Sleepless in Honduras

Dear Reader,

If you've ever been to the tropics you know how hot and humid it can be. If you've ever stayed in a small village in a third world country you know how hot and humid, strange, colorful, confusing, dehydrating, and frustrating it can be.

My husband, John, and I are both scuba divers. We love diving in Belize and Honduras in particular. We are also both huge history buffs and enjoy visiting ancient sites and climbing all over ruins. On our first visit to Honduras I saw a chance to combine both of these passions into one trip because the great ruins of Copan are in Honduras, a four hour drive from the big city of Tegucigalpa.

During my research into Copan I discovered that it could not be visited as a day trip. I also discovered that the site is so vast, more than one day would be advantageous, so I started searching for accomodations. This was back in the day before the internet really got big and finding places to stay in non-touristy locales required a lot more research and lots of letter writing in foreign languages. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise when I discovered the Spanish Language Institute of the small town of Copan Ruinas next to the great ruins. For an amazingly cheap price, I believe it was only $110.00 total, we both got to spend an entire week in Copan Ruinas! The price not only included accomodations with a local family, but three meals per day and Spanish language classes for four hours per day. I simply couldn't resist.

The first week of our visit to Honduras was spent at a scuba diving resort on the island of Roatan. I wish I could say that it was uneventful but that must wait for another day because a lot happened there as well. However, not to mislead anyone, the diving is magnificent.

After boarding a tiny prop-plane filled to the brim with locals and their many boxes and a few animals from Roatan to the coastal town of La Ceiba and then another prop-plane from La Ceiba to Tegucigalpa, we were greated by our new host, Renee', who had brought his jeep for the ride to Copan Ruinas.

Renee' is a great guy, a local native, tri-lingual, man of many occupations and talents. Not only is he a tour guide, he also helps with the Spanish Language Institute run by his wife, Darla, and owns the town bar. He is a good person to know in Honduras.

The jeep ride was to put it mildly, bumpy! Really bumpy, and scary too. The only time I ever saw so many potholes was later in Costa Rica. They were so deep that we would fly a good foot into the air every time we hit one. My teeth were rattling the entire way and I could tell John's back was killing him. The drive into the mountains was quite steep and the cliffs were shear which added that fear factor to the fun ride we were having. There was a lot of slash and burn going on at the time which made me sad seeing all of the tree and plant stumps but once we got deep into the jungle it was as beautiful as any I've ever seen.

Upon arrival in Copan Ruinas, hot, wind blown, tired, and teeth clattering, we were introduced to our new hostess, Argentina, who greeted us with a plethora of Spanish, talking a mile a minute and patting my knee every other minute. She was the wife of the town undertaker and we were staying in their little house. It's hard to guess how old she was because people there work hard and tend to look a lot older than their actual ages, but she was a grandmother with gray hair and very sweet.

We were told that no English was allowed at all during our stay because it is a total immersion class. So we smiled and nodded and pretended to understand Argentina, both of us wondering if we would survive the week without going crazy.

I was aghast when we saw our room and the tiniest double bed I've ever seen! Of course, there was no air-conditioning. How could there be with a huge open atrium right in the middle of the house? I knew sleep was going to be tough right off the bat. What I didn't know was how bad it could be until that first night. That's when we discovered that Renee's bar was right next door to our bedroom. We actually shared the same wall. And the loud pounding of rock music went on until around 2:00AM.

After tossing and turning and falling off the bed several times and lying in a pool of sweat, it began at around 2:00AM. A loud voice yelling into a loud speaker approached and as it got closer we could hear a really lousy brass band playing and some really bad off-key singing. Eventually this noise was on our street and passed right by our little house. In fact, it stopped right in front of our house while the priest was saying Hail Marys, I believe. That's when we knew it was some sort of religious fete. At the end they set off fire works, or possbly fired their rifles in the air. In any event, this was impossible to sleep through.

We awoke, after somehow sleeping a bit, the next morning to find breakfast ready in the tiny kitchen while Argentina chatted away and swatted at the 10,000 flies that circled our plates. Breakfast consisted of black beans, rice, fried plantains and really thick homemade tortillas. It was pretty dry stuff but at least we had really thick syrupy coffee to go with it. I needed to go out and buy a Fanta pronto!

That day we met with Darla who gave us each a Spanish exam to test our competence levels, and then she assigned each of us our own personal teacher for the rest of the week. I was at the advanced level and John was, well, John at the beginner's level. Both teachers were very young and very sweet. I liked them alot.

Four hours is a long long time to spend talking a foreign language that you are not fluent in non-stop with just one other person. It was gruelling and my head was pounding and I was dying for a Fanta, and then a beer. I couldn't wait for that first class day to end.

When we returned home at noon, our lunch was ready and waiting on the table with Argentina chatting away and swatting at the flies with her towel. The lunch consisted of black beans, rice, fried plantains, a pile of super thick tortillas and a bowl of broth with a tiny chicken bone in it with some skin. This was not good. John was already complaining that he hates plantains. We scarfed and ran with the excuse that the ruins of Copan were waiting.

The hike to Copan was hot, of course, and it was about two miles so we were soaked with sweat and dehydrated and tired by the time we got there. The road was lined with soldiers holding machine guns. Why? I have no idea. But we were ecstatic because we could speak English!

The Ruins of Copan are fabulous and I highly recommend seeing them. National Geographic was actually there digging during our visits because they had just discovered a new tomb with a king in it. The entrance is flanked by two beautiful Macaws which speak to you in greeting. I really like birds and Macaws are so cool.

We stayed about three hours and then walked back home stopping at a grocery store first to buy a bunch of Fantas and some beer, though we had no way of keeping them cold. After taking cold showers, there was no hot water after noon, we lathered ourselves up with bug juice (insect repellant) and sat on the front porch trying to somehow cool off. Promptly at 4:00PM thunder and lightning struck and it started raining as hard as I've ever seen rain. It rained so hard that the stucco was crumbling off of the house across the street and it gushed in a river down our steep cobbled street. Then it stopped.

The sun came back out and people started to promenade arm and arm by our porch.  Everyone who came by greeted us. It was fun and very interesting. There was an old couple dressed in the native costume who came by every night. The wife was blinded from having carried heavy baskets on her head all of her life and had a big slash of a scar diagonally down her forehead. She wore a broad black hat and lace red and black shawl over a black dress. Her husband wore a very jaunty black hat resembling a Panama hat with a colorful band, and a very colorful vest. We saw them every afternoon while we sat chilling on our front porch.

Then dinner was ready and waiting on the table with Argentina batting flies with her towel. It consisted of black beans, rice, fried plantains and really thick tortillas. I could see the writing on the wall. We were going to starve!

That night we tried to sleep again but the music pounding was impossible to sleep through and then it happened. The loudspeaker started up again and the brass band was playing and we knew this wasn't a good thing at all. It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that this would go on for two entire weeks!

I realize that there is far too much to say to attempt to condense the rest of my story so I will end it here and continue tomorrow. Hasta Manana