Food

One of the tasks agreed-to on this assignment was to tweak, play with, and hopefully improve the menus and their delivery.

A little background for you - Aparthotel Guijarros is a modest 10-room hotel in one of the nicer parts of Tegucigalpa. There are lots of embassies and a big private school nearby. Alejandra's team consists of a front desk/administration gal, a maintenance fellow, three housekeepers/cooks, and a couple of guards. (more on guards, pistols, rifles and shotguns later - it's a fairly big part of life in Tegus)

Most guests only eat breakfast at the hotel. When they show up in the dining room, one of the delightful three housekeepers pops into the kitchen to quickly and expertly prepare a different Honduran dish each day. And the food is great. My only real task is to play with the presentations and make a few other esthetic suggestions.

Early on I impressed upon Alejandra that her specific demographic of traveller is usually looking for authentic, local experiences. They also like to learn something and have stories to tell when they get home. She and her staff were quietly ..... too quietly ..... doing great things along these lines already. Each time I ask about an ingredient I get a great story. Things like;

"This hot sauce is fantastic! Can I see the bottle?"
"Oh ... the girls make it from the chillies that grow by the pool"

and ...

"Great coffee Alejandra. Is it Honduran?"
"Of course. A friend of mine grows it and roasts it just outside of the city."

How fast do things happen at this little hotel, in a culture perhaps not known for making things happen fast? One evening over dinner I suggested to Alejandra that they make their own tortillas instead of buying them. The next morning at 7am she told me, all matter-of-fact-like, that housekeeper Melissa's mothers grinds corn each day at home and that Melissa will bring some each day to make the tortillas. Right then and there Marta called me in to the kitchen to give me a lesson in true tortilla making ..... then proceeded to laugh at me when I couldn't  get them perfectly round like her. (She's been making tortillas for most of her 33 years .... I might have some catching-up to do on the whole tortilla thing)

The food part's easy. They are already authentically Honduran.  They just need to brag about it a bit more to their unsuspecting guests.

Done and done.

Marta shows Canadian-boy how it's done.

A Chilliquitos lunch.

Honduran breakfast w/ rice, beans, queso and fried plantains.

Some local sweets. Looks like marzipan - actually made from dulce de leche.

Mamoncillos. Bought these through the passenger window from a guy who approached the car at a stop light. Kinda like lychees, but not so sweet.

Toncontin Airport - not for the timid.

A few weeks ago, CESO sent me to Toronto for a three day pre-departure course in Intercultural Effectiveness training organized by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) - standard procedure before a first assignment.

Twenty of us, heading to twelve different countries, spent three days pursuing the stated objective of, "to increase the effectiveness of people in the development field preparing to live and work in a different cultural context". This is the same course Canadian Foreign Affairs, military, RCMP, and aid workers take before shipping out. It was outstanding. Every bit of it relevant and immediately applicable. Damn, we do this stuff well in Canada!

On day two we had the opportunity to meet, one-on-one, with an ex-pat from the country we were travelling to. This was fantastic information and set everyone's mind at ease. My meeting with Manuel started something like this:

Manuel: The first thing you need to be aware of is the airport.
Me: You mean, be careful when in the airport. Pickpockets, porters, certain taxi companies, things like that?
Manuel: No. I mean before the plane arrives at the airport.
Me: Oh. Really?
Manuel: Yes.
Me: What do you mean?
Manuel: I mean the landing is very dangerous.
Me: Great.

I don't hold back from travelling at all, but I'm probably not the bravest flyer in the world. I don't like turbulence. I don't like odd noises. I have never slept even one minute on the 100+ flights I've taken. (Subconsciously, if something goes wrong, I want to be able to offer my assistance to the stricken aircraft and likely-incapacitated pilots. In reality, as a foodservice professional, I could probably get everyone coffee as the plane entered it's death spiral to the ground/ocean)

Did I foolishly spend much wasted time thinking about my pending Tegucigalpa landing on the Calgary-Houston flight, the motel stay in Houston, or the relatively short flight from Houston to Honduras? Uh huh. You bet.

Mercifully, it was over quickly. After plenty of banking, turning and low-level buzzing of the mountainous region around Tegucigalpa the 737 banked hard left (like, sideways vertical) very close to the ground. There followed ten seconds of fairly steep diving down a hillside during which local children played just out of reach of the wingtips and of being sucked into the engines. I recall  clothes lines and faces and was convinced we were about to land with someone's bras and futbol jerseys dangling from the wingtips. As soon as the runway appeared we slammed down onto it and applied full brakes because (it gets better) this runway is very short. A picture perfect landing meant we had all of 200 yards of runway left. 201 yards puts you down a small cliff and onto a busy highway.

Cool eh?

Cue the YouTube video of a 757 landing at Toncontin airport.

Toncontin has universal bragging rights as the 2nd most dangerous airport in the world. Maybe I'll see #1 on my next trip.

You gotta have goals.

Tay-goose-e-gal-pah

Yep ... say it with me. Tegucigalpa - capital of Honduras and snuggled neatly amongst Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in Central America.

I arrived yesterday for my very first CESO assignment. What's CESO? Think I'll let you follow the link and figure out that one for yourself. Briefly, my life in hospitality and tourism has led me to a 2-week volunteer stint helping a small hotel here in Honduras improve and tweak how they run their business.

I am staying and working at Aparthotel Guijarros with the owner/manager and mercifully-English-speaking Alejandra. She is completely delightful, passionate about her business, kind to her small staff and very quietly proud of her somewhat troubled country. After grabbing me at the airport (whooo-boy .... gotta tell you about that next) we met for about 5 hours over coffee and dinner where I scribbled pages of notes about what is working at the hotel, what she thinks might work, and what her vision is moving forward.

I spent today hammering thoughts and ideas into my laptop with the conversations of tropical birds and the city sounds of Tegucigalpa outside my window.

I think we have a plan.