Palm Trees! Pollution! And Photos!

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So after getting back to Tegucigalpa on Sunday, I had to leave Monday morning to cover a WWF conference about a palm oil production firm signing an agreement to reduce pollution affecting the coral reef.

The conference was... not very exciting. Or interesting. But i´ve got the article finished now so it means I don't have to do any work till next Tuesday (my last week at the newspaper. Where the crap did time go?)

What wasn't cool was the methane lagoons; several hundred cubic metres of nothing but human excrement is not a very pretty sight

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We then took a trip out to see a palm plantation, which was pretty cool. What wasn't cool was the methane lagoons; several hundred cubic metres of nothing but human excrement is not a very pretty sight.

The hotel was amazing. I didn't have to pay a single thing for anything, including the food. I had pancakes, eggs, ham, a burger and a steak over the course of the 3 days and it tasted so good because it was free. I had a massive glass of a drink which was pretty much pineapple, sugar and milk. It was like Yop but better. Yeah, that's right. Better than Yop.

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The trip back to Tegucigalpa was... special. The clutch on the bus completely stopped working about 10 minutes into the journey, so the bus driver spent the next hour driving for about 5 minutes, then getting out to fiddle with the pedal and something round the back of the bus. The bus also overheated every time we went up a hill, which was quite often.

Anywho, the driver suddenly had the bright idea of just starting the bus in 5th gear and getting up to speed, which worked when he got the hang of it. A 3.5 hour journey took closer to 6 and I wasn't a very happy bunny. So I went and bought some beer and read James Herriot for the rest of the evening.

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I got some pictures, but it's not because I've sorted out my phone/bluetooth situation; the media officer of WWF was kind enough to take a whole load and send them to me. Bless her.

This weekend I am definitely staying in Tegucigalpa to buy some souvenirs, check out some art galleries and do some general sight-seeing. I need to save my money to get to Utila and then waste it all on drink.

According to Jason and Greg, the guys from Virginia, there's a zoo where they keep the monkeys on the inside and the outside of a cage. Obviously some sort of well thought out psychological experiment, and not that they can't be arsed to round them up...