What a splendid Saturday afternoon in La Ceiba! But I'll get to that later. First, I should spend some time writing about the events since my last post.

The week in Dallas was great! In fact, I don't know how things could have turned out better. I managed to sell the Prelude within a day, I found out I passed the P.E. exam (finally!), and I had a very brief-and by all accounts successful-interview with the INS (or bureau of citizenship and immigration services as they like to be called these days). To cap it all off, I managed to meet the first-born son of Arthur and Juliette before I left!

Then one morning I woke up in Dallas and before I knew it I was touching down in San Pedro Sula. I'll never get over the extraordinary feat of jumping across space and time like that. Anyway, since I got in on a late flight, the connections to La Ceiba by air and bus were gone and I had some decisions to make. I had to either stay in a hotel (and make another series of decisions), and then determine whether to take the bus or the plane in the morning. The other option was to hire a taxi to take me, but the trip involves two and a half hours in a rather well-used station wagon, $120 US, and the risks of driving at night. These include, but are certainly not limited to, hijackings, stray cattle on the road, dangerous potholes, and some that my imagination is incapable of conjuring, but the taxi driver and the Spaniard I ended up sharing the ride with were more than eager to share.

It was good to be back and I was able to spend a day with the Bourochers before they headed back to the continent (and we drove once again to San Pedro to drop them off). An amusing little tidbit that sent the B's into unrest and a fitful sleep on the eve of their 28 hour voyage back to Avrille was that (thanks again to Sophie being right on time) we found out there was a strong chance that the highway would be blocked at one or more points due to a massive teacher's strike. There had been blockages that paralyzed traffic for the better part of a day for the past week and there wasn't any end in sight. The options were:
a) get to the strike line before the La Ceiba airport and walk across to take a taxi on the other side and fly to SAP,
b) same but take a taxi on the other side to SAP and repeat as needed for other strike lines, or
c) go for it in the Jimmy and take our chances.

That last one was too much fun to pass and anyway, just to be on the safe side, we checked with the bus companies and the police to see if they had any info on ongoing or planned strikes. They knew of none so off we went.

The ride went off smoothly (except that the Jimmy's A/C is now a distant memory) and the Bourochers got to the airport with time to spare.

Today we spend the bulk of our waking hours cleaning house and settling into our de facto home for the summer. It's great to finally have one's own space and stop living in suitcases. That is how we came to come out of our clean and comfy nest into a spectacular La Ceiba afternoon with a stiff breeze blowing in from the sea and nothing to do. Well, the night has arrived and we're off to see where it catches up to us.