The Wednesday Group Has Arrived!

I had barely gotten my coffee cup filled and Elser, our driver, was giving me the "vamonos". It was 6:00 am and Kyle and I were assigned the job of picking up the Wednesday group arriving in San Pedro Sula at 11:00 am. I had packed a book to read just in case the four-hour drive became boring. I never touched it because the drive was so dramatically beautiful. It was reminiscent of a drive through the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains combined.

We arrived at the airport ten minutes before the flight came in. I was very impressed with Elser's driving skills and his timeliness. We had to cut straight through Teguc in morning rush hour traffic.  Elsur is 23 years old. He said he was a Pequenos and he came to NPH when he was four. His English is very good and he is going to college now and wants to become an English teacher. He was also very accommodating to his group of 14 sleep deprived passengers. A pick-up truck accompanied us and we stowed all of the luggage in it. The van was so full with people that we had to send Steve Kraemer in the pick-up truck with Geraldo (aka Gijo) the driver. He did have the "luxury" seat with plenty of leg room. But we had air-conditioning which was much appreciated.

Steve said he enjoyed speaking Spanish with Gijo and that he was a good source of information. We stopped to buy a stem of bananas and some pineapples. There were about 100 little bananas on the stem and it was in a plastic bag. We passed it throughout the van and everyone pulled a few bananas from it. They were very sweet ... until someone discovered a big spider in the bag. It was quickly sent to the front of the van and Eric Stephan was told to deal with it. He said the spider jumped out of the bag and was never to be seen again.

We also stopped to buy a bundle of giant pea-pod looking things from a little girl. The giant pea-pod was hard and when broken open it exposed white pods. We were told to eat the white part and leave the seeds. It tasted kind of like a honeydew melon. Another interesting roadside item were the fish people were selling. They would take a long tree branch and prop it at an angle with the various-sized fish hanging like wind chimes. We were driving along Lake Yajoa. There was also a lot of honey in clear bottles lined up on wooden shelves. They looked really pretty glistening in the sunlight.

The plan was to make a quick lunch stop and Elser pulled into a Wendys. The passengers made it clear that they didn't want American food. Elser found a very nice restaurant "El Gordito" and the group was pleased.

We continued on with the next stop being an hour away at Metro Mall in Teguc. The group changed money at the bank, used the ATM and did a little snack shopping at the LaColonia grocery store.

By 7:00 pm it was dark with a full moon as we cut through Tegucigalpa. The van's passengers were getting pretty giddy. A new nickname was bestowed upon Richard Elsberry. "Ricardo Silverado" which referred to his hair color. The group was holding up well and neon suckers were being passed throughout the van. They were suppose to turn your tongue into a glow-in-the-dark neon color. I did not see any glow-in-the-dark tongues flapping but there were a lot of bright blue and cherry red lips by the time we reached our destination.

The Monday Arrival Group met us at the door of San Cristobal and helped unload the luggage and everyone got settled. Joe Oeth was busy in the kitchen cooking up a gourmet spaghetti sauce. He had been a slave to the kitchen today. He and Jared worked in the Tortillaria and made 2400 tortillas. He must like kitchen work because he and Marian LeSage volunteerd to cook pancakes for a special Ranch event on Thursday.

The youth who arrived on Monday tormented Chandler Bursey with their recently purchased machettes. Yes, Matt Huppert, Eric Weiman, Kyle Erickson and Leah Flannigan bought big two-foot long machettes in leather sheaths. They claimed they wanted them so they could help cut the grass. That's how they do it here. The kids go out with machettes and chop away at the grass. It's one of the daily tasks here on the ranch. Feeling the "peer" pressure, I too bought a machette (to torment Chandler with :-). We will be cutting grass.

After a long day, the group gathered in the kitchen for a spaghetti dinner. The youth were loud and rowdy. The spaghetti was delicious. Our "chaplain", Phil Grisez, led us in prayer and gave us our directions for Thursday. It was lights out at 10:00 pm.

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