April Work

Kalin is currently in an Aldea (kind of like suburb) of San Sabastian right now working on the
topographic survey for the design of a potable water system. This is her meeting with the community
to assess their needs.

The first time I have been able to use Google Earth to help design a water system was in Palos Blancos an Aldea of El Progresso. Here is one of the houses, they remind me of beach houses because they are all on stilts. Here is the kml file of Palos Blancos.

Aprilish1

Our Cousin Rob Johnson came to visit us during Holy week this year. We made a quick trip to the North Coast where we stayed just a couple of days in small Garifuna Village. This picture is taken from an excursion we went on at a national park penisula where saw howler monkeys.


This is Rob enjoying the freshly caught freshly fried fish.

Just before Rob got there we had a visit from the new Volunteers who will soon be arriving at their sites. Kalin took the opportunity to give a charla to some elementary school students on how to protect your water source and surrounding microshed.

Our one remaining site-mate left in April (we may get new one(s) soon), we had her despedida (going away party) and our local castle. The piñata was yellow dinosuar named Anna.

Aprilish

So one of the many things Rob did with us was to hike to the "punto mas alto de Honduras" of the Mountain Celaque.
The highest point in Honduras 2,849 meters, 9345 ft. We started our hike around 1200 meters or 3,930 ft.
Which if your counting is just over on mile up in the vertical direction. We started around 6 in the am and
were off the mountain by 6 at night.

Our town took part in the tradition of making murals/carpets from sawdust in which hours later they are walked apon by a large prosession of people singing and observing the stations of the cross. This particular photo is taken in front of a church close to our house-we heard this particular mural was done by local famous artist Mito Galeano.

Kalin got her put in tight braids while we were on the North Coast this is what happened when she took them out.

Pena Blanca -Puppy- work

Kalin left and spent her first nights out in the Village by herself doing a water study for this town.

They currently have no potable water and very few have latrines.

We got a new puppy to protect our house. His name is Pecas or Freckles or Pecoso.

So a couple of weekends ago Kalin and I went to Pena Blanca to visit our friend Tara Oates, who is a bi-lengual teacher there.
We went and saw the really big falls there that sound something like pullyapantsup falls.

Montaña de Puca

So two weekends ago we decided to go Hike la Montaña de Puca with some freinds. It is other mountain
(other than Celaque) that creates the valley in which Gracias Lempira exists.
We took the desvio to Azomada and drove to highest house we could find. We parked the car there
and then hiked up about 3 and half hours to the peak. I am going to include a link to the GPS points we took:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=879258&filename=20100222141251-4b830163a51dc4.06710856.kmz

The top was clear and you could have seen quite far (if not for the swirling clouds).