much of the land is owned by cattle barons and (standard) fruit companies (read: dole brand) - most of the people here are latino "campesinos," peasant level farmers on the land remaining.
in part cuz the dollar's so strong, and because the lempira is so weak.
so it's the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, next to haiti.
but the people are nice.
and there's lots of good fruit.
i spent two weeks in the third largest city, la ceiba, where they've had electricity all day and all night for two years now; already there's three internet companies.
so, I left by diesel freighter for La Mosquitia, the largest and most remote aggregate of intact natural vegetation left in central america. I spent five weeks surveying projects of a indigenous development organization, mopawi. they paid my transportation costs, and i had a contact, and maybe an office-shack floor to sleep on in more than 14 pueblos across the mosquito coast.
in return i wrote for them 9 articles.
now, with my spanish, i can better talk to a cacao farmer, or an agroforester than i can to the average honduran teenager. and i learned some miskito too - they're the people, the natives of that land.
like most foreigners who travel to honduras, i did some scuba diving in the bay islands: utila.
