San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa

We spent the night in the Tamarindo Hostel in San Pedro Sula and in the morning re-loaded our stuffed van and started for Tegucigalpa.  We chose to fly into SPS instead of directly to Tegucigalpa for a couple of reasons; first, the airfare was lower, and second, because most of us have made this trip several times in the past, we wanted to see a little bit more of the county to get a feel for Honduras as a whole, not just the area we have been exposed to.  It was an eye opener.  For some reason, I thought the rest of the country would appear "less poor" than Tegucigalpa since much of Tegucigalpa had been wiped out during Hurricane Mitch 14 years ago and they still haven't recovered.  To my surprise, driving through other cities and towns, everything looked the same as Tegucigalpa and the area surrounding it.  It better showed me just how materially poor the whole country is.

We had a several hour drive in front of us and broke it up with some stops every couple of hours to stretch.  We stopped at a park across from Lago de Yojoa for a bit, climbed up an observation deck for a look around, played on the playground equipment, and listened to a trio play a zylophone. None of us opted to go into the butterfly museum/enclosure, although I wanted to. 

After refilling our water supply, we continured on towards Comayagua.  We stopped outside of the city and had lunch, and then continued on to go see the Comayagua Cathedralsecond oldest, continually working weighted bell tower clock in the world.  (The oldest is in London... but they are doing date testing to see if this one, built in the 1800's, is actually the older of the two.)

In the plaza in front of the church, the paving stones were layed so that they form a shadowed image of the face of the cathedral.



As we were leaving, I spotted this face in one of the paving stones.  Do you see it?

 While we were in the bell tower, a full scale downpour started.  Luckily we were nice and dry.  From the bell tower we ran across to the cathedral interior and looked around until the rain ended, and then continued on our way.   Lets just say we are completely spoiled by the freeway system we have in the USA.  They're working on it here, especially in the area of the US joint military base (proposed future site of the relocated Tegucigalpa International Airport), but in areas where construction hadn't yet been continued, oh my.

Once we arrived, we checked into the Hotel Mac Arthur, where we also stayed last year.  (Part of me wished we still stayed at Hotel Boston where we stayed for a couple of years, simply for sentimental reasons).  Once settled, we had dinner and then crashed.