caroline climbs a mountain

well a small part of one! Am now in Gracias, another little mountain town which is pretty cute, but mostly famous for being near the Celaque national park, the proud owner of Honduras´most pristine cloud forest. Luckily I was talked out of doing the 2 day summit hike (I always overestimate my own fitness) as the little 900m climb we did to the mirador nearly killed me! Worst bit was it started to rain, got really misty and cold and the waterfall for which the mirador was handily placed, was not mirarable!!! But on the positive side of things only felt like i was going to die of exhaustion 3 times and, rather remarkably given the slippy nature of the descent, I only fell over once! Didn´t get to the cloud forest but saw lots of cool birds

Best bit of the trip was stopping for lunch at this mad old crone´s house. For about 60p we had a filling meal of carbs (yep, you guessed right, rice, beans and tortillas) and then she showed us how she made coffee from the coffee plants in her amazing garden. Bearing in mind this woman must have been about 65 it was quite a feat and apparently the coffee drinkers said it was v good coffee. She was so cute though and when my friend complimented her on her garden her eyes lit up and she launched into a rather detailed explanation of where the flowers had all come from. To cut a long story short, this was mostly the mountain!

Then a bit later on as we were walking back we came across a young white couple living in the middle of nowhere. Turns out they had been english teachers here, liked it so stayed and built a house. The woman had also, rather bravely, had a child out here and it was fascinating talking to her. The doctors were horrified when she said she wanted her husband to be there at the birth (apparently this would ruin him!!) and then were equally horrified when she said she would have a home birth as all midwives were charlatans! Turns out hers wasn´t great as she kept trying to get the woman to lie down "so the baby doesn´t drop out". As this woman pointed out, after 30 hours of labour that was precisely what she wanted. In the end though she had to go to hospital but the birth cost the bargin price of $3!!!! In a more enlightened fashion, have discovered that birth control is free here, as are STD and AIDS tests. But more worryingly, the pharmacists here seem to be able to hand over anything they like. Had to go for Rebecca and saw sitting there progesterone injections, drugs for breast cancer and all sorts of prescription only medicine for which it was obvious no prescription would be required there!