Peter in Honduras

Perhaps I need to change the name of my blog, as I am no longer Peter in Honduras. Current status: Peter in Costa Rica. Tomorrow will be Peter in Panama. Hey, that´s got a good ring.

Two Saturdays ago I started on a southern stroll, beginning at the Pacific coastal beaches of El Salvador at La Libertad. From there we (Sarah and I) wandered down the coast back through Honduras, visiting a fellow Peace Corps volunteer in San Lorenzo where we enjoyed a nice dinner on the mangrove covered banks of the Gulf of Fonseca (major shrimp exporter and important Pacific port).

Nicaragua. Satisfied with our brief stop in Honduras, we began a whirlwind Nicaragua tour. Leon, Granada, and the island of Ometepe. Highlights were one night out at the Laguna de Apoyo outside of Granada, a crater lake where we lounged about on the water in innertubes and enjoyed liter bottles of Toña (Uncle John and Uncle Don, remember?). The island was beautiful, we went biking and climbed up the side of one of the volcanoes. The howler monkeys scared us back down though and we didn´t make the summit.

Now we´re one night in San Jose before skipping Costa Rica altogether and heading straight for the beaches of Bocas del Toro in Panama. It´s rumored that although you plan to stay only two or three nights you end up in Bocas for multiple weeks. We´ll see if it has the same effect on us. I also want to explore Panama City and the canal, having just finished David McCullough´s ¨Path Between the Seas.¨

In other news, we won money! On April 29th the organizers for Idea Tu Empresa, the business plan competition we were involved in announced the 8 seed capital prizes. We won a prize of $5,000 cold hard ones. I feel like we were not awarded the top prize because our business didn´t require any more money (not that we couldn´t use it, but we didn´t request it). My first instinct is to regret this decision, but then I remember how annoyed I am by wasteful spending in NGOs so perhaps we did the right thing and created a plan that didn´t involve investments that were not absolutely crucial. After all, this is how I would fund the business if it were MY money. So this means Matias and EcoPlast (our company) have a bit of scratch to throw down on the installations and the machinery. The national beer company also expressed interest in working with us, although I have no specifics because I´m not in Honduras and only just heard last night that we won.

And finally, coming Home, with a capital H. I fly out of Guate on May 30th, rumbo (destination) Los Angeles. Winning that prize has given me some nice closure on my service and I´m excited about the next step working with DukeEngage in Seattle and searching for jobs.

I´ll try to post some pics of the trip, although I don´t have a camera cable with me, so we´ll see if stumble on a card reader. Drop me a line, internet is more frequent now than it was in Nicaragua.