Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Choluteca is a city in Honduras.  Now you know at least one city in Honduras.  How many of you know what the capitol of Honduras is?  I’ll give you even more points if you know how to pronounce it correctly, because it is a mouthful.  Tegucigalpa.  We never made it to the capitol, but the two days we have spent here in Choluteca just leave me wanting more of Honduras. 

When we crossed into Honduras we were really expecting the worse, but we have only been pleasantly surprised since we’ve been here.  Choluteca has such a lively center.  And the church and old town are beautiful and honestly charming.  Once the sun sets I’d advise staying close to your hotel room, but that is the case in a lot of Central American cities.  With little kids we don’t venture far from “home” at night anyway, so it isn’t any sort of imposition at all for us. 

We’ve turned heads like never before here.  Women of all ages have been real suckers for our two blue-eyed boys in all of Latin America, but we’re drawing attention to even the men.  Yesterday when we were walking through town I remember we passed a billiard hall where about 10 men were sitting on a window ledge.  As we walked by at least 8 of them turned around to stare at us.  But it doesn’t stop there.  William and Julian showed interest in a woman selling sweet tamales on the street.  We were planning on eating dinner later so we told them we wouldn’t buy any right then.  But the woman insisted on giving them each a tamale.  Matthias asked how much we should pay, but they refused.  They were gifts for our beautiful boys. 

Choluteca is also very hot.  During the hottest part of the day the temperature was around 103º F (40º C).  This kind of heat sends Seattleites into a frenzied tailspin.  But here, life seems to have the requisite pace to deal with that kind of heat on a regular basis.  Everything moves slowly, and even the street vendors don’t bother you with aggressive sales techniques.  It is just too dang hot to exert that much energy.

We also found a nice Comedor (eatery) where we had most of our meals.  The menu isn’t complicated – there is only one thing on it each day.  They only thing you specify is how many plates you want.  Most of the meals were traditional for this area: beans, eggs, tortillas, meat for dinner and fried plantains for breakfast.  They were substantial, filling, tasty meals, and each plate only cost around 2 dollars.   

We didn’t do much other than eat, sleep, check out the city and spend time at the playground.  But the slow-placed, friendly atmosphere pleased us so well we spent an extra night there.  Choluteca doesn’t have any “sights.”  Other than the surrounding beautiful countryside there wasn’t much of interests to tourists, other than regular Honduran life.  We most likely won’t be traveling back to Honduras on the rest of our trip, and we think that is kind of unfortunate.  If this is just a sampling of what a lot of Honduras is like, I think this country is worth visiting and I’m sorry we won’t get to see more of it.

Tamales are a typical Christmas dish in Costa Rica.  When we were in Guatemala, the Spanish school we were attending had a cooking class every week.  Both times we made tamales.  Ever since we went to Mexico in April last year I had wanted to try and make my own tamales.  Now that we are living in a place with a kitchen I decided to give it a try.

We did some shopping for Christmas dinner and I picked up a few things for tamales: tomatoes, chicken, onions, masa (some sort of corn flour used for making tamales).  I found a recipe on the internet for a filling and made it on the evening of the 23^rd.  It ended out tasting good.  Cooking this simple mixture was more fun than you could imagine for me, since we’ve hardly done any cooking in the last 5 months.  We’ve done really simple cooking, but nothing that is even the slightest bit labor intensive.  To be able to spread out and just cook like at home is fun by itself.

Where it really became interesting was working with the banana leaves.  In some parts of Latin America people make tamales with corn husks.  In others they make them with banana leaves.  I guess that the deciding factor in which one they use is what crop is near and more readily abundant.  We’ve driven through numerous banana plantations in Costa Rica, so I figure it is just a matter of convenience that they wrap their tamales in banana leaves instead of corn husks.

Matthias and I went out for an hour and a half to do our Christmas shopping in the center of town.  The streets were bustling with activity, people selling their wares on every corner, lots of people shouting announcing what they are selling and what a good deal it is, cars passing and honking.  The market place is nestled on the inside of one street block.  It is a series of dark, narrow, isles lined with stalls of people selling everything imaginable.  Near the meat and fish vendors the smell is quite distinct.  We wound our way through this maze and left with two and a half kilos of banana leaves. 

At home I began to unfold and inspect the leaves.  Each leaf is around 5 feet long.  The tips tend to be sliced into small narrow strips, and the larger sections, big enough for steaming tamales, are at the other end.  I sorted through each leaf, saving sections large enough for tamales and discarding the narrow strands.  The smell of the leaves is earthy and a bit unpleasant.  I wondered if the smell would transfer to my tamales.  After sorting through this pile, I washed each section and hung them out to dry like laundry. 

Working with the leaves was such a great experience.  They are fibrous and thick like a piece of canvas with a thick center stem.  But they are also smooth and fibrous.  In one direction the leaves are sturdy and impermeable.  In the other direction they rip without effort.  The ease with which the leaves split is fulfilling and fun.   (Matthias put some pictures of me working with the tamales on our flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebays)

I figured my parents must really wonder about me.  They raised a good girl in Woodinville, Washington and here they see me quitting my good job at Microsoft, taking off in an old van, and here they meet us where I bring home a bag of unknown.  I explore them unfolding these massive leaves, not native to the Northwest, and take over the kitchen with these long wide leaves.  I’m not sure they know what to make of all this, but at least they are open as I am their daughter. 

On the evening of the 24^th I started to make the tamales.  The dough is just a mixture of corn flour, oil and water.  I mixed it with my hands and once I had the right consistency I started to spread the dough on the squares of banana leaves.  The filling is smeared on top of the dough, and then you fold them up like a small package.  I read on the internet that it is a good idea to wrap each tamale in a second piece of banana leaf and then tie them with a piece of twine.  When I had used up the tomato-chicken filling I added sugar to the rest of the mass and continue making sweet tamales for dessert. 

To cook them I took some forks and spoons and put them in the bottom of a pot with about an inch of water.  This was to keep the tamales above the boiling water since we didn’t have room for a tamale steamer in the Yoda Van.  I lined the pot with banana leaves and put the tamales in the pot on their side.  They were steamed for about 45 minutes and they actually turned out wonderful.  Even my Dad and Matthias (who both admitted to not really liking tamales) said they were good.  Knowing Matthias, he’s pretty straight up about what he thinks.  I’d know he’d tell me if he didn’t like it, so they must have been alright.

It was nice to spend Christmas a different way, in a different place than usual, with different food.  However, for me, and I think for all of us, it makes us look forward to spending Christmas next year the way we always do, in Woodinville with our good friends the Richards.  We’ve spent Christmas with them for so many years and this was the first time in a long time that I’ve missed it.  Spending time away from what you know is the best way to find out what is important and reminds me what to appreciate.