San Pedro Sula Salon Cosmos Latina owned by our friends the Sauvignons

Misael who is our housekeeping manager has been a friend of ours since we moved to Honduras. My business partner Gene used his car service on an early stay in San Pedro Sula and we have worked together with him and now his family since then. Eventually we brought Misael into the business here in Roatan and now we see his family on the mainland as much or more than he does.

From the early trips Misael used to take us over to his sisters salon (Cosmo Latina). We always got great service (haircuts, manicures, pedicures, facials etc) every time we went back we noticed they were expanding or planning on adding on. During this last trip the remodel of the entire upstairs of their building was complete and we were blow away with the layout and design that Waldina (she is Misales sister and the main person at the salon) had done.

In the pictures the first one you can see Misales parents (his mom gives a great facial) and his father who now gets to drive us around

The 2nd picture shows Digna (Misaels wife) and his son Misael Jr. Digna is 8 months pregnant and staying on the mainland till her Baby is born.

The 3rd picture shows Waldina the mastermind behind the spa. Cindy loves her hair cuts and we appreciate her great service.

The rest our pictures in and around the spa.

Great time and a great family.

Copan

Cindy and I had a great trip recently to Copan on in the Honduran highlands. Copan is famous for its Mayan ruins and its traditional spanish colonial village with cobblestone streets.

This set of pictures showcases the small village and our favorite place to eat Nina Lola where the servers carry the food on their head and the pinchos (Honduran shish ka bob) are the biggest we have ever seen. The city is laid out with a main square and they have a market on the weekends which is really nice.

We stayed at the Marina Copan hotel and found it to be first class and a great option.

During our stay we spent time walking around the city, went for a horseback ride, saw the incredible Ruins, Coffee farms and hit the Bird park which was amazing. Definitely a great 3 or 4 night option but plan on a full day to get there as Copan is a 3 hour drive from San Pedro through mountain roads.

Honduran Airline SOSA

On our recent trip to the mainland of Honduras we got off to a suspicious start. There were a few less people then normal on the La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula leg of the flight and they put the 6 of us and 1 pilot into the skinniest flying tube they could find. You actually had to craw over the seats to pick your row. Cindy and I got the very back seat (fly behind the wings for safety right).

We did make it and frankly the flight was pretty smooth so no harm no foul but always be prepared for the unexpected.

Water Water everywhere but none to drink!

Some of our best rental homes recently started to run very low on water. Water here is a precious resource and the infrastructure is not the best so the systems are vulnerable. Here is how it all works for these 5 houses.

The houses have roofs (duh I know) and they connect the gutters with downspouts into big concrete water tanks under the house called cisterns. That way the homes can collect rain water to then pump through the house for showers, sinks, toilets etc. Most places do not have enough roof area and storage capacity so they supplement rain water with well water. These houses work that way and so when the cistern gets low a float valve lets water from the local well supply into the tank. This water costs money usually about 2 cents a gallon but it varies depending on who your buying it from. From the cistern which is the reservoir of water waiting to be used for the house it goes out of the cistern into a pump and pressure tank then that regulates the pressure so you have a good stream coming out of the sinks, showers etc.

Well these 5 homes are very large and have 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms so they use a lot of water. We noticed that the cisterns were getting low as we have had little rain lately. It turned out that in the community of West end one of the two community wells had collapsed and there was basically no water pressure in the town and they were only running the water every so often doing the best they could to get some water to all people in the village.

These houses are on a point and kinda of the end of the line and they are up a little bit higher than the surrounding. Since the pressure was down they were not receiving any water to speak of. The water board was working on the problem but it takes time to get materials, money etc together and we had all 5 of these houses rented for Semana Santa (Easter week).

We had to do what we had to do which is order up the water trucks. The problem is these houses do not have a driveway to them. The closest place the truck could park is down the beach at the church so its about 347 feet to the first house and then each house is 50 or so feet apart.

It turns out on the island of Roatan between the water truck, local tool supply rental place and some PVC we had about 400 ft of line we could accumulate so we were able to pump water to the first two houses. We then would mark the cistern before and after each 1000 gallons (the amount the truck carries) and then when the truck left to go get more water we would pump it from house to house with another pump. We got about 10,000 gallons delivered this way over a few days.

We would have gotten more but the truck was in an accident with a motorcycle. No big deal right motorcycle small, truck huge how could that hold us up much? The bike had a cop on it so the truck was impounded, the guy in jail and that took about 7 hours to sort out so we lost almost a whole day just getting the driver and truck free. Don't worry it was like a bump no one was hurt and the Bike was not even really very damaged.

So we got the cisterns all about half full (4000 gallons in each of them). Believe it or not a 4 bedroom house uses about 400-800 gallons a day depending on number of people, how long they bathe, what they cook, if they wash clothes etc. Luckily for us a few days later it rained for a little while (first in a month) and the water board also got the well going and we started taking water again.

What did we learn from all of this? We decided to install low flow sink aerators and shower heads which are on order, we are investigating with some of the owners the cost feasibility of a solar powered desalination plant and we now tell customers to conserve and think about water usage because Water is no SPLASHING MATTER! ha ha I made that up do you like it?