To See Beauty You Gotta Rise Above the Dust

We have to begin thinking of our time here as living in Honduras. If we trap our imaginations in the rough city we reside in, Tegucigalpa, we'll miss the startling beauty and memorable experiences to cherish here. A national holiday awarded us a three-day weekend, so Carrie and I determined to escape. I haven't blogged much about our short time here, as there's been little of note to note. Much like Aleppo, there's not much to do here. Unlike Aleppo, there's loads of street crime, and we are warned not to travel out at night, take cabs everywhere, stay out of certain neighborhoods. And here in Tegus, I think I can safely chart one of the most interesting cultural experiences of my life: one weekday afternoon we were in the backseat of a taxi stuck in traffic that clogs the narrow winding hilly streets here, chocking on exhaust, en route to Walmart. That was our highlight of the day. Hope we don't get robbed. To return: Carrie knew of some cabanas set high on a mountain bordering La Tigre National Park about 20 kilometers from Tegus. A short taxi ride from near the Mexican embassy in our neighborhood to one of the main roads where the chicken buses (old schoolbuses probably sold from the States) wait to groan and wheeze their way up to Valle de Angeles, a quaint colonial artisan handcraft village in the mountains. Another bus ride 15 kilometers to be dropped off at a road leading into the even smaller village of San Juancito, an old mining town once the economic powerhouse of Honduras, now nearly defunct and shrunk to a quarter of its size after the mining companies and a Pepsi bottling plant boarded windows and doors and skipped out. Once out of the dull grays and rickety browns of Tegus, lush green mountains and forests rise around the snaking roads, banana and coffee plantations, side of the road ramshackle stalls where peasant fires twirl white smoke into verdant countryside. Once dropped off, we called Jorge and Monica, the German owners of Cabana Mirador El Rosario, and a half hour later we were shaking hands with a tall thin Jorge who offers a large smile of teeth but is otherwise soft-spoken and quiet and content in the cloud forest he calls home. The rocky rumbling bouncing bumping ride in Jorge's pickup took indeed a half hour, up and up and up we go, the daily rains washing out scoops of earth from the road. Three big dogs greet us at the gate, and proceed to lead us down the winding stone steps past terraced gardens and fruit trees, and direct us to our cabana. For 13 years Jorge and his wife have operated the cabanas on two acres high on a sloping mountainside. Just two cabanas, clean, spartan, elegant wood. But the deal sealer is the view from our deck: forested mountains rolling down to a valley of sugar cane with a thick brown rushing river cutting gently through. Puffs of white cloud like daintily poised whipped cream toppings sift across the sky. Below us is their rich, diverse garden (no spraying), hummingbirds flit through the dense brush and the soft roar of the waterfall is heard around a distant canyon, otherwise the blessed silence and temperate winds of Honduras. What would you expect to pay for a weekend in Paradise? How about $35 a night? After a leisurely lunch of sandwiches, cut celery and apples, Carrie and I hiked the trails into La Tigre, vines trellising through mossy trees of grand and wild abandon, slivers of sunlight consecrating a curve in the trail, mist suddenly descending, and after days of heavy rain, arching waterfalls drew down the hillsides and splashed happily. For three hours hiking Carrie's and my soul were the only ones we encountered. About ten minutes from the cabana on our return hike, a torrential downpour soaked us, the road back down becomes a river, puddles formed in our hiking boots, my shirt creaked when I finally under our roofed deck removed my dripping clothes. The expanse of sky was white with foamy stormcloud and rain, and we were so high up that we could actually see the clawing fingers of a dark threatening raincloud spreading and convulsing toward us. A change of clothes, we head down another level to the main house. Jorge lights a fire to warm our cold feet. The dogs, furry and glad to see us dry, wander in and curl around our chairs. A cat waltzes by. Jorge opens the night's first bottle of a Chilean Cabernet. The last twilight blue shudders and then darkens in the panoramic sky outside wide windows settling on a peaceful world. Jorge quietly eases out of the room to prepare dinner. Carrie and I count our blessings, peer up at the high vaulted ceilings, we the cabana's only guests and now feeling like royalty in the main house, warmed by the now blazing fire, here on this lush mountainside in the quiet soft air of this forest in this Third World country, our feet up, the dogs' hair soft to our strokes, wine glasses full and held high, and we toast to the magic we've found, that glowing balm sweet and healing.