From Crete, Greece to La Ceiba, Honduras

Good Morning from Honduras!

Our trip from Crete was good.  Started at 6:45am Jan 2 and we arrived in Honduras 6:00am Jan 3 (1:00PM Greece time)  So it was pretty long trip but with the breaks we had in Athens, Rome and Madrid it was not so bad. We enjoyed our last night in Tsikalaria even though it rained all night and was still raining when we left the house at 5AM.  I was just hoping with all the lightning that the flight would still go - and it did.

Our last day was a little wet but left a beautiful rainbow over Chania

Our last meal in Greece, bread stuffing wrapped in a chicken breast, greek salad and roasted potatoes for Dwayne 

Fluffy is really "out" even his little tongue is hanging out LOL!!!  Going to miss these little kitties  

McDonalds ad on Arabic TV - Nice uniforms :) 

This is a New Years cake and inside is one coin for good luck - And you can see I just took a small slice and BINGO!! I got the coin!  Thank god I didnt have to keep eating more of the cake to find that lucky coin 😉

Our first stop was Athens - layover was 4 hours.  We had to wait an hour before the check-in opened for our next flight.  Once thru security (easy) I grabbed my last cheese and spinach pie :(  Oh how I'm going to miss just being able to pick one up from any bakery while walking around!! My hips wont miss them though!! Going to have to work on loosing some weight once back in Honduras - which will be hard since there is ALWAYS someone there that wants to join us for a beer or two! LOL!!

We then flew to Rome and had 3 hours there.  I ended up walking around terminals B, C and D to get some steps in LOL!! Ended up walking 3.5kms.  Had to be careful not to take the wrong escalators to different floors, so as not to walk out of the secured area accidently- otherwise I would be hooped!! No passport,  no boarding pass - yikes! Would have been bad.

Sunset as we are flying out of Rome

Then off to Madrid and another 5 hours layover.  But this time there is a VIP lounge that I have passes for that allows us free access.  But on the way there we pass a Burger King and Dwayne couldnt resist! So of course I joined him for a burger and fries :)  Even at the cost of $30C!!! Then we went to look for the lounge and were surprised at the amount of food that was available - all FREE!! Plus Wine, beer, hard liquor - I was expecting some nice comfortable chairs, wifi and drinks and usually some cheese, crackers sandwiches from previous experience.  Without a pass the cost is $27US per person.  I think we paid $35 each for a lounge in Seattle when we had a long layover there a few years back!  And it had NOTHING compared to this! I had a lobster sandwich! Yummy! Dwayne was even able to take a shower to freshen up! I didnt cuz I didnt have all my "stuff" with me to look presentable after the shower LOL!!! All in the suitcase :)

Sweets section of buffet

Wine bar - yes I did have to have 1 glass of rosè wine :) 

Salad bar - cant remember or able to read what is in the small bowls 

Soup bar - I had a mushroom pork soup 

sandwiches, fresh fruit, yogurt, beer, juices, pop

The bar!

He looks so much better now after the shower LOL!!

So we stayed in the lounge until about an hour before our flight was to leave and then walked over to the gate.  Once we got there I was shocked to see the developer of our place in Honduras - Flor waiting for the flight also!! This woman is a liar, thief and just a total bad person!! But she continues to operate anyways in Honduras. Lots of lawsuits against her but she always seems to be able to payoff the Hondurans to get out of it.  She owes employees months of pay and she tells the labour board she has no money!! And here is the bitch on probably a 2 week holiday in Spain!! Grrrrrrr!!!
At least we didnt have to sit close to her for the 12 hr flight!!

Sunrise coming into Honduras 

 Once we got to Honduras we got thru immigration quickly - 2nd couple thru because we had hoofed it from the plane because the line up gets really long and so does the wait time!!  It wasn't long and there were our bags!! Cant believe they made it all the way from Athens without getting lost!  They must be equipped with good GPS LOL!!!!

We then had to wait for the Avis office to open to pick up our rental.  So had a coffee in the mean while and also got a SIM card for my phone.  Back in business again :)

The Avis office opened at 7 and by 7:15 we were out of the airport and on our way to La Ceiba. Temp at 8am - 27C!   Arrived there 3 hours later so got our internet hooked up first, then to the bank to get the registration for our truck.  But once I got explaining what we needed found out they didnt have any blank forms, but the branch downtown would have some tomorrow!  Ok guess we drive in tomorrow without up todated registration - just have to hope we don't get stopped by the police :)

Hope he doesn't get rear-ended!

Sights in the city

Next stop is for groceries.  Wow prices have gone up!! When we arrive we usually spend about 3500-4000L ($190-218C) but this time it was over 5000L ($273C)!!  And I didnt even buy a lot of meat.  Now it was time to get the expensive groceries to our house - another hour away.

The last 20 kms to our house usually takes the longest because its a dirt road and if it has been raining a lot it is full of ruts, pot holes etc!  As it turned out it was in pretty good shape and we were at our house by 1:30!  Yeah!!!  Our housekeeper had been in yesterday and got our place all ready for us - she is a really wonderful person!  I bought her some nice soaps and body wash from the Body Shop in Chania as a gift along with some cash to show our appreciation :)

Then the rest of the day was spent unpacking and putting groceries away.  Then we realized that the fridge was not working properly. Not getting cold!  Luckily our neighbours are away and we have a key for their place so we were able to use their freezer. Our freezer gets cold enough to keep the fridge stuff cool.  Guess we'll have to look at buying a new fridge tomorrow when we go to return the rental car in La Ceiba.

Friday we leave early for  La Ceiba since we have to have the rental back by 8am.  Once we did that we went to Walmart and a number of other stores to look at fridges.  We decide to buy a small bar fridge first since ours crapped out last spring, and then Dwayne will look at our fridge closer and maybe bring it in to be repaired.  So once we got the bar fridge 4000L ($218C) we headed to the bank hoping the forms would have arrived. This time the clerk spoke English - I find out after trying my best at explaining what I needed in Spanish!! So he checks but no forms came in. He did have one on his desk that was a little wrinkled and dirty - but we said "we'll take it!"  So he printed off the required information and we were done with that for another couple of years.

One more stop at the auto shop to pick up new wiper blades and we were ready to head home again.  Once there and Dwayne had time to look at the fridge and take it apart he found that the cooling fan in the freezer side was not working. The compressor is working but the fan is not working well enough to get the cool air over to the fridge side.  Yeah! Maybe we get to save 29,900L ($1700C)

Dwayne leaves for La Ceiba again on Saturday to go find a new fan.  I decide to stay home and catch up on some laundry and puttz around.  When we arrived I saw that my favourite 2 palm trees on the back patio were both dead!! They were planted probably 5 years ago :(  Later heard from the locals that everyone who had one of those palms died - think a type of spore came from Roatan during one of the storms.  So now will have to get Manuel to dig them out for us and I will have to decide what to replace them with.

These 2 large palms have to be removed

I really cut back this plant in March and it has come back nicely!

I was also told be one of my neighbours who use to also us Travelpod that there is a new website that is free and I can download all my blogs and pictures to Travelark and see them again!  So I was also working on that while Dwayne was gone.  That means I can now delete about 4500 pics from my laptop!  Should open up some more room LOL!!

When Dwayne returns in the afternoon he has the new part with him.- 200L ($15C)!  He installs it and tadaaaa! the fridge works again! He is such a handy type of guy!! And saved us a bunch of money :)

Now we will just hang out, maybe walk to the beach later - its VERY hot out right now - 31C