Choluteca.. the HOT spot

So on my first full day here, we all (Jen, Karen, Nicole Tindall, Mike and Janet, and I) all packed into the rented truck (Karen got the "fun" spot straddling the shifter) and headed out on the road. Oh yes, we were in a rented truck because good old "Gracie" decided that she wanted to do more shaking than moving, and so we had to take her to the shop. Anyway, on our little adventure down there, we had the great opportunity to give a few police officers (one with a nice, large shotgun) a lift down the road. I mean, how do you say "no" to those guys, huh? But, it's good to know that if you needed them, they would have to catch a ride to come to your aid. Very comforting. Now, this truck that we're in has something very precious that Gracie doesn't have.... Air Conditioning. Oh yeah, that was NICE to have. :) So, we drove down to Choluteca basically without any problems... other than directional... but nothing major. Then it happened. Jen rolled down her window. Wow. Talk about a 30 degree temperature hike in about 2 seconds. Jen had mentioned that this was suppose to be the hottest place in Honduras, but who knew that it was apparently the hottest place on the planet?! I would compare it to living in a sauna. Because it wasn't just hot... nono. The people there probably don't have to drink water because there is enough in the air to just absorb into their skin. It is THAT humid. Crazy.

So, after the shock of going from 85 degrees in Santa Ana to 135 degrees (ok, maybe not quite) in Choluteca, we headed to the Lazarus Mission's office in town. They have acquired a 700 acre piece of land outside of town that they use in their mission efforts. But, before we headed out there, we looked around their office and warehouse. Jen and Karen were very jealous of this warehouse because it is pretty darn large. Just think small airplane hanger... made of block... with no planes... yeah. It was very impressive. They also had their pharmacy (might as well call it) in that building as well, and they were definitely stocked. So, after that brief tour, we got directions to get out to the property. As a side note, on the trip out to the property, I was right about two things while Jen was totally wrong about them.... no big deal. You would think that she would know better than to challenge me by now. ;) Ok, just had to throw that in there. Anyway, we got out to the property and met Jarrod, the main man at Mission Lazarus. We talked to him for a bit about what was going on out there, what they did, and other things about the structure of their organization. Then, Jarrod was nice enough to take us all out in his big F250 around the property. Now, if you're thinking that this is some nice, flat land... you'd be dead wrong. We were in the mountains. But, this worked out well because it was much cooler up there than down in Choluteca. Anyway, let's just say that the "tour" was more of an offroading adventure. Did you know that trucks can go up a 90 degree hill? Ok, it wasn't THAT steep, but I was very surprised at the steepness of the path (yeah, not even close to a road... and sometimes not really even a path). I would tell you about how nice it all was, but I'll leave that to Jen who also has pictures to go along with the story. But, it was very very nice.

Oh, but there were some humorous parts about the little tour. Karen made up a new car manuver, "tailfishing". Never heard of that one before. Janet said that she saw a Jaguar... which turned out to be a black stump. Apparently when American women come down here, they see large cats wherever they are. The hunt is still on for Jen and Mary Ann's mountain lion. The other humorous moment was Janet's flight. No, not the airplane flight down... though I'm sure it was very interesting since she hates flying at all, and she wasn't notified of the very abrupt landing in Teguc. But I digress. Since the cabs of those F250's aren't really big enough for all the people we had, Jen, Karen, Mike, Janet, and I all were in the truck bed riding around. Now, as I said, this was NOT smooth terrain. The bumps and holes were plentiful. However, on one particular hole, right near the end of the tour, the rear passenger-side tire went into quite the large crevass in the ground. However, with the truck still moving, it popped right back out rather quickly. Because of this, Janet, who was seated at that corner of the truck bed, caught some serious airtime before coming smack down back in the bed. Have you seen the cartoons when a character is very surprised and their eyes pop out of their head? That's about what happened in the back of that truck. I thought that Jen was going to pass out from laughing so hard. Good times, and definitely worth the drive down there. But the fun isn't over...

So now it's time to head back. But first, we gotta eat dinner, right? So we went back into hades, as I'd like to call it, and went to Pizza Hut. I love the person who invented the stuffed-crust pizza. Just had to share. So then we get back into the truck (MUCH smaller than an F250) and get back on the road to Santa Ana. Now, as you may or may not know, the roads here are... well... "rough" to say the least in some areas. Well, at night, these rough spots are a little harder to see until you're right on top of them. This is especially true when you're traveling as fast as we were.... I mean... we were traveling at a very safe and reasonable speed. Ahem. So, we're driving along, listening to some music, when all of a sudden... WHAM! We DRILLED a huge pothole in the road with the front passenger-side wheel. It was very deep and wide... don't start singing the song. So we're still amazed out how huge that pothole was when... WHAM! There was ANOTHER huge pothole that the front DRIVER-SIDE drilled. So now we're a little concerned. Neither tire had blown, but we were pretty sure that we could eaisly lose one. And then we did. The driver-side tire went out. So, after deciphering the the way to lower the spare tire down from under the bed in the back, Mike and I get the spare tire on. Oh yeah, and this is OF COURSE on a turn in the road where people don't exactly take them nice and slow, and we didn't have a flashlight. However, I found that Jen's iPod can really put out some light. So, we got a spare tire on the driver-side... oh, but it had a nice big bulge in it... that's always good. That's what you want to see in a spare tire. So, we had a spare tire with a bulge and a front passenger-side wheel that was bent and could go at any time. What is there to do but drive and pray that God puts his hands over the tires to keep them inflated? So, driving about 40 kph behind a slow truck for a while, and then getting up to a whopping 65 kph when we finally passed him, we FINALLY got back home after about and hour and a half or so... maybe more. But, this would have normally taken about half as long (if not less) if we had had two good tires. But hey, we made it back. So that was Wednesday.... what an exciting day, huh? Oh, and I didn't mention the part where Jen blew past a checkpoint and the policeman (or military guy, I can't tell them apart sometimes) reached for his gun while looking in shock as Jen didn't even tap the brakes. In fairness, it was hard to tell that he wanted us to pull over because it was so dark and he just kinda shined his flashlight at us when we were like 20 feet away and going quite fast.... I mean nice and slow. How can you not love Honduras? haha. Wait for a picture-filled version from Jen.