It isn't easy to like Nicaragua. The border crossing isn't bad but the roads can be terrible. The local people are friendly and accomodating but the police hassled us again. No fire extinguisher. Rather than even try to negotiate in Spanish I repeated "No entiendo" (I don't understand) until they sent us on our way. We spent a quiet night in Masaya, a natural stopping place if you are trying to avoid Managua, then continued to the border crossing at Los Manos.
Again it was an easy border and we drove all the way to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. We stumbled upon a nice hotel, the best of the trip and settled in to watch the Superbowl.
We met Julio Carcam, The Nature Conservancy's director for Honduras and Nicaragua, for lunch. He filled us in on their projects and took us on a brief visit to the TNC headquarters. He seems like the ideal person to deal with the issues in conservation while helping the indigenous people realize some gains.
He picked us up this morning, an unseasonably rainy day, and took us into the mountains to see some of the small former mining towns and La Tigre National Park. Honduras has a unique flora with pine/oak forests and dry forests and each requires a lot of studying as well as protection. Back at HQ we met some other staffers who are working on projects as diverse as prescribed forest burns and whale shark conservation in the Bay Islands. Julio has gone above and beyond what can be expected of a TNC director. He invited us to stay with him and his family tonight. They have a wonderful house in Tegu and it is a real treat to be a part of their family.
