Getting to Yorito
Oh what a difference the location makes!! Honduras has lots of mountains and plenty of open green spaces full of trees and plants that never turn brown, and there are small towns and big cities.
Although I knew that Catacamas was much bigger than Yorito, the differences didn’t really sink in until we made a trip there. I had invited my teaching colleague Christina and her husband Doug to an adventure that was more than we had anticipated.
Christina completes two years as a U. S. State Department English Language Fellow this month, and I thought they might enjoy seeing my town in the mountains. Starting from Juticalpa on Saturday, after I had completed four hours of teaching English to teachers, we traveled for two hours to Guaimaca where we stayed with the family of one of our other colleagues.
Hoping to make a connection with the only morning bus from Tegucigalpa to Yorito, we left Guaimaca Sunday morning on the 5:30 rapidito which was packed with people going to the capital only to get to our desvio and wait for more than an hour and a half beside the road. Then we got on the big yellow school bus that should have taken us straight to Yorito, and for the first hour on a paved “highway”.
By the time we got to the bumpy dirt highway we all had seats. We wound up the mountains on the windy road until the bus overheated, and then we got out to stretch our legs and wait.
Continuing on our way over a highway that is being improved and may eventually be paved, we scraped through a shallow river (where the bridge has been out for years). At the next flat spot we stopped and got out so that hammers and big rocks could be used to pound the rear spring back into place so it wouldn’t scrape the wheel – it could have been much worse.
Already thinking this was enough adventure for the day, the bus again stopped, this time so we could get off and carry our luggage to the other side of a small creek with gravel to board a different bus.
Only pickups and cars were getting through, so busses just unloaded on each side, then turned around and took on a different group of passengers. And nobody complained. I think it was 2:30 when we finally got to Yorito, my former Peace Corps town, where none of the streets are paved.
Yet the mayor saw fit to have stairs paved up the side of the mountain to the cross at the top of the nearest hill. The community has been convinced that it will bring tourists. I don’t think so. It makes me tired just thinking about our trip, but definitely no complaints.
The experiences during the few days we were there made it all worth the long trip. In the next e-mail I’ll send you photos and details of our time in Yorito. It only took us eight and a half hours to get from Yorito to Catacamas, with only one slight delay as the crowded rapidito encountered difficulty in the same location where we had walked over the gravel from one bus to the other.
This time it was very muddy and the men got out to push it up the last bit of hill. When we got back to Catacamas our breath was taken away by the heat. It had been cool and refreshing in the mountains. P.S.
The spider kept me from washing dishes for several days at my house in Catacamas. Not sure where it will ever fit in an e-mail, but thought sure you would want to see it. It seemed much bigger than it looks in the photos.