Two weekends ago, a few of us went to a Corn Festival in a town called Danli. Every year, every town in Honduras has a week-long celebration of their town, and Danli combined corn with theirs. Juticalpa is going to have ours in December and according to the Administrative Assistant that works for the school, my boss's daughter who drove us there, the Juti celebration is mostly just drinking and stands selling clothing and nic-nacks. There were planty of nic-nacks here, too, and suprizingly not very much corn. In fact, there was only one stand grilling corn! Not pictured that is a big thing here is this corn pudding thing. It's supposed to be more like a warm corn smoothie, but what we got was more of pudding. If they hadn't put sugar in it, it would have been really, very good.
One of the parts of the festival was a horse and cow show... I'm sure there's a more legitimate name for that, but I can't remember. The second ones you see are the stereotypical cows. Dairy cows. The first are another kind I've only seen in those 50 cent tattoos you get from grocery stores, but I think they're more for meat. Also, these guys I'm pretty sure were entered into fairs. There were also about 30 horses, and people could pay to take a ride.
The army had a booth set up. I think mostly just to show how much power they have with their weapons, because, when there's a stop in the road on the highway (which is pretty frequent) every army dude is carrying an automatic weapon and have at least one of these, shown.
When we got to the more corn-y part of the festival, the streets were decorated with fancy corn-husks.
These stands were basically biscuits made out of corn that you eat with coffee. The free samples were really good. There was a spicy one, though, which I cannot see being very pleasant with hot coffee.
Vino de Maiz! Corn wine! It was really good. Very sirupy, which means that it's more of a sipping, one small glass kind of thing rather than a dinner drink that allows for multiple glasses. There's another kind of alcoholic corn drink called chicha, which was not as thick and a lot better. Both, though were very good. Had I any cash, I definitely would have bought some chicha.
Like all Central American-based festivals, there was a group of kids ding a traditional dance. I've always loved those outfits.
Ok, on the hill, if you can find it, there's a cross. Almost all towns and cities have a cross on the hill above the town in order to protect against evil.
These are the traditional cups used by traditional people in Honduras.
This is what pupusas look like. They aren't as green as these look, obviously. Just a tortilla filled with beans or beans and queso or beans and queso and carne. I get just beans. The salad that comes with it is mostly cabbage, and the other is chile. So good.
We went to the town's museum.
Traditional grinder for making corn tortillas, for any of those anthropologists out there.
Part of the festival was a cultural presentation. Shown here is a Japanese school in town doing a traditional dance.
I love these shelves. How clever to use forty bottles! More likely that not, these bottles are Imperial... I would love to have something like this some day.
Honduras.
Every day when school is over, this is what we see. One of the things that we need to be consistently aware of living here is now beautiful it is. This view is a wonderful, daily reminder.
~Two weeks later~
Lago de Yajoa is the biggest lake in Honduras, that according to the travel books, has just recently gotten a lot of tourist attention. The main reason we went was to go to the only microbrewery in Honduras called the D&D Brewery, and the beer was mostly pretty good. The only thing that I wanted to do, which apparently is a very big deal, is go to Los Naranjas, an un-excavated archaeological site on the lake that was found around 1998. There's a 4 mile hike, an awesome museum, and the site itself. Unfortunately, everyone else was going along with what some of the other teachers wanted to do, and a group of us ended up hanging out at a waterfall for a few hours while everyone else paid to go under the fall.
Next to the brewery was a coffee plantation, where they brewery buys their coffee. This was the best coffee I've had since being in Honduras. Nothing beats fresh coffee...
For breakfast on the second day there, I had two cups of coffee, a baleada, and a glass of pale ale. Nothing wrong with that.
Pana Blanca is the town next to the lake, about a 20 or 30 minute walk from where we were staying. There's only one ATM, which was broken, so I was very strapped for cash during this trip. Maybe for the best, then I wasn't able to go to Los Naranjas.
The waterfall was very beautiful! Pretty big, and interesting thing to see.
This is just a tree that has roots that start above ground, which is very cool. I also love that one of the roots that was cut just started sprouting more roots... Like a little alien creature.
One of my co-workers was mot feeling very well on this trip. The rest of us did what we could to make her feel better.
Once we got back to the Cabañas Ecológicas Paradise, where all 13 of us were staying in one cabin, we got pretty creative with how to drink our guaro and Fresca drinks. Guaro is basically Honduran Everclear made from sugar cane.
We finally got to see the lake as we were driving back. The man in the boat is dragging a certain kind of plant that was foreignly introduced and has been killing all the fish by sucking up all of the oxygen. They now use the plant to make things like bags and hats to sell, some of which have recently been being exported.
Apparently, pregnant women at this rest stop need their own parking space, too. The most confusing part is how small the parking lot is.
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