Address Information/ Sending Packages

(This post has been slightly edited since our return. After 2 1/2 years of trying to get packages, we learned a few tricks to get past the corrupt and quite slow Honduran Postal Service.)

Our mailing address until further notice is:

PCV __ and __
Voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Teguciagalpa, Honduras
America Central


This is the address to the main Peace Corps office in Tegucigalpa, where most volunteers would travel to pick up any mail ever few months.

Addresses in most smaller Honduran villages and even some of the larger cities are hardly like the typical U.S. address-or even like the address above, which was in the capital.

A typical addy is more like this: Mr. So and So
The Main Street in Town
3 houses up from Miss Tina's store on the Right
The house with the chickens and the blue paint
Las Vegas (city) Santa Barbara (department)
Honduras
Central America

This is really how the addresses end up looking. In a lot of Honduran towns there will be a lady who is hired by the mayor of that town to run a village 'Post Office'. Often times this is run right out of her house- and open 8-3 with a 2 hour break from 12:00-2:00 for lunch (2 hours you say? That's a long break-get used to it-sometimes it turns into 3 or 4 hours). Sometimes the Mail lady might not decide to open again for 2 days.

Our Mail Lady in Las Vegas said she was open Monday through Friday. In the end it was usually Tuesday- Thursday, with Wedneday being a 'half day'. Just because she felt like it. She got paid by the mayor's office either way...

The mail system is corrupt. Though we lucked out and never had any major issues other than a lost package (that showed up 3 months later), we have heard countless stories of problems-Mail workers going through packages and taking anything of value and sending empty packages, packages that mysteriously go missing, never to be seen again, Birthday cards sent with money taken out.

Here's what it comes down to-if a letter or package has ANYTHING worth money, it's probably not safe to go through Honduran Post. It's truly a crap shoot. We also knew someone who had cash and a digital camera sent down-it made it fine.

In our humble opinion though, anything worth value is best left to be brought down with a friend or family member and handed to you directly. Just to be safe.

When you are going to be receiving packages, here are some helpful tips to make sure it makes it to you in one, unopened piece:

Write things like, " Cosas Religiosas" (Religious Artifacts) or " Materiales Educativos" (Educational Materials?. This will keep people from tampering with your stuff. If you’d like, you can write in Red Sharpie or draw a cross (Honduras is a very religious country), as this will also deter thieves. Chances are slim that the Postal Workers are going to tamper with a package with crosses on it, as it could be for a mission or meant for a church. Nobody will want to mess with that.

Sending things Fedex, UPS or DHL is basically pointless. It all goes through the 2 main post offices (in San Pedro Sula or Tegucipalpa) and is then directed to the destined Department and seperated by region and then city or village. It will take just as long to get to you (about 3 weeks) as regular post.

One tip that we did utilize while we were living in Honduras was to have family and friends number all packages that they sent down. This way we knew if one had gone missing or not, and if it did, we could go to the mail lady and ask her to look for the package (or pay her a little extra out of our pockets to make sure it got to us when she found it).

First post

Well, this is my first attempt at trying to post a picture and write a post on our new Honduras blog. Seems easy enough.

Anyhow, as many of you know, Simon and I are leaving soon. PC sent us the tickets last week-it's all official. We fly out of Eau Claire Regional Airport to Minneapolis International to Washington DC, where we will have a couple days of orientation and such at the Doubletree Hotel, and on the 21st we officially fly out of DC-to Miami-to Tegucigalpa, Honduras for pre-service training (3 months of language, culture, safety and other types of things we need to learn).

We sold our car, paid off immediate debts and will be leaving our jobs in 2 weeks and are almost ready to leave our families and friends for 2 1/2 years. (Note: The PC set up our student loan payments out of the money that went into our final end of service allowance. We would get 225 bucks a month that we never saw. At the end service, you get like 5 grand to help get you back on your feet again. We used this to pay those pesky loans so we wouldn't have to worry about them for a couple of years, otherwise we would have needed to have this money in a bank account and ready to be pulled out automatically for 2 years. We didn't want that.

If you decide to go to Honduras for an extended period of time, however, it might be a good idea to have something like this set up if you have loans, as the Honduran Lempira is only 19 to 1 USD.

It is unknown at this point how often we will have internet access, but one of us will try to post whenever possible. Also, if you have specific things to chat about or want more in depth (location etc.) information please email us. After this posting will be a post called "Address Information" or whatever... Please use this information to send us tasty treats and fun things-ie-books, cds, tapes, lots of pictures, etc. Just make sure to follow the guidelines we emphasized in that post.

We will not be posting anything TOO personal, as we will soon offically be associated with the government. Everything posted on this blog has to be appropriate and non-offensive, therefore, I'm sure you'll be receiving many emails since most of our antics are far from appropriate. As I said, please send emails, or better yet, snail mail. This will take about 3 weeks to get to us from the U.S. but it's so much more exciting to get real mail.

That's all I have for now.