Travel, Photography, Life.
Honduras
Great diving and tropical diseases are available here.
Copan Ruins and Town
May 22nd
March 28-29, 2008
Days 854-855
It was a long day of boring logistics getting to Copan Ruinas that included a ferry back to the mainland and a series of buses. The name of the town implied that it was the site of some ruins, but that wasn’t strictly true. It was actually a pleasant, small place near the border with Guatemala with lots of actual living people.
The ruins after which the town was named were only a short walk away. People began inhabiting the site at least as far back as 1200 BC, and at the height of its existence, Copan supported about 20,000 people. Eventually, the population got out of control, cultural resources were strained, and people started starving. By 1200 AD the environment had been damaged so badly the last of the remaining farmers had to abandon the site and it was reclaimed by the jungle. It all sounded strangely familiar, but unfortunately our present day civilization can’t simply get up and abandon the whole planet.
The ruins had a few pyramids and large buildings, but the most impressive part was the statues depicting Copan’s past kings. They were scattered throughout the central courtyard, and some of them still even had the original paint. I was quite impressed by the hieroglyphic-like stories that were told by Copan’s scholars. I had gotten ruined out in South America, but my first set of ruins in Central America have put me back on track.
Grease Me Up And Wake Me When the Revolution Comes
May 22nd
March 22-27, 2008
Day 848-853
Rumor had it the earliest ferry left to one of the Bay Islands at 9:00, but to which island was unclear. Truth be told, I was skeptical there even would be a ferry today because it was Easter weekend. But the only way to find out was to get up early and head over to the dock. Sonia and Ivan got their ticket to Roatan, which indeed did leave at 9:00, but I wanted to go to Utila, and nobody seemed to know what was going on with it. The ferry was sitting in the dock, and when Sonia talked to the captain, she found out that it had already dropped off a load of passengers from the island and was about to return empty to pick up another load. I ran over to it and jumped on board just as it was pulling away. They let me ride out to Utila as the only passenger on the whole ship, a strange situation indeed. The mass exodus from the island meant that I was able to find a place to sleep right away, so I guess the divine intervention of El Salvador worked out for the best.
The first thing I noticed when I got to the island was that the locals were speaking English to each other. It was a Caribbean dialect that was hard to understand (they say mon and riiight a lot), but delightful nonetheless. It had been over a year since I had been to an English-speaking place.
The Bay Islands are known for their cheap diving, to the point where many people end up staying for several months learning how to be a divemaster (a kind of an underwater tour guide) or an instructor. I signed up for some fun dives on Easter Sunday. A big group of us checked out the reef (the second largest in the world), including a wall that went thirty meters (100 feet) deep. Later, we went to a private beach for a barbecue, volleyball, and an underwater Easter egg hunt where the prize for each egg found was a bottle of beer. I didn’t see anything life-changing on my dives, and I learned that overfishing had badly damaged the ecosystem around the island, but it was still fun getting back into the water.
Later I met a family from Alaska traveling together. Porsha did various things for a living, including playing in two bands and selling fruit smoothies at the farmer’s market. One of the first things she was going to do when she got home was go caribou hunting with her brother Garrison and mother Katie. Porsha liked to tell me that if you didn’t learn how to be self-sufficient by hunting and growing your own vegetables, you weren’t going to survive in the future. She also told me that the US had more or less become a police state in the time I’d been gone. It all seemed far-fetched, but it also had an eerie ring of truth to it.
Another guy hanging out with us was Dave. Dave also sells fruit smoothies at the local farmer’s market. He claimed that he only works four months per year, and only one day per week during those four months. That’s been his only job for the last twenty years. I think I need to consider a career change when I get home.
The worst thing about the island was the sand flies. The first night I got bitten a lot, but then I learned that if you grease yourself up with baby oil, they can’t piss directly onto your skin. The whole island looked like a big Mr. Universe pageant, what with all the athletic, deeply tanned people walking around in their swimming suits and covered with baby oil.
The other bad thing was the weather. Most days were cloudy with rough water, and the ferry service and even some of the dive boats became unreliable. A local rasta told me that around Easter it was always guaranteed to be hot and sunny, but the last few years have been totally unpredictable because of global climate change. So we’ve taken away the fish and the sunny weather, but at least there was still some coral. For a little while, anyway.
The photo album for this entry is here.
The Real Meaning Of Culture Shock
May 22nd
March 21, 2008
Day 847
The Bay Islands consist of three islands: Utila, Roatan, and some other island I can’t remember, but that’s not important. The backpackers generally stick with Utila, and those with a bit more money go to Roatan. Sonia had been living in Roatan for the last year, and Ivan was going with her. As for me, I didn’t much care which island I went to as long as I got there. I was supposed to be there a week earlier, but didn’t make it because all the buses were sold out for the pending Easter week holiday, remember.
It turned out my decision had already been made for me. Sonia called the ferry company this morning, but there were none because it was Good Friday. Same deal with flights. Yesterday the water had been too rough for the ferry to make it, so that made two days with nobody coming from or going to the islands. That meant we had to stick around town with nothing to do because nothing was open due to the aforementioned holiday. It also meant tomorrow would be a long and hectic day as we struggled to get on the ferry, if it even left at all.
I think I’ve found the true meaning of culture shock in the last few months. Most people say it’s something that happens right when you get to a new culture, and it goes away shortly thereafter as you make lifestyle adjustments. I think culture shock is more like being in a relationship. The little character flaws your partner has don’t bother you at first. Maybe they even make that person more attractive. But over a period of months or years of being with the same person, those flaws work their way into your head and won’t come back out again until you either leave that person or blow up in their face. Then when you look back at the situation years later, you find that time has its way of only making you remember the positive stuff and you’re not even sure why you got so mad in the first place.
Culture shock for me has come in the form of all these damned holidays. These people will find any excuse to throw a party, and it disrupts the entire transportation infrastructure. There are no boats, no flights, and the few buses that still run become a deathmatch to embark. Hotels are all full and restaurants are all closed. There’s nothing to do but sit around with your thumb up your ass and wait for it all to end. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only a few days per year, but it’s nearly the end of March and I swear there’s only been a few weeks so far this year without any holidays. And so today I walked around with the Colombian and the Spaniard with a look of accepted defeat on my face, like an old man who suddenly gives in to his oncoming incontinence. I had found my happy place.
The Colombian, The Spaniard, And the Unreachable Island
May 22nd
March 20, 2008
Day 846
I tried to go to the Bay Islands a week ago but accidentally got dropped off in El Salvador. I had a decent time in Central America’s smallest and least visited country, but the time had come for take two in Honduras.
I paid a premium for the luxurious direct bus into Honduras that would completely avoid the crime-ridden capital, but the glorious bus still managed to break down on the highway for most of the afternoon and I was forced to watch a string of movies starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. The sun was already on its way out of the sky by the time I got to San Pedro Sula, the second biggest city in the country and only slightly less horrible of a place than the capital of Tegucigalpa.
I wanted to leave town right away but the bus company to go to La Ceiba was already closed. Worse still, transportation was due to shut down completely tomorrow because it was Good Friday, so it was looking like I would have to waste two days just to get to the islands. Suddenly I ran into a Colombian woman who lived on the islands named Sonia and a Spanish guy named Ivan who were traveling together and in the same predicament. A long time ago I learned to follow the locals in these situations, and these two were the closest thing to locals I was going to meet.
We took a taxi to another bus station, but it was closed. We had one last chance at another bus station across town and went for it. The last bus for the next two days was on its way out of the parking lot just as we pulled up, and Sonia and Ivan wasted no time in jumping aboard. I was right behind them, but the assistant told me I wouldn’t fit. I had never heard of such a thing as not fitting onto a bus in Latin America, so I pushed the assistant out of the way and squeezed in next to him. Technically I did fit, even though I was unable to take full breaths and nearly needed a bottle of grease to get back out. We pulled into La Ceiba late at night and got “lucky†again as we scored what was surely one of the only rooms left in the city. It was the size of a jail cell with only one bed, and as a courtesy, the owner only charged us double the normal price because he knew we were desperate. We all were hoping to get the ferry to the islands today, but delays made that impossible. We’ll try our luck tomorrow. Why does Easter week travel have to be so difficult?