PANACAM-- Where the Scenery is Beautiful and the Guests are Cranky.

Disclaimer: Personally, I loved this trip. I had an amazing time with my friends and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was with my some of my closest friends here in Honduras on top of a beautiful mountains. While the weekend did have it's ups and downs, I would give it a positive rating overall. My tone in the following play-by-play doesn't exactly convey that, but it's true. The weekend spent in PANACAM was filled to the absolute brim with adventures, laughter, and memories as well as a lot of crankiness. Mostly memories though.

 

Another weekend, another set of travel plans, right? Absolutely right. This weekend we packed up and headed up to PANACAM which is a forest (rainforest?) with great hiking. Our entourage consisted of myself, Sarah, Cristian, Hector, Daniel, Ricky, Ricky's friend, Lauren, and Erika. We had a bit of a late start while leaving (shocker) and arrived at PANACAM around 6:15ish. In theory.

 

Yojoa from PANACAM Lodge

Weekend Adventure #1. We were in the final stretch of our drive to PANACAM. Quite literally in the driveway to the hotel we were staying at, about five-ten minutes from our final destiantion. It's dark and rainy and there was a giant delivery truck blocking the road. As in, it was horizontally across the road making it quite impassable for us. So we turn around, find out there is no other way up to PANACAM Lodge, and wait for something to happen. And wait. And wait. And wait until we finally got a hold of the people at PANACAM who said they would drive down to the truck and then walk to meet us. We could leave our cars at the pulperia where we were waiting and get them in the morning. Sounds like a legitimate plan, correct? Except it was raining and dark and we all had our backpacks and blankets and it was at least a 45 minute walk. Idea vetoed. We eventually found some people who would let us park at their house, drive us to the truck that was blocking the road, and then the people from PANACAM would drive us the rest of the way. Honduran people have such big hearts.

 

 

We arrive at PANACAM Lodge, get settled in to our college dorm room/ camp cabin, and make our way to the restaurant for dinner. It's about 8:45pm at this point, so I think it's safe to say that the restaurant staff was less than pleased with us. We ate some dinner, played some cards, moved to a table outside, built a fire, played some more cards, and finally quit when we were all cheating so badly that we couldn't actually finish a game. That was around....2am.
 

Despite the nights adventures and the intense card gaming, some of us still couldn't fall asleep once we got back to the room and ending up having some intense teacher bonding. It was needed and successful, don't even worry.

 

 

A late breakfast and some hummingbird watching before starting on what turned into a treacherous hike. The hike itself was diffcult, but managable. I survived and enjoyed it, but it was certainly tough. But EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of us was wearing our cranky pants. Cranky. Cranky. Cranky. It was too hot, the hike was too far, we were too hungry, we were too thirsty, we didn't know this is what we were getting ourselves into, the hike was too hard, we were too tired. If there was something to complain about, I can certainly guarantee we complained about it.

 

 

We finish the hike, shower, all ready to go back to Sigua. Oh wait, the truck that is supposed to drive you down the mountain to the pulperia isn't here, just wait over there. Fine, done. OH WAIT. You have to wait TWO hours. Now let me tell you, out of the five of us who completed the hike and were waiting to drive back to Sigua, there were ZERO people who dealt with hunger well. You can only imagine the crankiness and nastiness that ensued. We were not pleasant people to be around. We finally made it to the pulperia and stopped for dinner at the lake. After consuming some tasty, tasty fish, we were back to our normal selves.

 

At the top. Hot, sweaty, and so cranky.

Roll into Sigua late on Saturday night and I was asleep the second I touched the bed. Oh PANACAM, you provided me with more 5 Year Perspective stories than anything else has in a long, long time.