But first Basilia, Celenia and I had to get to the meeting point in La Paz. From our house in San Salvador, that took a cab, five buses and a jitney. Once we were all in one place, we fired up the bus and headed for the coast. We had along Basi's mom and dad, five of her six siblings (one had to work), and many nieces, nephews, and even a couple grand-nieces. The drive went fine, though at one point we had to inch across a provisional bridge next to a bridge that was destroyed by an earthquake last year.
Triunfo is one of many Garífuna villages on the coast. The Garífuna are people of mainly African origin (with some degree of intermarriage with coastal indigenous people) who are the descendants of people who survived shipwrecks of incoming slave ships in the Caribbean. So technically they were never slaves, at least not in the New World. They maintain many traditions, having their own language they speak daily, though they all seem to know Spanish and in many cases English as well.
The place we stayed is called Panchi's, named after the owner, a kind woman who made us great meals and treated us very well. Basilia has an old classmate who is from Triunfo, and we hired her father Dionisio to take me and Basi and all the kids (11 of them) on a trip in his outboard launch across Tela Bay to Punta Sal. I´d been there years before as a Peace Corps volunteer, and it's still a wild, pristine place with monkeys in the trees and beautiful turquoise water lapping white sand beaches. Of course we all loved it. The funniest moment of the weekend was when we came ashore and the park ranger assumed Basilia and I ran an orphanage!
Part of our boatload of orphans
Saturday night Basi and I and a few members of the family, mostly twenty-something nieces and nephews, walked a few blocks from the hotel to a community center where there was a dance. It was fascinating to all of us, since virtually all the 80 or 100 people there besides us were Garífiunas. We had a great time dancing. The Garífunas are friendly enough but seem overall pretty indifferent to outsiders, whether gringos or Hondurans. This is probably a good thing for the survival of their culture.
Yesterday we headed back toward Guajiquiro, making a detour to visit Pulhapanzak, Honduras's iconic waterfall. Our last hurrah with the group was stopping for lunch at Granja d'Elia in Siguatepeque. This has long been a favorite restaurant for Basilia and me, but it was especially nice for our big group. The staff are so friendly, the buffet style food so good, and the prices affordable even when feeding so many. Awesome!
The family at Pulhapanzak
Basilia and I said our goodbyes to the family and hopped off the bus at a crossroads so we could head for Tegucigalpa on another bus. It had just gotten dark as we arrived in Tegus, and a blackout that turned out to affect much of Honduras and El Salvador had just hit. We had to find a hotel in the middle of the city in complete darkness. Always carry a flashlight in Central America! Power came back on within a couple hours. This morning another parting -- Basilia went back to Guajiquiro to spend some time there, while I caught a bus back to San Salvador for my last couple weeks of work.
This week at UDB culminates with a signing ceremony for the Science Corner grant on Friday. This grant will help the university to start equipping their renewable energy research center. I just learned today that I have ten minutes in the program to make remarks, so I need to get something together. Also, I need to prepare for a three-hour workshop I'm teaching for the local IEEE chapter a week from tomorrow. So I guess party time is over for awhile...fun while it lasted anyway!
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