Well Rested and Ready to Work

We got back a couple days ago from El Salvador and Honduras. We were in Suchitoto, El Salvador for a conference about Food Security and Sovereignty. Food Security means access to food (it may be food given to you that you have never eaten), whereas Food Sovereignty means the ability to grow what you want and do whatever you want with the food (consume or sell). We spent time in lectures, workshops and visiting local farmers. Some of the things we learned about were making compost using worms (vermiculture), how to make candy's from fruits in order to sell them and how to extract vitamins and minerals from certain vegetable leaves in order to supplement peoples diets. Also, we were able to met up with and old friend, Jenny Mason, who is working in Guatemala with Food for the Hungry, at the conference. It was nice to see her and hear about her experience in Guatemala. We had a little time to explore and found the country to be beautiful and the people extremely friendly and helpful.

Once the conference was over we decided to take a vacation and explore some of Honduras. We spent time on one of the Bay Islands, Roatan, where we snorkeled and swam in the clear turqoise water. In our snorkeling adventures we saw 6 hawksbill sea turtles, lobsters, star fish, various colorful fish and coral. After being on the island we spent time in one of Honduras's most well known national parks, Pico Bonito (Pretty Peak). It was a beautiful mountainous tropical rain forest. We hiked to a waterfall in the park where we also were able to cool off in the crystal clear river Zacate. We stayed in a small town that was trying to build up its tourism, El Pino. They had developed a nice eco-tourist center with a pool, restaurant, huts (mud walls, thatch roof, no electricity, but running water) and was very well landscaped with a view of Pico Bonito. It was nice to be able to support the local people and we would recommend this place to anyway. After enjoying Pico Bonito we went to a Tela, a town a little further north on the coast. We visited the world's second largest botanical garden (Lancetilla). It was started as a research center for united fruit company, but is now run by a Honduran university, whom continues doing research, but has opened the grounds for others to enjoy. Now keep in mind this is not the typical botanical garden we would think of in the states (lots and lots of flowers). Lancetilla is more about different tropical tree species. It was a beautiful place and Seth especially enjoyed all the fruit trees (because he was able to try many of the fruits). We enjoyed ourselves extremely and found Honduras to be an extremely beautiful mountainous country.