Bienvenidos a Honduras

NH here:
We have arrived. We landed around midday in Honduras. This was really strange to me since all of these kind of trips for me have been to China or African which require days of traveling and overnight flights. This was kind of like flying to California....no biggie. We are met by Don Sergia Avila, a man holding a sign ready to drive us. We tell him en espanol that we need to exchange money. He takes us to the money changer who is a guy standing on the sidewalk with a stack of US dollars and a stack of limpiras. Let me tell you. That really inspires confidence. But J did some quick math to make sure we didn't get totally cheated. We then head to the car with our luggage. If any of you have ever been in a developing country, you know. There are always multiple, very agressive people waiting to "help" you with your bags. I was ready for this and held tightly to mine. This did not stop a persistent Honduran man from trying to grab my suitcase as I put it in the car and then demanding un dolor.
We then began a 3 hour drive to La Ceiba to meet our missionary sponsors. We watched out the window at the intricacies of a new country and held on for dear life because Sergia apparently thinks he's a Nascar driver. We watch people traveling down the road in a variety of ways. There are a fair amount of cars and motorcycles with also many people riding on horse drawn buggies and bicycles. We were amazed at the things they can carry on a bike. At one point, we saw a child who could not have been more than 6 years old carrying what appeared to be an 80lb bag of rice on his handlebars. We passed fields of sugar cane, banana trees, and tons of lychees (a spikey red fruit with a white inside. delicious!) which are currently in season.
In La Ceiba we were picked up by our missionary sponsors: an emergency medicine doctor, her husband a pilot, and their 10month old Aliyah. We went grocery shopping there since where we are going there will not be the opportunity to go grocery shopping and headed down to the hospital. On our way (J wanted to make SURE I did not forget this), we saw a jaguarundi, a large cat that is comparative to a miniature jaguar.
We arrive and it is dark, and we explore some. The hospital is as pretty as it looks in the pictures, and we are really close to the beach. On our way here, the missionary told us how the hospital is currently working to be off the grid. They run off of regular electricity during the day and a generator at night. The hospital harvests palm oil that right now they sell to the government for processing. They are in discussions to try to buy a processor that will allow them to run fully off of palm oil and then be energy independent. I am tired but J is crazy full of energy. We explore a little around the compound, go watch Survivor with our hosts who we're delighted to discover are also fans, and settle into sleep.
I am starting work tomorrow. Apparently they are short doctors.
More to come.
NH