A walk in the hills by San Rafael

As part of the deal with GVI here, I am allowed a free hike in the mountains with a guide. One Saturday morning, Kimberley and I met Alberto at the Spanish school. It was quite a chilly day for Copan which was ideal weather for walking. We walked up into the hills not far from the school in San Rafael and indeed the plan was to end up at the hacienda at the bottom of the road to San Rafael for a coke.

We stopped to admire the view and Kimberley spotted two children playing at the nearby house who go to our school. They were SO excited and took us into their house. This is typical of the houses in the mountains, made of mud etc. Alejandro greeting us!

We had coffee that was warming in their fire. I did not put any flash on the photos so you can see the gloom that they live in. The mother makes clothes for the community and so she has her sewing machine by the door for the light.

and the wildlife wanders in and out.

but the kids were all smiles. The simplest toys still make them happy.

We continued our walk, through large areas of coffee plants. Picking the coffee is the principle source of income for the communities in the mountain. Of course, the coffee is competing with the rest of the "jungle".

We came upon some birds that make wonderful nests hanging from the branches that swing in the wind.

We saw some cows in a pen and when we walked over to investigate we found one of my class with them. Joel has been in a lot of pain with his tooth so it was good to see him smile.

His father suggested that we go left out of the pen and from that point onwards our guide, aged 52, (lived in Copan all his life) was lost. Well not really lost as you know that Copan was at the bottom of the hill. In our journey, we came across this wonderful stile.

And we came across this lying in the path. We are told that it is good to eat but we declined.

Anyway, it became more of an adventure as we eventually had to go from community to community to get directions to the way down. There was one house we stopped at casa that had a wonderful sign to indicate who lived there.

All in all, the walk was meant to take four and a half hours, but it took six and a half hours. This is Honduras.

_________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________