After Christmas shopping in San Pedro Sula

Some of my goodies

We had a really nice day yesterday! We took a little trip to San Pedro Sula to check out the after Christmas sales and to try once again to look for furniture for our sala principal (living room).

San Pedro is about 110 miles from our house and the trip usually takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours, depending upon how many times we stop. El Jefe informed me we were NOT stopping for photos or we wouldn't get there until the stores closed (since we already had a late start) so I had to settle for video out the passenger window at 60 mph.
I have no idea what I'll do with 15 minutes of that video. If I slow it down so you won't be dizzy, I guess it will be about 30 minutes of video and who has the patience for that? I think you might enjoy parts of it, though, as the videos show what the real Honduras looks like so I may try to put together some pieces of it.

The highway is in amazingly good shape right now, except for one bridge which was out. Apparently it fell down and they have built a temporary one lane bridge in the meantime, with traffic directors whose idea of fair is that each side has to wait 15 minutes at a time for their turn. The road was great other than that, a couple of potholes that would probably rip the tire off your car if you didn't see them, and two towns that have a series of killer speed bumps.

The photos below show the broken bridge if you look past the blurry trellis in the foreground.









I never get tired of watching the view along the way. I used to take along something to read but found that I never did read. Sometimes I help with the driving, but usually El Jefe likes to do that himself.

First we went to Diunsa which is a nice Target-like store. They have fantastic sales of 30% off EVERYTHING in the store, 40%-50% off some items. Diunsa has some nice quality things, Cuisinart, KitchenAid, Mikasa, for example, and I'm pretty sure every toy in world. El Jefe made the mistake of leaving me alone in Diunsa (He knows about my kitchen-stuff addiction! It's not MY fault!) while he took care of something else. Most of the stuff in the photo above is from Diunsa.

I really don't know how their prices compare with U.S. prices. It may be that the appliances (large and small) are a little more expensive than the U.S. but it is a moot point for us. I saw 4 1/2 quart Kitchen Aid mixers for L.9,200 (US $545 with tax!). Many things seem a bargain, though. The cobalt blue glass plates in the photo hardly cost more than a package of paper plates!

We went to Sears looking for lawn mower wheels − no luck there − but I did find some towels that go perfectly with our weirdly colored dusty orange bathroom. I only bought two towels and four hand towels because I wasn't sure if they would match or not. Now I'm itching to go back for more because they look fantastic. If I live to be 100, I'll probably never find more towels, other than white, that work in that bathroom.
This grill is what El Jefe wanted from Sears! No, he didn't get it. That L.49,990 price in lempiras will definitely give you sticker shock!
We went furniture shopping and found some nice stores. Finally, after all these years, we found some furniture for our sala principal. You can't imagine what a thrill that is for us! I've been looking for some casual rattan furniture that wasn't complete weird-styled junk and finally I found it! It's even made in Honduras. I'm so happy and just hope that the orange in the fabrics goes with the orange walls. Why I didn't think to take my paint and tile samples, I have no idea.

We also bought two rattan chairs and an ottoman for our bedroom. Again, the problem with picking out a fabric! Jeesh! I know better than that, but I'll be content to recover the cushions if the color doesn't work in our purple (!) bedroom. El Jefe thought everything was too expensive. The prices did seem expensive compared to some of the other stores with more formal, ornate furniture, but that isn't the style that we wanted. I suggested that we could continue looking for another 5 years to see if we found something nice at a better price....so he decided that we should get it. He was able to get the price reduced even more over the already reduced end-of-year price.

The furniture won't be delivered for a week or so, so I'll be posting photos later on. I didn't even think to take a photo in the store. I was completely out of blogger-mode yesterday!

We also went to PriceSmart to stock up on some things that we can't get here. It was literally minutes before they were closing so I didn't get to pace the whole store like I usually do.

We only made it to about half of the stores we wanted to go to. That happens every time we go to San Pedro. We really need two days there, but with the animals to tend to, we really can't stay overnight.

We arrived home after 1 a.m. As we opened the driveway gate, Chloe came happily running out with the newspaper in her mouth! It arrives around 8 a.m., so I guess she was waiting all that time to get her reward! We laughed so hard about that. The chihuahuas were crying because they aren't used to being out-door dogs − daytime is one thing but staying out on a cool night? Sleeping on the cold ceramic tile instead of a fluffy warm pillow? They were appalled to receive such treatment, not to mention that it appeared that Chloe had eaten all of their food as well as her own just to show them that she could.

We fell into bed without even unloading the car, hoping to be able to sleep in in the morning. Today was trash day, though. Our trash receptacle is right outside our bedroom window and the trash man had a brand new fire-engine style horn to show off at 7 a.m.! Only in Honduras. ;-)