The next four days would be the most challenging in terms of travel. We would travel from southwestern Guatemala, on the Pacific Ocean, to the northern coast of Honduras on the Caribbean. We would spend the night in four different cities over that period. Our third week in Central America ended with a trip to IRTRA, a private theme park created for and financed by workers in Guatemala through a payroll deduction system. There are actually five such parks across Guatemala, but the one near Retalhuleu [or Reu] is the newest and largest. It had the feeling of a Disneyland and Epoch Center combined. The park had Old Guatemala, Spanish, French, German-Swiss and Japanese theme sectors. It also had a water park, amusement rides, and many restaurants and gift stores. There were many cultural events and entertaining shows as well.

We were to leave from the park at 2 pm, but as had become our pattern it was closer to 4 pm. We left for an overnight in Guatemala City, before leaving their on Sunday at 4 am for Honduras.

We were up at 3 am, packing for our trip to Honduras. Our Guatemalan hosts took us to the bus depot for our four and one half trip to Honduran border, the Copan Ruins and Santa Rosa de Copan. We had spent two incredible weeks in Guatemala. We found it harder to stay good-bye to our hosts, most of whom were there at 4 am to send us off. I think we mostly slept on the long bus ride to the Honduran border. We were met by all the English-speaking members of the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa de Copan who themselves had to travel 2 hours to get to the ruins at Copan. After breakfast we drove out to the Copan ruins, the fifth and last Mayan ruins we would visit on our trip. They were the most recent of the ruins, dating back to 800 AD, and next to Tikal (which we had visited two weeks earlier), the most spectacular and best preserved. The temples were not as high as the ones we had previously seen, but here you could easily recognize the Mayan art and writing carved into the rocks. In addition, here we learned that there were temples within temples within temples, as succeeding generations of rulers would construct new temples over old ones. We went into tunnels to see the well preserved temples that had been built over. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip to date. Later that evening, we traveled to Santa Rosa de Copan, attended a dinner meeting with their Rotary Club and gave an informal presentation in Spanish.

Our stay in Santa Rosa would be the shortest stay in any city, less than 24 hours. This day began with a tour of the Santa Rosa Cigar manufacturing company, another one for the highlight film. This is one of the premium cigar companies in the world. It employs over 650 people and exports throughout the world. Most American cigar companies are fully automated -their cigars are made by machines. Not here, everything is done by hand and every cigar is tested.

They even hand manufacture the cedar boxes in which the cigars are shipped. I hadnít smoked in almost 25 years, but I could not resist the offer of a premium cigar in their tasting room at a hand-carved mahogany table. Needless to say, all of us purchased premium cigars to bring back as gifts. From there we saw a few of the projects that Rotary had been engaged in their city, from constructing a side walk to reduce pedestrian accidents to their support of historical preservation and the arts.

A native Santa Rosan architect who had lived 30 years in the United States before returning to Santa Rosa to retire, gave us a tour of their historical preservation projects, including an indoor community market that had been created to move street merchants off the streets and indoors.

Following that tour, we visited their Center for Culture and the Arts, also a historic facility being restored. Interestingly, the Center included a Ballet and Dance school, staffed by Dutch volunteers. They were looking for more volunteers, music and dance supplies for their programs serving children from poor families. We had lunch at Pizza, Pizza which was owned by a Rotarian, ex-American who had come to Honduras as a staff member of the US Embassy there, married a Honduran woman and decided to stay. Their pizzas had both an American and Honduran ingredients and were delicious.

Following lunch, we were once again on the bus, heading to San Pedro Sula, the industrial capitol of Honduras. San Pedro Sula generates almost 80 percent of the countries GNP. It was another 3-hour bus trip. When we arrived in San Pedro Sula, located in the northeastern part of Honduras, not that far from Puerto Barrios Guatemala where we had been ten days earlier, there was no one at the bus depot to greet us. We were tired, not feeling well and now had to locate our hosts or find a hotel to bed down for the evening. It took us about an hour to discover that our hosts were waiting for us at another bus company located on the other side of this large city. After finally be picked up we were transported to our host families for dinner and a good night of sleep.

It seemed no sooner than we had arrived in San Pedro Sula, we were off on another adventure, this time to Central Honduras, almost parallel with Santa Rosa. It began with a trip to Lake Yojoa, HondurasÇ only lake. Our guide this day was the director of a micro-credit program serving northern and central Honduras. We have been very impressed with the micro-credit programs that Rotarians had been involved in throughout Belize and Guatemala. We visited a fish farming operation that began with a $500 loan five years ago and had grown to an operation providing 22 Hondurans a living.

They grew tilapi in cages on the lake, starting with 8 cages and now operating 24 cages. Central America is economically suffering today as a result of the drop in the prices of coffee due to competition from Southeast Asia. This fishing cooperative, once profitable, was now also marginal as a result of the action of a Minnesotan company that bought up all the fish food suppliers and raised the price of fish food by 66 percent over 3 years, cutting the livelihood of the Hondurans involved in what was once a profitable endeavor. We continue to be impressed with how hard these people work and their ability to survive on almost nothing.

Bob Walz returns home this weekend. We will conclude his trip next week.

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