Feliz Año Nuevo (Happy New Year)

by Matt

After Katie's family left we came back to Catacamas, and were kind of sad. Probably sad because we had such a great time with her family, and it was time to get back to reality. Also because it is hard to be apart from your friends and family during the holidays, and even harder in a foreign country. Anyway we decided to get right back on a bus and go visit some old friends near Minas de Oro, Honduras.

While studying at the U of MN I had done an internship with some coffee farmers for an organization called Tierra Nueva. We always keep in contact, and they invited us to stop by for the new year since we had the time off anyway.
First we went to a small village high in the mountains called Pocitos to the house of Tobias. Tobias showed us his ripe coffee which is just starting to be harvested. We had a great time with the family. There is no electricity in Pocitos, so we went to bed early, and slept well because it is really cool at night up in the mountains.





Next we got a ride from Pocitos through the mountains to Tablon, where Apolinario and his family lives. We spent new years eve there in Tablon eating lots of Tamales and drinking lots of really good coffee. Actually there was a period of about two days during which the only thing we ate for breakfast lunch and dinner were tamales! Good thing they taste good and agree well with my stomach. In Honduras it is tradition to celebrate the new year by "burning the old man". So, you take a bunch of old clothes, stuff them with sticks, grass, and fireworks and make it look like a person. Then at midnight you light it on fire. It is supposed to represent leaving behind all the bad things of the past year. We stayed up well past midnight waiting for the old man to burn since he was a little damp and didn't really want to start up.





Finally we passed through San Luis visiting Carlos briefly, and then on to Minas de Oro where we met up with Dagoberto. We ate some more tamales, got to look at Dago's coffee processing operation, and then roasted coffee with Dagoberto. Dago is the only Honduran I know that brews coffee without sugar. Katie and I were happy to have some rich, dark, fresh, bitter coffee!





It was really a blessing to see all these people again and it helped prepare us for coming back to live in Catacamas where we have the luxuries of electricity and relatively easily accessible transportation.