Comayagua

Bathing in midstream is a popular amusement in Honduras and is conducted without any false sense of modesty, and judging from the number of times we came upon women so engaged, it seems to be the chief occupation of their day.

That night we slept in Comayagua, the second largest city in the republic.

It was originally selected as the site for a capital and situated accordingly at exactly even distances from the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

We found it a dull and desolate place of many one-story houses with iron-barred windows and a great bare dusty plaza faced by a huge cathedral.

Commerce seems to have passed it by, and the sixty thousand inhabitants who occupied it in the days of the Spaniards have dwindled down to ten.

The place is as completely cut off from civilization as an island in the Pacific Ocean.

The plain upon which Comayagua stands stretches for many miles, and the nature of the stones and pebbles on its surface would seem to show that it was once the bottom of a great lake.

Now its round pebbles and sandy soil make it a valley of burning heat, into which the sun beats without the intervening shadows of trees or mountains to save the traveler from the fierceness of its rays.

And at the time, I was blessed to become, uh, wealthy, young, a- as a, as a young man, and I was making donations to help a priest in Honduras.

And I just finished a project, uh, with my wife where we built, uh, a series of homes for abandoned and abused women near Comayagua in, in Honduras.

And so I went to travel to meet with the priest and to let him know that I was gonna focus my, the bulk of my donations on funding a program in West Africa, and specifically Liberia.

And I knew that was gonna be heartbreaking to him because of the amount of financial support I was going to, uh, redirect.

I think we know what we're doing over here.

So we made it to Comayagua.

It's like an hour and 20 minute drive.

Beautiful drive, very scenic, a lot of mountains.