training (FBT). We are going to be going into the aldeas (small villages surrounding a larger city) and working on water systems and latrine construction projects designed by current Peace Corps volunteers.
We spent the last half of today in Potrerillos, the community that we are going to be working with this week. It is a town of 19 families that has not had potable water in 25 years.
I am looking forward to being able to explore Siguatepeque and the surrounding aldeas and making a huge impact on people's lives by completing our projects.
