So I decided to write about my first day in Honduras as a collection of thoughts I had over the course of the day in no real comprehensible order. It’s one of those things where you write really poorly and try to play it off as being artistic.
5:20 AM- Arrive at BWI airport.
5:30- Sign warns that “for your awareness, passengers traveling from Venezuela may not have been properly checked before leaving airport”. These passengers are still allowed to fly, but they just want you to adapt your plans to having this knowledge somehow. What exactly can I do with this information? And is airport security really any worse in Venezuela than in any other South American country? Or African country? Or is this just some subtle propaganda to remind us that we´re supposed to be angry at Venezuela when none of us really know why?
5:35- Video clip of a woman wondering why she can´t carry liquids through security. A guy explains that Al Quada wants to use contact solution to murder us all and she smiles and thanks him for taking care of her. Everyone in line looks pretty unpersuaded.
5:40- I clear security with 2 things of contact solutions, a water bottle and toothpaste in my carry-on bag. They need a warning- “Americans may not have been properly cleared at security.” Obama must be in league with Chavez! Fox was right all along!
6:30-8:30- Fly to Atlanta, sleep a lot
9:15- Woman asks me the time in Spanish and I answer perfectly. I got this down no problem!
9:16- She immediately switches to English. What happened? I don’t have an accent do I?? It turns out that she’s a lawyer in La Ceiba, the city next to the village I´m volunteering in. She gives me lots of advice on the area and her phone number. So far so good with hospitality from Hondurans.
11:00- Begin flying over the Gulf of Mexico. It just looks like water from up here! Was it Rumsfeld who said that Iraq doesn´t look like its on fire from the air? By his standard BP has nothing to apologize for.
11:15- (Honduras time) A heated debate breaks out between 3 passengers over which place I should visit first when I land. Either they really want me to enjoy myself or just like to argue!
11:30- Begin to see land. The water along the coast makes unbelievable patterns of clear blue water mixing with normal blue and darker blue that I assume is coral reefs. The coast I see is covered in a forest that seems to go on forever with no signs of civilization.
11:40- This whole country seems to be wilderness with a few scattered dirt roads and huge banana and pineapple fields breaking it up. We´re supposedly landing in the second biggest city but all I see as we fly in for landing is forest.
11:50- After landing and walking towards customs I realize I´m the only gringo anywhere in site. No one seems to notice except the entourage of taxi drivers who begin to follow me as I walk into the main airport and wander back and forth confused trying to figure out which bus line I want.
12:00- Having decided to go to Tela, a city on the Caribbean coast west of La Ceiba, I begin negotiating with a driver, who convinced me I should just take a taxi all the way rather than just to the bus station. “50,” he says. No I’ll pay 40! “50.” Well how about 45? He smiles and writes 50 in huge letters and hands it to me.
12:05- I am such a typical American negotiator! Meaning, I pay what they ask but make sure they know I´m not happy about it. Much like paying 45,000 dollars for a year of college.
12:20- Is there anything but jungle here? We stay in the city center with signs for places like Burger King and Pizza Hut for about 2 minutes, and then are leaving the second largest city on a single paved road. We are surrounded by jungle with nothing but dirt roads and paths jutting off to the sides towards little houses made of tin, straw, plastic, and anything that can be used in construction.
The jungle is thick and vines cover everything, creating one continuous impenetrable wall of jungle. I don’t see individual trees but rather an unending barricade of vines and bushes strangling banana trees, palm trees, and bigger versions of your normal North American trees. Wherever we go the background is filled with more jungle that climbs hills, and the colors in the distance slowly change from bright green to darker green and blue on the mountaintops. This ecosystem is called “cloud forest” and the scientists clearly didn’t put much work into naming it. Every mountain or hill seems to have its own group of clouds hugging it, despite blue skies everywhere else.
12:21- Just as the jungle is a never-ending wall of trees, the road seems to be a neverending sea of chaos. Cars mix with bikes, mopeds, a few carts drawn by horses, and cows and chickens that are completely oblivious to the fact that they’re in a road. It is a two lane road with cars going in each direction, and a steady stream of traffic. This of course doesn’t stop everyone from passing each other constantly and narrowly avoiding cars coming the other way. What does passing accomplish when all the traffic is slowed to 25 MPH by something way in the distance? Is it just for fun or to pretend you’re accomplishing something?
12:25- We tailgate a cow for a minute or so and then honk, yell and pass him. Cows really drive unreasonably slow!
12:30- People describe me as a risktaker, but fitting 3 people on a single bicycle with a cart of bananas dragging behind seems A LITTLE excessive to me.
12:35- Car in a ditch totaled. People here don’t have the same embarrassment about rubbernecking, they just accept that curiosity is natural and almost everyone stops to watch for a few minutes. The cars that don’t stop to watch don’t take the crash as any type of warning and pass those that stop in reckless fashion.
12:40- Pass a flooded river that is overflying into the yards of all the houses near it.
12:45- No one has AC and its too hot to be inside so we pass by people living out their lives by the side of the road, almost like just seeing snapshots of typical life as we drive by. We go by a straw house with children playing soccer in the yard and an older man hacking intensely at random clumps of jungle in the yard with a machete. Am I in a movie?
12:50- Apparently some type of berry grows in this section of jungle and people who are desperate for work pick it and sell it by the road. We buy from one of them and the drivers offers me some. I don’t like the taste but enjoy spitting the pits out the window. We laugh and spit them at cows. Serves them right for driving so slow!!
1:10- We arrive at a hotel. I realize I am far too sleep deprived to think when I can’t figure out if 150 lempieras a night is a good rate after repeating the exchange rate constantly to myself all day. I am sure the woman is ripping me off when she says its 10 dollars, then changes her mind and asks for 12 (dollars are accepted currency in Honduras but they usually overcharge if you pay with them). I later realize it should have been $7.50. At least I knew I was getting ripped off, even if I couldn’t do anything about it.
1:20- I go to a store to buy a cell phone. The woman selling it to me is extremely nice and patient with me not being able to understand her. Thank god for such hospitable people.
1:22- I ask her how to call the US and she sends a text message to my phone and tells me to press “acceptar.” I do and she immediately yells “100 lempieras.”
“Para que?”
She shows me the message and I read it carefully. It says something like “this message costs 100 Lmps. Click to accept it.”
1:24- Debate trying to figure out what I paid for. I decide that I’ll probably get charged another 100 for an explanation of the explanation. I thank her and practically run out.
1:40- Alone. Scared. Confused. I walk towards the beach to try and get food and it seems like every 5 feet I walk I run into a restaurant or someone selling food on the street, and when I make eye contact with any of them they aggressively try to sell me what they have. Vendors seem drawn to me like a magnet from every direction, and it seems like everyone in sight wants to get something from the confused gringo who doesn’t know what the country is like yet. I look at menus but my brain isn’t working to translate the Spanish or have any idea what the prices are like.
1:50- Pick a restaurant basically at random and order fried chicken. A little girl sells me a loaf of bread for about .50 cents as I sit at the outdoor seating and as I begin to eat it I realize I haven’t really had food since the night before, and was up traveling all night.
2:10- Food arrives and as soon as I bite into it the world changes before my eyes. Amazing how your surroundings can be totally changed by your inner perspective changing. And amazing how food can be a catalyst for changing your whole worldview when you’re so hungry. I realize I am on an overwhelmingly beautiful Caribbean beach sitting and enjoying some fried chicken. What was I so worried about before? I look around and all the locals smile at me. Maybe they weren’t trying to take advantage of me! They now just seem to be curious about the foreigner and everyone suddenly seems to be my friend.
2:20- A beautiful gringo woman walks up to the table. “Turista?” I hesitate. It is usually better to never openly acknowledge being a tourist, but she seems harmless and I nod.
She is a tourist too and needs an extra person to go on a boat ride to a national park the next day. She also offers to help me out with anything I need help with getting arranged the next couple days. I feel even more relieved. Suddenly everything is going perfectly.
3:00- After going to book the tour for the next day I go swimming. I am in heaven. The beach in Tela goes the whole length of the town and there are restaurants lining the whole beach, but no road anywhere near it. So there are people hanging out everywhere having a good time but no noise from cars. The water is overwhelmingly clear and there are mountains all around me because Tela is on a bay and you can see the mountains on the other side.
3:12- The Italian “girl” is 38. I immediately believe everything I’ve ever heard about the Mediterranean diet. She looks like she’s younger than me.
3:40- I was telling people before I left I didn’t think Honduras would be as hot as DC has been this summer. Wrong. Tropical humidity is a whole new ballgame. I am drying myself with a towel and getting wet with sweat at exactly the same rate so the towel really seems to serve no purpose whatsoever.
4:00- Naptime. I designate the left side as the wet side of the bed so if I ever stop sweating I can sleep on the dry side. As I get into my room I see 2 lizards and a cockroach. I kill the cockroach and hope the lizards will stay.
5:10- Wake up confused, disoriented and soaked. Where am I? Is this real life?
5:12- In the bathroom it appears like the floor is moving. Ants converge from all different directions on a single point and swarm. I realize that its the cockroach I killed, and a little over an hour later the whole thing is almost gone. I should be in awe at the circle of life, but am slightly disgusted and remind myself to only kill cockroaches if I’m willing to bring the corpses outside.
5:20- As I leave the hotel room I am on a balcony looking into the backyard of a house where a woman is cooking. No privacy here, we live on top of each other. Her yard is packed with chickens, parrots, and a ton of kittens. I am torn between observing the chaos and not wanting to be nosy.
5:30- I realize she’s actually cooking food to sell on the street and it smells delicious!! I go down and get 3 tortillas filled with different types of meat and beans, and pay about 1.20 for them and juice. Life is good.
5:40- I walk to the beach as the sun sets and sit with my feet in the water. The crystal clear water reflects the sunset and the colors float off in a million different directions as they hit the waves. The mountains change to darker blue and then to darkness as the stars come out slowly at first, and then begin to overwhelm me. I think back to leaving the airport and it is hard to believe this is the same day. I am terrified and confused by this place, and the fact that I will be here for 6 months, but as the waves hit my feet and a vendor brings a beer right out to the water, I realize that I am also enchanted. There must be worse places in the world to spend 6 months!
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