Hope you are all enjoying Christmas, and not too cold. Currently about 18-20°C here, although was freezing last week. The problem with Honduran buildings is that being built in a tropical country, draught insulation is not the biggest concern, so when the winter gusts come around you feel like you’re experiencing an indoor hurricane. I went to bed most of last week wearing a scarf. Gemma, I sympathise with your gripes about Australia and the lack of heating – everybody talks about how cold Britain is, but at least we have discovered the joys of central heating and double-glazing.
I have spent all weekend baking – Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a mince-pie so decided to make some myself (for the first time in I don’t know how many years). Fascinating to enter the world of the ex-patriot cook – the internet has opened up a whole global community of earnest English housewives (and some househusbands), who despite living in countries where they haven’t even got a word for currant or sultana, and where baking hot, sweet stodgy food stuffs is not advisable given the climate or the prevalence of sucrose-loving insects that get into everything, carry on regardless in good old stubborn British fashion. bbc.co.uk/food becomes your best friend, and the deliaonline.com message board belies a host of frantic women looking for an alternative to suet (‘frantic of Vietnam’ is advised to use grated butter, or to do nothing short of go out and slaughter the nearest cow in order to render the fat off its kidneys herself). There is now a Christmas pud waiting to be re-heated, two dozen mince-pies, a sherry trifle, and I shall be doing the veg for the Cena de Nochebuena (they eat at midnight on Christmas Eve): buttered cabbage with bacon, roast potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and glazed carrots. This gluttony of gastronomic creation has done the trick, however; I am now feeling very Christmassy. Despite the abundance of cheap and tacky decorations everywhere (tastelessness is a universal phenomenon) I have failed up until now to get in the festive mood. The Christmas tree in the mall is amazing – 40 feet tall and covered in white fairy lights, although the frost covered wreaths were obviously made by someone who has never seen frost or snow (it looks more like a flock of diarrheic pigeons flew past).
Am going to Utila with some friends for New Year’s. It’s one of the three tropical bay islands off the north coast in the Caribbean. It’s supposed to be very rainy and windy there this time of year, but I’ll just be glad to get out of the city, and I’m still holding up hope that the weather will be good enough for us to spend New Year’s Eve on the beach. Have been dying to get back to the north coast every since I spent a weekend in Tela (coastal town) back in October. It’s like a different world from Tegus. As you head across the country you notice the climate change very quickly – the weather seems to just jump up 5°C at some point along the road, and then several more before you reach the coast. The scenery turned from the almost unreal green that carpets the south’s hills, dotted with darker patches of trees, to a flatter, more European view of muted long grasses around great blue lakes, and then onto the ordered symmetry of palm plantations in the steaming haze of the Caribbean coast. The hotel we ended up at turned out to be a beach-side resort that was originally built by the Tela Railroad Company in the 1920’s to house its US executives. The freestanding wooden houses now house many an American tourist or affluent Honduran family, and look like something out of one of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries that are set in the Caribbean – Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple strutting about in full colonial splendour. We went straight to the beach at 9.30am but by 10.30 the sun was so strong we had to retreat to the pool. When I decided to come to Latin America I never really thought I’d be sitting in a bar, sipping piña coladas, looking out across palm trees and white sand to brilliant blue ocean.
The following day we hired a boat and a guide to take us out to the national park; beach-front houses and hotels gave way to unbroken forest and then the palm-roofed beach shacks of the Garifuna (African immigrant) communities. We finally dropped off at a beach barely given to sand before the bulging presence of the tropical forest we were to be taken through. As we walked through it a racket started up that sounded like a pack of wild dogs. When I looked up I saw that they were wild monkeys jumping from branch to branch. The boat took us to three, totally deserted beaches, each different from the other; a completely secluded cove, sides bending round to a narrow entrance, another more shallow with some coral to go snorkelling amongst, accompanied by blue and yellow striped tropical fish, and the last, which was the best, where we had a lunch of fried fish and plantain, then took a siesta in the hammocks in the shade of the beach huts. There was just enough time for a dip in the turquoise waters before we headed back to the hotel at full speed, crashing over the waves, wind in our hair. It really was one of the best weekends of my life.
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