Exit Honduras, Enter Nicaragua

I have to apologize at this point but I realize that I’m not taking nearly as many photos as I was earlier in the trip. I should still have a couple photos for each of the next several entries but not as many as usual.

Anyhows, on March 19, we headed to Comayagua. There really wasn’t much to do in Comayagua and there wasn’t really much reason to be there except that it was a halfway point between Roatan Island and Granada. We had left from Roatan Island at 5:30 in the morning and were fortunate enough to see an English Premier League match on the ferry ride on the way off the island. Other than that, the trip was pretty uneventful and we got to our hotel shortly after noon. After lunch, we walked around for a while. Meanwhile, I took a picture of a church in the center of town just to have a photo to post on this site. You’re welcome.

We were going to meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant later in the evening. We didn’t realize at the time, though, that there was a Wendy’s just around the corner from our hotel. We had a few Wendy’s virgins in the group so some of us went there and ruined our appetites. Especially me, since I needed a Baconator from the time I walked in.

I went to the Chinese restaurant anyway and just had a few beers. This was going to be a short night anyway, though, since we had a 12-hour trip across the Honduras/Nicaragua border the next day.

We got up early the next morning and started on our way to Nicaragua. The most important part was finding a volunteer to bring our Honduran jerk chicken into Nicaragua. As it turned out, the border between Honduras and Nicaragua was pretty damn simple and the chicken smuggling wasn’t a big deal.

From the border, we headed towards Granada. One of the most interesting events during the trip was when the bus stopped for a while to let a herd of cattle get by. It reminded me a lot of North Carolina.

Upon arriving in Granada, we went to find an ATM to get some bona fide Nicaraguan currency – Cordobas. Afterwards, we headed to a bar where I had some hot wings, which I find myself getting every time they’re available. There’s only so many rice and beans a man can take. We headed to an Irish pub, afterwards, and drank until they closed and returned to our hotel.

The outdoors things to do in Granada turned out to be pretty lame and not many people went out to do much. My Australian friend and I went out to get a three-hour breakfast and I had one of the most interesting omelettes that I’ve ever eaten. It was a bacon and cheese omelette with entire strips of bacon inside the eggs. It was the first omelette I can ever remember eating that required a knife. Afterwards, we met some friends for a drink and then I retired back to the hotel to write for a while.

Later in the evening, I went out and met a group of friends for some drinks. I had a few but was getting bored. The constant drinking thing was starting to get tedious. I left for about forty minutes and then met back with the group. Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t feeling it. After my Australian friend offended me, my English friend stopped by and made me feel better. Nevertheless, by that time, I had taken a few over-the-counter valium and was ready just to go to bed. The rest of the group went salsa dancing but I couldn’t have cared less. I slept the sleep of the dead and when I awoke, I was ready for the next day’s trip to Ometepe Island. On Ometepe Island, I was going to have a Sheldon day and I was really looking forward to it. I’ll get into that next time.

Finally, Some Physical Activity

The day after St. Patrick’s Day turned out to be one of my favorite days of the trip up to that point. It was much different from the others, but after spending several days mostly in bars drinking, it was good to get some activity under my belt.

The day started by me being awoken by my English friend throwing up at around 7:15 am outside the window near the bed in which I was sleeping. Having grown nearly immune to hangovers during this trip, I was feeling good but wasn’t able to go back to sleep.

I was supposed to meet a group of people at around ten to go to a nearby beach and rent some jetskis. I had never been on a jetski before so I was looking forward to it. We took a water taxi to the beach only to find out that it cost US$65 per person for a half-hour of jetskiing. I didn’t want to do it that badly. Instead, a Canadian friend and I were approached by somebody who wanted to know if we wanted to kayak. That sounded fun. We asked the cost and it was US$25 combined for two to three hours. That was much more in our price range so we decided to do that. We kayaked around the bay for about an hour-and-a-half and had a lot of fun. When we finished, we met up with the jetskiers for a drink.

After our drink, my Canadian friend and I went back to the beach to swim. It was one of the best swimming experiences I’ve ever had. The water was warm and calm and you could go out quite a distance without the water getting more than about five feet deep. I practiced my breaststroke for a half-hour or so and was really happy with how well I did.

We ended up walking back to our hotel and decided to meet for lunch. Instead of lunch, however, we stopped by a smoothie place and I had a chocolate and banana smoothie. It made me very, very happy. Then, I went souvenir shopping and bought a few things, including a beer t-shirt. I don’t recall the name of the Honduran beer off the top of my head, but I remember it wasn’t my favorite – I just liked the t-shirt.

Later on, a group of us went out for dinner. We stopped by the floating bar that we tried to board the night before and we were much more successful this time, seeing as there was no US$30 cover charge to worry about. There wasn’t much interest in staying out late for a second night so we returned to the hotel kind of early. When we got there, my Australian friend was standing outside smoking a cigar. Seriously, she was smoking a cigar. We decided that her efforts were a waste of lung capacity, so we brought out some jerk chicken and went for a walkabout. There was a little paranoia as my Australian friend took off back for the hotel near the end of the walkabout. Afterwards, nobody was in the mood for a long, long night, so we called it a relatively early night and went to bed. Also, we had a 5:30 am trip off to Comayagua the next day, so there really wasn’t much point in staying up anyway.

There wasn’t be much to Comayagua, but I’ll get into that in the next entry as well as our border crossing into Nicaragua.

St. Patty's Day - Honduran Style

It took a few buses and a ferry, but we made it to Roatan Island, off the northern coast of Honduras, late in the afternoon on March 16. By the time we arrived, it was already pretty late and there wasn’t much time for anything but dinner. We went to a pizza place that had wifi and I learned that somebody had been buying women’s fashions with my credit card. With that knowledge, I took out some money for the next few days and cancelled my card. Fortunately, I travel with a spare, so I won’t run out of money but it’s going to be a pain in the ass trying to replace the card while I’m traveling. (By the way, I don't have any pictures of these particular days so I'm just shooting up random photos of the recent past.)

The next morning, there were some people snorkeling and diving, or at least trying to do some of these things. The weather was pretty crappy, though, so I don’t think they got the full experience. I, on the other hand, went to get some breakfast at a place that had wifi and worked on my credit card issues.

After breakfast, I started looking for partners-in-crime. It was St. Patrick’s Day and I wouldn’t have felt right if I had neglected my Irish ancestors by ignoring such a holy day. I ran into some friends and had some lunch and then started looking for the usual suspects. I found them at the dive shop and, lo and behold, there was a bar upstairs of the shop. We went up around 1:00 pm and had a few beers. And a few more. And maybe another one; I don’t remember. Then people from the group came by and were heading to a Thai restaurant that was located across the street. We followed them over there, but the menu wasn’t appealing and the prices were steep so the three of us left and went to a bar a few doors down for some vegetarian nachos and more beer. One of the girls got sick, albeit discreetly, and we left before too long.

Despite traveling with the walking wounded, we decided to stop by another bar on the way home because it was advertising green beer and Cuban cigars for $6. Needless to say, this probably wasn’t a good idea– the sick girl turned into Linda Blair and started vomiting green – but it was good for a memory or two. We went back to the hotel to drop off the sick girl, who had to break into her room so she could get to bed.

After dropping off the sick Australian, my English friend and I decided to head out to a floating bar in which we heard there was some jerk chicken available. We had to take a water taxi to get to it and when we arrived, we learned there was a $30 cover charge. Umm, nevermind. We went back to the island on the same water taxi.

We walked around a little more and found out that much of the group was in a bar next door to the Thai restaurant, performing karaoke. We went in and had some more drinks and it was a lot of fun. I sang Wonderwall with a little group, just for the record.

While all this was going on, my English friend found a jerk chicken salesman. As I write this, I can see the stupidity of what I did, but three of us got into a van with a few salesmen and went for a ride. I tried to keep a close eye on where we were at all times (I always have an escape route in mind) but we ended up stopping at a house about 100 yards from our hotel, so we were in a good place. We had some jerk chicken and then called it a night. All-in-all, it wasn’t as memorable as my traditional Thai Thanksgiving, but I did enjoy my traditional Honduran St. Patty’s Day.

Now I'm Hiding In Honduras

March 14 was yet another early morning as we prepared for yet another border crossing. This time, we were headed to Copan, Honduras.

It took us about four hours to get to the Guatemalan/Honduran border. Once we got there, though, things went about as smoothly as possible. We all handed over our passports to the tour leader, waited about forty-five minutes, and then went on our merry way into Honduras. Copan was only about a 20-minute drive from the border.

We got to the hotel and checked in. It was a short downhill walk to the center of town and we headed in that direction for some lunch. I had a bacon, avocado and cream cheese sandwich that was a little too heavy on the avocado and a little too light on the bacon. Afterwards, a few of us walked around town to scope out a place to watch the next day’s Champions League match between Manchester United and Marseille.

That evening, we went out to dinner at a meat-oriented restaurant. As good as it smelled, I ended up having a steak that was so-so. The most memorable part of the meal turned out to be the heated discussion at the other table between my best friend on the trip and the tour leader. After about five minutes of complete awkwardness, we met up outside and went out for a few drinks. We ended up closing three bars before returning to the hotel, where we had to crawl through a small door in the gate to get in.

The next morning was cultural day in Copan. The most noted site in Copan is an ancient Mayan city. I’ve been going to ruins pretty consistently throughout this trip, but since Copan is the final Mayan ruin site on our trek, I didn’t want to miss it. I had heard great things about Copan, but I was a little disappointed. Perhaps I’m just a little ruined-out, but Copan’s Mayan site struck me as more of the same, just on a smaller scale. Much of it has degenerated and, although restoration is in process, there really hadn’t been enough of it done for the site to intrigue me but so much. Still, I took lots of photos because that’s what I do. (The rest of the photos for this entry are all from the ruins.)

After the ruins, I met up with the usual suspects and we went out to watch the Manchester United/Marseille match. The place at which we wanted to watch the match was closed so we went back to the restaurant at which we had dinner the night before, having remembered that it had a big screen television. As fate would have it, we ended up watching the match between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich. (Go Inter!!!) Also, as fate would have it, happy hour started at 2:00 pm, so we nibbled at some food and went through, oh I don’t know, six or seven bottles of wine. I figured we had drank too many when one of the girls with me and I started harmonizing to the CCR CD that was playing in the background. Good times, good times.

As we were walking back to the hotel, there were some musicians playing on one of the corners of the main square. I took my English friend home, once again crawling through the small door in the gate, and then went back to find my other friend. When I got back to where I left her, however, she had disappeared. It only took a few minutes to find her and, after speaking for a while with a drunk manicurist, we returned to the hotel. This time, however, even the small door was locked. My friend decided to scale the 12-foot high fence to get in. Just as she reached the summit, a guy from the hotel came out, yelling “No, no, no!!!” By this time, obviously, it was too late. My friend climbed down and the guy from the hotel unlocked the gate for me. Another fitting end to an evening of alcohol and merriment. The next day, we headed to Roatan Island, where I’ll pick up in the next installment.