Goodbye Guanaja - Hello La Ceiba!

We say goodbye to Guanaja, but in 25 minutes we are already saying hello to La Ceiba! I am clicking pictures from the plane and you can see the airport below ... just a short distance from the beautiful Caribbean Sea.



We are met at the airport by our taxi driver Javier, standing here with one of the local gendarmes . Javier was recommended by Senor Denis of the Nautilus Resort and he turned out to be a terrific tour guide. He had a new air conditioned mini van and because we wanted to go several places, he charged by the hour....no problemo! First on our agenda was to check in at the La Quinta Hotel, no not the American chain hotel, but very nice and complete with pool, cable TV, on site restaurant and free internet access ... cool!


From the La Quinta we wanted to check out the Mega Mall that we had heard so much about. This was truly an experience as there were so many familiar American names. Pizza Hut, Applebees, Wendy's ... where is the Honduran food?
It seems that the Honduran's have gone American fast food crazy, at least in the large malls! There were many clothing and shoe stores and cellphone kiosks were everywhere. It really didn't seem so much different than the malls across America. The only real difference that I noticed were the armed guards patrolling the malls. Not a lot, but enough to make me feel secure.

One thing that we really wanted to checkout was the local grocery stores. This is a big deal if you are planning on living somewhere for any extended period of time ... well...check it out! A lot of fresh produce, quite inexpensive. They had a meat and seafood counter along with a deli ... in addition, there seemed to be a lot of American foods that had been imported ... they were a bit more money than in the US, but, for example, if you really needed to have that special jar of dill pickles, you could buy it.

As all my friends know, I enjoy a glass or two of wine everyday, in fact I write a blog about it:

http://www.WineFoodPairing.blogspot.com

I had to check out the wine options. HOLY COW! I was not disappointed! A lot of wines from Chile and Argentina that were reasonably priced. The Californian wines were priced about the same as the US, but were available also.

It seems that if you have the right connections and can learn the right places to shop, an American can live quite nicely down in Honduras.

When we completed our tour of the mall, we went back out into the parking lot, and Javier was right there with the van ... perfect! A quick tour of La Ceiba and back to the hotel for a rum punch and a siesta.

Goodbye Guanaja, Hello La Ceiba!