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.