Never Again

Never again will I stand on an already-full bus for 3 hours. But more on that later.

Chris got the scuba bug. We stayed five more days so he could do the advanced certfication, very cool. For our last five days our hotel received six more students and the previous departed. About half of the new ones were either crazy or very rude, so that didn´t create a very relaxing vibe. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the remainder of our time there, got to know some of the locals, and got to witness an amazing lightning storm. A bolt of lightning ended up striking one of the power lines on the caye that night, about 300 feet from our hotel! And, I read three books.

Yesterday, after taking an early morning ferry back to the mainland, we caught a taxi to try to find the DHL to mail a bunch of our stuff home. Note to reader: never bring rainpants, 4 pairs of socks, and a fleece jacket to Central America; it´s always so hot that even if it´s raining you will stay perfectly warm. We circled around for what seemed like hours and the driver gave up. So then we caught a bus to San Pedro, a large city in which we had to find an ATM because by this time we had only 60 lempiras - 3 dollars - to our names. The only ATM on all of the islands was never functioning. After this we found the bus terminal to our next destination. We were whisked onto a schoolbus to find that it was already full. In the states this would mean we would have had to wait for the next one. Not in Central America, my friends. In Central America you stand. Even though it was a three-hour ride. And Chris felt terrible. The minutes dragged on so slowly I found myself conjugating Spanish verbs in my head in all of the tenses. Eventually we got seats for the last 45 minutes.

It all paid off, though, because we arrived in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, got a hotel, and got dinner. It was 5:30 pm and we had only spilt a muffin and a bag of crackers that entire day because of our money situation. We then proceeded to fall asleep at 7pm and slept until 8am. I think before this kind of travel experience I perhaps underestimated myself.

Santa Rosa is beautiful. It´s a colonial town with cobblestone streets set in the mountains. Today we relaxed and walked around a little. We found this really cool indoor cafeteria where you can find any authentic local food you desire. For breakfast we had 40 cent tamales and for lunch we each had huge plates of fried chicken, rice, cabbage salad, and tortillas. Each plate cost 1.50. Yep, this is the life. It´s also really nice to be speaking Spanish again. And, since the town in the mountains, it actually gets cool at night. We didn´t even have to turn the fan on last night.

This town has a cigar factory. Supposedly Honduran cigars compete with Cubans.
Chris confirms it, he´s already tried a couple so far on this trip. Tomorrow we plan on taking a tour of the factory.

¡Adios!