So the Thursday before we flew to Honduras, I had my monthly party. Friday morning I found Katie fully dressed for work but unable to muster the lack of nausea to initiate the commute. As she called in sick I got to work at 12:30 and stayed till 10pm, ran home to shower, pack, and clean before the 1am taxi came.
We met the couple to be married, Karen and Jay, at JFK for our 3 am saturday flight. We got into San Pedro Sula, which is the capital of Honduras at 7am. (they are 2 hours behind us.) From there we took these pimp buses with cushy reclinable seats and snacks to Copan Valley where there are Mayan ruins which were amazing. Karen booked us rooms for 2 nights at this amazing 100 yr old hacienda outside the town where they minimized electricity usage by lighting candles all over the property and in the rooms (haciendasanlucas.com). It was owned by this awe-inspiring Honduran woman, Flavia, whose family owned the hacienda for decades. She had moved to Kentucky, had a family, became a teacher and gourmet cook. Then 10 years ago or so she dropped it all, moved to the hacienda, fell in love with Hector, a 23 yr old local, and began rebuilding the property to make it one of the best accommodations I have ever stayed at. As she was bequeathing us with her life stories, I felt high as hope for the future bubbled through her to me.
From Copan in the southwest, we took a series of buses for 9 hours to La Ceiba on the northeast coast where we caught a flight to Roatan. We had the luck of having Spanish speaking Karen with us the 1st leg of our journey, but Katie and I departed from the group wanting to give us some time alone. Though on the island most people were english speaking westerners or Caribbean locals (Garifuna), Katie impressed me with her spatterings of Spanish that she had picked up. (Food tended to be her strongest spanish speaking points.) Roatan was one of 3 islands off Honduras and they all resemble a Corona commercial with the best coral reefs in the world second only to the Great Barrier Reef. In the 60's all these gringos started coming through and made it into a scuba diving mecca because it is so cheap to learn there.
We were still so elated from Flavia's hospitality that we assumed our next bed and breakfast would be the same. Unfortunately the couple that owned the one on the island were not as chill. Ton and Zilla were the Dutch proprietors and they constantly wanted us to hang out with them, to the point that Katie started hypothesizing that they were kinky folk and wanted to have a foursome. So we basically dodged them the entire time. The 1st day we took a water taxi to West Bay which was the nicest beach I have ever seen. White sands, clear blue water.... it's everything you hear about till you step into the water and realize that it's not shockingly cold. We went snorkeling and though i'm not a strong swimmer, the saltwater was so buoyant it kept me afloat. It was the first time in my life I willingly swam in the ocean where it was well above my head. Snorkeling for the 1st time was one of those moments where you have the insight to realize that what you're doing is so fuckin amazing, much like having sex.
After snorkeling we took these canopy tours that essentially strap you by the waist to zip lines that go from one station to the next, flying 200-300 feet above the jungle for an hour. I'm somewhat fearful of heights and forgot that fact when I signed up. Needless to say that fear was quickly reintroduced into my psyche when I got to the platform and looked down into the jungly depths. It ended up being a blast except for this one time when they made us get into this position where you straddle your guide in a superman position and "fly" over the jungle like the Man of Steel. I however proceeded to fart my brains out cuz I was nervous. Poor guide. The next day we rented a scooter and drove 40 miles across the entire island to this deserted beach where we were chased by wild dogs, stoned by local rugrats, and almost run off the road as we headed back to the West End.
We then flew back to mainland and cabbed back to Tela, which is this sleepy little beach town where the groom's mom is from. Our hotel with the rest of the Americans was right on the beach. So for the next 3 days we went to botanical gardens, swam in ponds, ate dank fried chicken on awesome beaches, went to wildlife preserves, snorkeled, ordered french fries as we chilled in jacuzzis, and got ready for the wedding. I ended up buying some herb from one of our tour guides which might have made me yawn once or twice but otherwise was just stems and seeds. The wedding itself was awesome because it was super simple and on the beach. Kind of ideal actually. I liked seeing how Hondurans celebrate marriages and all the idiosyncrasies that come along with it like the music and how the wedding cake is eaten at the very end because it marks the end of the celebration. Weddings make me nostalgic for the future. Not that I'm looking to get hitched, but i feel like they are the purest forms of that union, much like babies that are still mad soft. anyways, it was one of the best trips i had ever been on.
Sunday we flew out but were delayed during our El Salvador layover, so we landed around 2:30 am Monday morning. After the nerve-wracking process of going through customs and hailing a cab we got back to the hood around 3:30 and as we were headed down bushwick avenue I saw my boy from tower records skating a few blocks from my apartment. He came over for a few beers and I ended up passing out around 4:30. I had work at 9. I felt like the trip lasted a long time in a such a good way which made it that much better to come home.
(Editors' note: pictures to follow)
next stop: Copenhagen/Berlin and Barbados '08!!!
