As promised, some of the bird sounds that I have heard both in my recent trip and also from when I was in Costa Rica:
My two favourites first!
Montezuma Oropendola
Slaty-backed Nightingale Thrush (not found in Honduras)
Three-wattled bellbird (heard on Costa Rica, found only in the very southeast of Honduras on the border with Nicaragua)
And here are some of the Honduran birds that I saw:
Great-tailed Grackle
Melodious Blackbird
Black-headed Saltator
Common Bush Tanager
Great Kiskadee
Blue-crowned Motmot
Squirrel Cuckoo
Little Blue Heron
And just because I love monkeys, although I never heard them in Honduras:
Mantled howler monkeys
And HERE are the night sounds of the cloud forest in Costa Rica
Friday 10 April 2009
Home Again
Well folks, this will be the last post for my Honduras Blog. Thank you all for reading it and sharing the adventure with me.
The journey home was certainly eventful. Honduras did beat Mexico in the world cup qualifier! The hotel owners' son was watching the game downstairs with some mates so I joined them, popping out briefly at half-time to grab something to eat. And yes I did eat somewhere different. Next to the Vamos a Ver Cafe there is a restaurant, whose name I have completely forgotten! Anyway I wasn't hugely hungry so I grabbed fried plantain with sour cream and beans. Very nice but very filling! Restaurant was nice, empty due to the match, but nice! Anyway, back to the game, a 2-1 score later and it's time for me to head to bed due to the horribly early start the next day. Of course I had conveniently forgotten how they like to celebrate in Latin America. I struggled to sleep whilst fire-crackers were being let off and taxis were zooming round the streets constantly honking their horns! This probably went on into the wee small hours, but I had luckily finally fallen asleep. Alarm went off at 4.15 am, yuck! Anyway, it was a fairly uneventful journey to San Pedro Sula, I was a bit nervous in case anything went wrong as I had been cutting a bit fine not going the night before, although in hindsight, due to the match I would have had a hard time finding a room. I grab a taxi for the 16km from the bus station to the airport ($15) and arrive only 15 minutes later than the ideal 3 hours before a flight.
Check-in, get rid of heavy bags (yay!), pay airport departure tax (about $35) and go through, relieved to have made it. Boarding time comes and goes and still no one is getting on the plane, then they bring snacks. It's not looking good. Suddenly I hear my surname called. Myself and 5 other people are pulled off the flight because we are not going to make our onward connections. Basically someone had driven the passenger bridge too hard into the side of the plane! (Perhaps due to too much celebrating the night before!) The plane isn't going anywhere soon. Initially there is nothing we can do, they want us to fly the next day. Luckily one of the other refugees is a lawyer who speaks fluent Spanish! Bless him, we spend 5 and a half hours standing at the check-in desk trying to fix things. That is how long it took to get us booked onto a new flight to the States (into New York that evening instead of Miami) and then a British Airways flight leaving early in the morning next day. We would arrive at Heathrow pretty much 12 hours later than planned. In the meantime we were sent to a hotel to have a shower and relax for an hour and a half before we had to be back at the airport. There was one business class seat on the flight to New York and I got lucky! What luxury! Wide seats, loads of leg room, staff waiting on me hand and foot! Was very strange, not being accustomed to such treatment!
In New York we had to wait a few hours before we could check in again, unfortunately no business class this time, but lots of empty seats on the plane so the chance to stretch out and sleep. Whilst we grabbed some breakfast we saw several dogs, in handbags! One Bichon Frise was even wearing a pink sweater! At last we were heading home, there was a great choice of movies, but unfortunately, unlike Virgin, BA had edited a lot of the films for content so I chose not to watch James Bond, Benjamin Button, The Reader or Revolutionary Road because I'd rather see them in their entirety! Instead it was Changeling (very good) and 80% of Bolt! (will be very good when I finish seeing it!).
Heathrow at last, mum waiting, yay! Unfortunately the M25 was a nightmare, cars at a crawl even at 10pm. It took 6 hours to get home! I worked out I had been travelling for 42 hours from getting up in Copan, Honduras to getting into bed in Holt, Norfolk.
The end of an amazing trip, it had it's share of ups and downs, I met some jerks, but also some really wonderful people. A huge hug and thanks go out to Jeff, Terrie and the girls at the Cafe Mariposa for making my stay so memorable, and to Dr Rob Davis and Bryan Becker from the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Centre for making my dreams come true, and finally to Cesar Flores, my guide at Copan, for giving me a fantastic tour of the ruins and explaining so much about the amazing Mayan civilisation.
Thank you, goodnight and good luck :)
The journey home was certainly eventful. Honduras did beat Mexico in the world cup qualifier! The hotel owners' son was watching the game downstairs with some mates so I joined them, popping out briefly at half-time to grab something to eat. And yes I did eat somewhere different. Next to the Vamos a Ver Cafe there is a restaurant, whose name I have completely forgotten! Anyway I wasn't hugely hungry so I grabbed fried plantain with sour cream and beans. Very nice but very filling! Restaurant was nice, empty due to the match, but nice! Anyway, back to the game, a 2-1 score later and it's time for me to head to bed due to the horribly early start the next day. Of course I had conveniently forgotten how they like to celebrate in Latin America. I struggled to sleep whilst fire-crackers were being let off and taxis were zooming round the streets constantly honking their horns! This probably went on into the wee small hours, but I had luckily finally fallen asleep. Alarm went off at 4.15 am, yuck! Anyway, it was a fairly uneventful journey to San Pedro Sula, I was a bit nervous in case anything went wrong as I had been cutting a bit fine not going the night before, although in hindsight, due to the match I would have had a hard time finding a room. I grab a taxi for the 16km from the bus station to the airport ($15) and arrive only 15 minutes later than the ideal 3 hours before a flight.
Check-in, get rid of heavy bags (yay!), pay airport departure tax (about $35) and go through, relieved to have made it. Boarding time comes and goes and still no one is getting on the plane, then they bring snacks. It's not looking good. Suddenly I hear my surname called. Myself and 5 other people are pulled off the flight because we are not going to make our onward connections. Basically someone had driven the passenger bridge too hard into the side of the plane! (Perhaps due to too much celebrating the night before!) The plane isn't going anywhere soon. Initially there is nothing we can do, they want us to fly the next day. Luckily one of the other refugees is a lawyer who speaks fluent Spanish! Bless him, we spend 5 and a half hours standing at the check-in desk trying to fix things. That is how long it took to get us booked onto a new flight to the States (into New York that evening instead of Miami) and then a British Airways flight leaving early in the morning next day. We would arrive at Heathrow pretty much 12 hours later than planned. In the meantime we were sent to a hotel to have a shower and relax for an hour and a half before we had to be back at the airport. There was one business class seat on the flight to New York and I got lucky! What luxury! Wide seats, loads of leg room, staff waiting on me hand and foot! Was very strange, not being accustomed to such treatment!
In New York we had to wait a few hours before we could check in again, unfortunately no business class this time, but lots of empty seats on the plane so the chance to stretch out and sleep. Whilst we grabbed some breakfast we saw several dogs, in handbags! One Bichon Frise was even wearing a pink sweater! At last we were heading home, there was a great choice of movies, but unfortunately, unlike Virgin, BA had edited a lot of the films for content so I chose not to watch James Bond, Benjamin Button, The Reader or Revolutionary Road because I'd rather see them in their entirety! Instead it was Changeling (very good) and 80% of Bolt! (will be very good when I finish seeing it!).
Heathrow at last, mum waiting, yay! Unfortunately the M25 was a nightmare, cars at a crawl even at 10pm. It took 6 hours to get home! I worked out I had been travelling for 42 hours from getting up in Copan, Honduras to getting into bed in Holt, Norfolk.
The end of an amazing trip, it had it's share of ups and downs, I met some jerks, but also some really wonderful people. A huge hug and thanks go out to Jeff, Terrie and the girls at the Cafe Mariposa for making my stay so memorable, and to Dr Rob Davis and Bryan Becker from the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Centre for making my dreams come true, and finally to Cesar Flores, my guide at Copan, for giving me a fantastic tour of the ruins and explaining so much about the amazing Mayan civilisation.
Thank you, goodnight and good luck :)
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