Alive and Kicking!

Well, kinda sorta. :-D I'm still here in Honduras. Arrived late Monday night. The flight out of Miami was slightly late in departing. Landed in San Pedro Sula about a half hour late.

In San Pedro Sula, we had to go through Customs and Immigration. I think we were the one big flight that arrived that evening. There was just one officer on duty when we all got there and started to line up. Then 2 more officials came out to start processing us. After finally getting through that, we went to get our luggage, which had to be scanned again before we can actually leave. After that, we had to figure out how to check-in to our connecting flight. Thankfully there was a woman on our flight who was able to ask some official-looking guy where we should go. He opened one of the sliding doors which was "off" for some reason and pointed us towards the counters and that the departure level was upstairs.

We headed over in that general direction and went to one of the ticket counters. The whole place seemed very empty. The check-in counters seem pretty closed and unmanned except for this one guy. We went straight to him and tried to tell him that we needed to check-in for a flight to Tegucigalpa. I think at this point we already knew or heard that the flight was delayed anyway, but we still needed to check-in. Eventually, we went over and waited at the TACA counter. Finally, this guy came out and asked if we just got off of the AA flight. He processed the guy who was also waiting in front of us, then he checked us in. Then we made our way over to pay the airport tax (all of 2 bucks since it's a domestic flight) and then up to the departure level. There, we found a couple of TACA reps and asked which gate. They told us gate 7 (which was the last gate, btw) and said that boarding would be around 9:30PM. Anyway, I think it was nearly 10PM when we boarded. It was ATR turboprop.

So away we go finally to Tegucigalpa. It's roughly a half hour flight from San Pedro Sula. Now, given what I've read so far about the airport, I was not too apprehensive about landing there. The ATR is a much smaller plane than a Boeing 737. The skies were not too cloudy, so I think visibility was decent. As we made the approach to the airport, I don't think the ATR had to make any funky manoeuvers on it's approach to the airport. When we did land, it was nice and quick. I read afterwards that ATRs were made to land and take off on short runways. So these guys were perfect for this particular airport. At the airport, it was pretty dead and quiet. I think we were probably one of the last incoming flights that evening. We went to get our bags. We almost had to go through customs again until the official was told we just arrived from San Pedro Sula. Then we got our bags, had them scanned and exited. The driver from the local office was already there to take us to the hotel. Since it was night, it was kinda difficult to have a good look at the airport and the surroundings. But I'm sure the video I posted last time gives you a good idea of the terrain around here.

I think it was about 11PM when we finally got to the hotel. I managed to communicate to the driver to pick us up at 9:30 the next morning to take us to the local office. After checking into our rooms, I quickly logged in to check on some email and stuff. I think I finally crashed around 1AM.

Yesterday was not too eventful. We spent most of the day at the local office and had a meeting with some of the local people about the project. We grabbed lunch at the food court of the nearby mall. It's amazing that just about all the eateries there were some American chain like Pizza Hut, Quiznos, etc. Anyway, later that afternoon, we went to the customer site for a quick meeting. After that, it was back to the hotel for a beer and a quick bite.

Today, we were hoping to get a few things, but alas, we were stuck. And on top of that, internet access from the customer site was heavily restricted. We could not use VPN to access our network at work. We could not access any sites that were email, chat or forum related. However, one of the guys there showed me a work around. It allowed me to access gmail. With gmail, I was able to get in touch with a few people back home and at the home office. I was also able to communicate with the local guys too about what we needed and stuff. We did get connection info to the nodes at the customer site. But with no test phones, we still can't do much.

Anyway, the highlight of the day might have been on the way back from lunch. We got the driver to take us to the mall. He decided to just park and wait for us since we would only be gone about 45 minutes. When we came out, it was kinda raining lightly. We scanned the parking lot for the car. We saw it but weren't sure if the driver was there. A few minutes later he flashed his lights, so we made our way over there. He had the SIM cards we asked for so that we can use in our phones. Then we made our way back to the customer site. On the way there, I noticed a whole bunch of taxis parked along the street. Apparently, there was some sort of protest going on over fuel costs and such. When we got to an intersection close to the site, it was blocked by police. Apparently, there was no way they were going to let us through, so we had to head back, which meant passing by the local office. Just before we got there, the driver got a call and it seems that a couple other guys who needed to go to the customer site were stuck because the other driver could not get the car out due to the protest. Luckily we were just in front of the office and picked up the other 2 guys. To get to the customer site, we basically had to go all the way arond the hill and get to it from the other direction. Oy! So yeah, that was the excitement for the day. The rest of the afternoon was kinda boring.

Maybe tomorrow will be more interesting?