Ten Days in Honduras

After all that I headed back to Ft. Benning to get some sleep in order to wake up at 0400 to pack and get to the airport. We had a 25 min flight to Atlanta, where we had to ruch to make our flight to Miami. It was almost like those old rental car commercials with OJ Simpson, except I can't hurdle worth a darned. From Miami it was a two and a half hour flight to Honduras, and a two hour time change. Flying into Tegucigalpa was quite the experience. Apparently there are only a handful of US flight crews qualified to fly into what is the most dangerous airport in the Western Hemisphere. We came in real low, you could count the leaves on the trees, for added effect, there was a brush fire burning at the end of the runway. It took forever to get our luggage, customs was a quick process. We then had a quick lunch at pizza hut and then headed for the base.

I will admit that I am a crazy driver, at least I am very aggressive. The drivers here scare me. The roads are two lane with little to no shoulders, they wind up and through the mountains. Obviously trucks have a harder time in the mountains, so people pass them, but without regard to oncoming traffic. The other real crazy thing is they don't recognize the concept of turning left. If there is oncoming traffic present when you want to turn left, you need to pull off to the right and wait until oncoming and behind traffic have cleared. We had to do an hour long driving course last week. I'm not sure if I will ever bother to get a rental while I am here. The other thing is that American's are presumed to be at fault (mostly because of money to be had) even if you are just an onlooker.

We got to base and were given a tour, and then started to move into our rooms, we were all given temporary rooms. I went into mine and was looking around and saw what I thought looked like rice piled up in the corner, I asked a couple of the other Navy folks and even though there was no movement, we guessed that they were termite larvae. The builings here are all wood construction, they were built in 1983 and are classified as temporary (meaning to be used for 5 years), you do the math. I ended up being able to move into my permanent room, which is a whole hooche, about 15 ft by 40 ft, (the more junior folks have half-hooches) it is officially divided into three rooms, the bedroom (with a full size bed, sure am glad I brought that twin sized bedding!) a living room and a kitchen with a counter and table, but no plumbing.

My hooche:

After the experience of moving in we went to a place called "The Zone" which is what passes for a navy club. There are six clubs on base, most "owned" by one of the Major Service Components (MSC), all drinks are 1 buck, the profits from the clubs go to support the orphanges that each MSC has adopted, more on that later. There is one club, that is open only on Thursday nights and it is the only one where they allow local Honduran women to come in to... socialize, ahem. At the Zone we fired up the grill for burgers and hot dogs, since we had missed chow hours. I had picked up some chips and salsa and salt and vinegar potato chips. While we were there hanging out, cats starting coming around. There are quite a few cats on base, I presume that they are all feral and teaming with disease, but they are really cute, although all I have seen are females, there must be some toms around somewhere, just this evening I saw a momma cat with five kittens, they were soooo cute. (Can you tell I miss my girls?). But back to the potato chips, I was tossing down chips to the cats and they were eating them up. I've never seen a cat eat potato chips...

Tuesday was the start of my check-in process. It was a matter of running around to a whole bunch of different buildings, filling out paperwork, collecting signatures. The base itself is realatively small, the runway is 7000 feet, the total perimeter is less than five miles. The main US compound is little more than a half mile across. Many folks have checked out what are called E-Z-Goes, essentially gas powered golf carts that get them around, this is what we used to chase signatures. Then I hit a brick wall, the new boss wanted me to attend a meeting. It was the briefing for an Airborne Operation on Thursday. It was actually kinda interesting, my first exposure to Army stuff, me that Commander of the Joint Task Force.

Wednesday morning I needed to do more check in, but the boss dragged me along to a Force Protection meeting, enroute he told me that it was going to be one of my jobs. We (five of the six Navy folks) met with the JTF Commander, he wanted to do a quick personal meeting with us since there aren't many Navy down here (now there are 10). I knocked off for the afternoon and went to get my computer account information. After dinner I went to the office to try the new account and the boss dragged me to another meeting. Three meetings in the first 48 hours, bad precedent.

Thursday was an early morning, got up at 0500 to go along with the Airborne Operation. It was actually kinda interesting, I sat in back when the first 16 jumped, got some pictures (once I get my laptop working again I'll be able to download the pixs). The helicopter then landed to pickup the second group and they let me move up front to sit between the pilots, that was kinda interesting. We got back to base a little before noon, had lunch and it was time for.. another meeting, a continuation of the one the prior evening.

The helicopter and ground shots:

The base as we left:

Jump Shots:

A view out the ramp:

Cockpit shots:

Mountains as seen from the cockpit:

Hey all,

It's been a little while since I've written, partially owing to no computer access, partially due to the number of things they've had me doing. A recap:

Sunday the 18th, my last full day in the US, I drove over to Macon, GA for church at St. Innocent Mission. It was a very friendly congregation, just about all the men (it seems) were military veteran's, and from every branch of the service. I then headed back west and stopped enroute at Andersonville, the famous site of the Civil War POW camp, it was built for 10,000 men and at its height held 33,000, some 13,000 died. They also have the national POW museum covering from ancient times up to Vietnam and the Persian Excursians.

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Friday was the driving class and two more meetings on the same topic (it is a Quarterly Training Brief they had to give to the one-star General that runs US Army South). That evening we met back at the Zone, I learned to play spades and later we ventured out into town to a club named the Lemon Drop, why I don't know. There were a lot of folks from base there and of course, local girls. One girl grabbed me for dancing, after 35-40 minutes of dancing, she got kinda forward, actually real forward. As one person phrased it, they are real desperate to get to the US.

Saturday was the day to go to the orphange. It is the orphanage that the Army Forces here sponsor (since there are so few Navy here, administratively we belong to the Army). It was a BBQ day there, normally they just go out for a couple of hours every other week just to play. This particular time it was a special event, we were there for about four hours. They had gotten some pinyata's (sp?) and the kids were divided between boys and girls and they got to wack at it. If 3 pieces of candy fell on the ground, all 20 kids would hog pile in an attempt to get the candy. I ended up having some runny nosed kid glom onto me, he really liked to ride on my shoulders, much to my neck's regret. All day it was warm there. Once we got back, I think everyone did the same thing as I, took a long shower and a longer nap.

I better stop there, we (the 6 Navy guys) are heading out to a couple of coast resort towns this weekend (tomorrow is off) and I will have more writing to do next week. It is comfortable here, nice and warm, cools off in the evenings.

I can be contacted as below:

Work: DSN 449-4158
Commercial from US 011-504-234-4634 x 4158
Hooche: DSN 449-4655
Commercial from US 011-504-234-4634 X 4655
Mail: LT Evan Stanley
PSC 42 Box 459
APO, AA 34042
E-Mail: mailto:evan.stanley@jtfb.southcom.mil

Take care,
Evan