Sleepless in Honduras Part II

Seven nights without any sleep is a long time. We decided on that second night since we couldn't sleep anyway and were unbearably hot and hungry too that we would visit Renee's bar next door and just wait out the end of the music. Renee's bar happened to be the most hoppin' place in town. Not only did they have ice cold beers but air-conditioning too! We were in heaven when we discovered that they served tacos.

I don't know why this happens but when you can't have something to eat because you are in a foreign country, you crave it senselessly. We were both craving tacos for some reason. Tacos are Mexican and Hondurans don't eat them. You can imagine how happy we were to discover both tacos and burritos at Renee's bar.

So this is how we spent the rest of the week. Four hours of Spanish language class, race to Copan to speak English with each other, chillin' out on the front porch drinking Fantas and watching the promenaders, drinking beer at Renee's bar all night. And a few tacos were consumed as well. We actually got so tired from these activities that the fete no longer bothered our sleep! I think I encorporated the loud speaker and the praying and the brass band into my dreams. I also began to dream in Spanish! It was amazing.

Argentina continued to serve us the same meal 3 times a day with only the broth as an extra for lunch. We discovered her husband, the undertaker, taking a nap every afternoon on the tile floor of his living room surrounded by coffins. I wish I had taken a picture of that!

One day I wanted to do laundry and got in a tug of war with Argentina who wanted to do it for me. There was no washing machine but she had a huge deep sink and laundry detergent for laundry. The only problem with the way she did laundray was I saw her in action and decided it was best if I did my own.

The house has a large atrium in the center which is open to the sky. On the floor underneath is a square concrete basin about 6 inches deep with a rim around it and a drain in the center. After Argentina would do her laundry in the sink, she'd throw it all into the big basin and hose it off to rinse it. She also slushed it around on the floor first. Not that it was filthy but it was open to the sky so I really didn't want my closes rubbed all over the basin on the floor! So I finally won the argument and did my own laundry and rinsed it in the sink. This created great thirst and an afternoon visit to Renee's was required.

John mentioned how wonderful our teachers were. He's right. Not only did we have classroom lessons, but they each took us around the town to practice our Spanish. They had us shop at the fruit stand and other markets, pointed out buildings by name, and even took us to a motel, which I drooled over because it had air-conditioning, and had us each request a room in Spanish. It was fun. We even got to visit Claudia's (John's teacher) home and met her parrot, llora. I still remember the word for parrot because of her.

I'm ashamed that I have forgotten the name of my teacher after all of these years but she was a darling and wanted to come to the U.S. and be a real full time teacher. The day we left she gave me a hand knitted beautiful doily in a mint green that she made for me. It's quite large and I still have it on the coffee table in my living room.

During our stay we also met another student, Bob, from Petaluma, California of all places. Bob was a school teacher in California but was having a hard time. He was getting a divorce and decided to go find himself in Honduras. While there, he stumbled upon Darla's Spanish language institute and signed up.

Bob was a lucky guy. He told us he was staying with the town doctor in a big house with air-conditioning and ate steak and eggs for breakfast every day! In fact, he ate all kinds of food over there.

Some people have all the luck, but I don't know if I would have gotten the same experience or learned as much if we had been that lucky. I'm glad we stayed with Argentina and spent time at Renee's bar and visited Copan daily. I'm really glad we watched the locals promenade every afternoon and that we spoke Spanish with them.

As it turns out, Bob wasn't so lucky afterall. According to Darla, he had moved in 6-8 weeks before we arrived refused to leave because he had no where else to go. When we left, she asked us to take Bob with us. I didn't know if she expected us to take him all the way home to Sacramento or just dump him in Houston but he did get in the jeep with us for the bumpy ride back to Tegucigalpa. I felt sorry for Bob and often wonder what became of him.

We spent one last rather scary night in Tegucigalpa before our return flight home. There were soldiers everywhere with their machine guns and thousands of people milling about when we went out to dinner, many who looked like gang members. There were a lot of loud noises all night and sirens but we didn't care, we had survived the heat and the religious fete!
Hasta La Vista