I decided I'd been hanging out in too many cities. The last time I was hiking was on the volcano in El Salvador. So I headed for the Tegucigalpa office of La Tigra National Park. The parks here are a bit different from in the US. You often can't just show up and expect to get in. You have to go to the office in the capital to arrange and pay for entry and accommodations in the park.

After finally finding their office in a fortress-like building, I met a nice English guy who was going up as a volunteer and had a ride. It wasn't cheap. $10 to get into the park, plus $10 per night to sleep in the lodge at the park. Then you're supposed to pay for meals at the cafeteria on top of that.

"I was the only tourist in the whole place."
Tom from England and I rode in the back of a pickup with the groceries for said cafeteria. He's been volunteering with street kids in Tegucigalpa, getting them into soccer and basketball programs. That's over and he's spending his last few weeks volunteering in the national park as a firefighter. Turns out there were five more volunteers already there, and I was the only tourist in the whole place. The volunteer guys were fun to hang out and play cards with... and since I was always with them the kitchen staff mistook me for a volunteer and failed to charge me for any of the food I ate. I didn't complain.

On day two I went for a hike and was amazed. It was like hiking the Appalachian Trail. Better that some parts of the Appalachian Trail. The trails were perfectly graded, well maintained, and even had bridges and hand rails at points. I'm not sure how far I walked but it took about seven hours. At one point the trail meanders through an abandoned mining settlement. They used to mine gold here. You could look into the mouth of a huge abandoned tunnel that traverses the entire length of the park. There was also a random steel door in the side of a rock face. It was unlocked but I was afraid to yank it hard enough to open it. Kind of eerie.

"Such is live broadcasting."
There was no electricity at the lodge, but when I got back to my room that night I turned on the BBC on the shortwave radio I just got. Just as I turned it on, the guy says something about unconfirmed wire reports of air raid sirens in Baghdad. I listened to the first moments of the war by candlelight. At one point the BBC couldn't get a direct feed of Bush's address and I listened as their reporter in Washington improvised by holding the phone up to a television speaker. Such is live broadcasting.

Then I re-secured the duct tape that covers the "US" in the U.S. Forest Service logo on my day pack. It's not a shame thing... it's just so much easier to avoid the issue when possible.