On Tuesday, Sandi and I left Enlaces before 8am, headed toward Tegucigalpa. Our goals for the day were pretty simple: renew Sandi's carnet, turn in paperwork for my carnet, and shop at HiperPaiz for things for Día del Niño. And, of course, a trip to PriceSmart.
We made it to the outskirts of Tegucigalpa quite quickly. Even the road construction was easy to navigate. But then we reached a traffic jam. You know the kind: we could have walked faster than the progress we made for the next mile or so. Once through the traffic jam, we stopped at Immigrations, which is in a new and better location. Amazingly, we were in and out of there in 15 minutes. That's pretty much unheard of, but we weren't complaining.
Next stop was IOM. Don't ask me what it stands for because neither one of us could figure it out. We know that they work with the United Nations and one of their services is to help people working with Honduran schools get residency carnets. We had all the paperwork we thought we needed -- and more. However, keeping in line with all things Honduran, we were told that the letters we brought weren't correct. Ugh! Sandi asked if it would be possible for us to call Enlaces, have them retyped and faxed to IOM, and she would sign and stamp them there in the office. Yes, that's fine. I mean, no, that's not good enough.
Ultimately, we called Hermes, had him rewrite the letters and email them to my gmail account. Then, Sandi and I went to an internet café, downloaded and printed. In an effort to keep this short, I've skipped lots of details, like our server being down at Enlaces, so no internet. Or, the first internet café we went to not having ink for the printer. But, you probably get the idea.
Back at IOM, they told us that the paperwork we now had was good. So, now we wait. Eventually we'll get a call telling us that I can come in and go to Immigrations and pay my money ($640USD), have my picture taken, get my provisional carnet, then wait until we have to go back again. But, at least we're making progess in all of this.
It was after 2pm by the time we arrived at HiperPaiz. HiperPaiz is actually WalMart. Yup. Really. Google it. I was hungry. So, we went to the food counter in the back of the store. "Plato típico, por favor." Nope. "Sandwich de pollo, por favor." Nope. They didn't have most of the items on the menu. So, disgusted, I told Sandi, "Let's just shop and I'll get something to eat later."
Well, it was about 6pm when we pulled in to a Chinese restaurant on the highway back toward Comayagua. We had a nice meal there and even found out they have rooms. So, after dinner, we were shown one of the rooms. Clean, bright, no air conditioning, but nice. And, the price is right: 800Lps, which is about $40USD. They have a pool and other things for the kids, so it might end up being a place to take the team for a retreat.
Back in Comayagua, we had the truck unloaded by 8:15pm. Yes, it had been a long day, but we got a lot accomplished. Our trip to PriceSmart? That was one of the details I left out. We went there in between the two different internet cafés.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot... I got to see my first tarantula. He was walking outside the room we were being shown at the Chinese restaurant. Pretty cool, in a totally creepy kind of way!
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