The road between San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba is beautiful. There are orchards stretching onto the mountains on both sides of the road, and amazing countryside to be seen between the scattered little towns. You can get a ticket on a relatively secure bus for about 90L, or $5, and if you can ignore the frequent vendors walking up and down the aisle off the bus, you can have a good 3 hour relaxation period. This guy, selling the Honduran equivalent of Snake Oil, was too cool to not get a picture of.
Let me save you the suspense and tell you that La Ceiba is a place you should simply pass thorough. Also, the walk from the bus terminal to the city is quite nice for a city walk, but the map inside the Central American lonely planet book is completely wrong! The walk into the city laden down with gear is ok. The walk around the city for the subsequent hour is not fun and will hopefully result in some nice person giving you directions out of pity instead of laughing at you out of spite. Also, no one in the city knows where anything is. The city is sketchy at best, with hookers and pimps materializing even before the sun sets. The one part of the city that was quite nice was the Banana Republic Guest House, which is actually one block WEST of Ave San Isidro between 12a calle and 11a calle. Somewhere along the way, I saw this amazing person on his way to work… or something… I’m not really quite sure.
The guest house is filled with plenty of wild characters of varying levels of smelliness and a dozen different languages. There is a kitchen where you can cook, and computers for using the internet. The private rooms are nice enough and they do a great job of dispersing people around the dormitories so as not to pile everyone up on top of one another. If you wind up in La Ceiba and can’t get out before the sun goes down, feel free to look this place up.
The trip out of La Ceiba is just as weird as the rest of the time there. I spent the night and morning giving directions and assistance when possible to the other travelers, then finally packed my bag and walked out the door to catch a taxi. I would caution you against ever taking a taxi with someone already in it if you have any sort of timeline you are trying to adhere to. The taxi driver had a woman in the backseat and when I asked if he was going to the bus terminal he said yes. This meant, “Yes, I will go there eventually after driving completely the opposite direction and getting stuck in a traffic jam that will so frustrate my other passenger she will get out and walk away.”
The bus depot consists of more people yelling at me about taxi, bus, etc to go to anywhere but the place I want to go to. Another ticket vendor goes so far as to lie to me and say that the bus I took here yesterday, Diana Express, does not come to La Ceiba. Navigating liars and loiterers, I got a cheap ticket back to San Pedro Sula and spend the rest of the day in the bus terminal dodging flies and writing in vain hopes of catching up. Also, I found this excellent advertisement.
Throughout the day, I catch a glimpse of some of the smellier patrons of Banana Republic heading through SPS and on to Tegucigalpa. I am offered a taxi dozens of times, even when I am sitting down. I’m starting to wonder just that qualifies as a taxi customer…
Finally, I get a return call from Herman as he is approaching the bus terminal. He is to be my taxi to my next destination, half a world away where there are no phones, no computers or internet, almost nothing at all.
Heart to Honduras is a faith based organization that helps build facilities and provides improved health and sanitation for Honduras. It is a group of numerous Christian churches who work with individuals in Central America to coordinate North American volunteers, money, and supplies to safely improve the lives of Honduran families in rural areas. They are doing great work, and Herman is my first contact with them. I’ll be staying and working with them for a few days in Canchias, a village in the middle of no mans land.
On the drive in, I have the opportunity to talk to someone who speaks my language and will answer just about anything I ask. I learn that, yes, everything is corrupt. Chinese blackberries cost almost as much as real blackberries. Single parent adoption is easier in central America. There really is NO speed limit. You never ever ever want to get pulled over.
The Heart to Honduras camp I will be staying at consists of several dorm buildings, a conference hall (with a guitar!!!) and some lecture halls. The support staff lives behind the conference hall in a single house. Herman and I have one of the amazing picturesque drives through the mountains above the jungles that do not cease to awe me. It takes a good long time, but I get to see the local jail and some of the homes that people live in here. I have never seen anything like it. As you can see, Honduras needs a little help with their infrastructure.
We pull in to the HTH camp at around 5:45. This means that the teams are just getting back for the day. I am rapidly introduced to Amy, Callie, Allison, and a number of team members from Arizona that are down here helping to build classrooms and water purification systems for the surrounding areas. I learn that the HTH campus is actually run entirely on hydroelectric power from the nearby river because it is a very long way from anything that might be considered a power line.
Dinner is provided by the HTH folks and I am welcomed into the group and am provided with ample opportunity to talk with all the members of the team. Cliff falls down. Doug is a killer. Battle is nothing of the sort, and Les is More. Allison is our interpreter and team leader. Amy has extensive experience in Argentina, and as is always a surprise to me, you can actually be employed full time by a church. I never understand how people get a salary from working with a church, but maybe that is because salaried religion was never a part of my childhood.
The shower that I head to after dinner makes me feel like a king. The sweaty walk through the last couple days is manifest in the measurable amounts of dead skin and dirt sloughing off me and the physical change in the color of my skin after the shower; a gross testimony to just how far I have come from my life in the USA. I manage to get back up to the conference center to catch the last few minutes of the nightly team debrief. Allison does her best to catch me up on the agenda for tomorrow and get me introduced to my teammates.
Breakfast at 6. Break camp at 6:30. We should plan on returning around 6 p.m. I’m no stranger to long work days, and the prospect of having work to do again excites me. The realization that there is a guitar in the building is equally exciting, but it is currently in use. It is only when the support staff finishes prepping for a surprise birthday party that the guitar is available for public consumption again. So while inside, piñatas are destroyed and music is played at volumes that I am positive wouldn’t be legal anywhere in the States, I sit outside and play and play and play my musical meditation. I play until my fingertips are raw, red, and painful. I will never claim to be a masterful guitarist, but I do really love to play. This is a special treat for me.
Doug is a killer. He is ex-everything, and trains MMA fighters for a career. He overhears some of my conversation with others and makes it a point to engage me in conversation. We get to talking about learning and fighting and learning about fighting and I come away with a couple new books to read by an author called Sam Sherridan; A Fighter’s Heart, and A Fighter’s Mind. Somewhat of a superhero:
The morning brings sickness. Not for me, but for some of the other men. Two of them can’t roll out of bed even to make it to breakfast. The ride back to humanity takes the form of a human cattle car where half of us are standing and everyone is in high spirits. Doug is one of the taller members of the team and is standing on the outside of the truck, closest to the tree branches. Someone yells, “Duck,” warning of the incoming branch and he turns to say, “What?” only to catch a branch in the face. This happens about 6 times.
HTH is a relatively wide organization for this area of Honduras, we stop a few places to pick up more people and even switch out for a larger more comfortable form of transport. Pulling up at the final location where we are to be building classrooms, it looks pretty much like I assumed it would. Church nearby, dirt everything, tiny little store selling nothing I recognize as food, and several dozen children milling about. The locals working on the project full speed ahead by the time we finish our 90 minute drive to the site. There is a tentative period in the morning until we all overcome the moderate language barrier and take up stations and move forward.
The work is hot. Yesterday, people were dropping out from heat exhaustion. Today, thankfully, we are a few blessed degrees cooler. I am still dripping with sweat within minutes and it doesn’t stop all day. Most of the work is over our heads. Ceiling drywall needs to be installed, then taped and spackled. Then sanded and painted. Everyone jokes and talks and works simultaneously. Everyone is sick. Except me.
People are peeling off to lie in the shade, or puke, or drink more water… anything that might help them get over whatever monstrous illness has beset the gringos. At the end of the day, people are literally falling over, though it is mostly Cliff. We do have a little bit of help from the locals, as seen below:
My arms are a sore, my neck is kinked, sweat keeps running in my eye, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to do good work: to be more than good; to be good for something. My filthy shirt is a witness to just how hard these volunteers have been working for the last week. Yes, that is the sweat I wiped off my face all day. Yes, it’s gross.
Halfway through the day, several of the crew break off to go talk to the local jeffe to confirm that they can continue a water purification project that will bring water to the local citizens. Prior to this initiative the local folks had access to clean water only on every third day, for 30 minutes. The local chief has been skimming the funds and now is asking them for more money so clean water can be brought to his people. Then he wants to charge them for it. Don’t think this is this only place in the world this sort of thing is going on.
The days is not without levity. Near the end of the afternoon, Allison rounds everyone up and sends us to the church where some wild chair/curtain structure has been raised. Everyone is handed hand made puppets, and we read a Spanish version of Dr. Suess’ “Are you my Mother?” As soon as it starts, we all start making animal noises, and generally acting like bigger kids than the ones out front who are quite a gracious audience. Battle doesn’t stop making bird whistles the whole time. As we are all skilled thesbians, we can’t help but receive a standing ovation.
These individuals left work, family, children, convenience, luxury, warm water, soft beds, bossy dogs, and rhinos to come down here, sweat and labor, sleep on cots, and eat potentially life threatening food all to help other humans they have never met and can’t even speak with. Be it faith in a higher power, personal strength, or the unity of mankind that motivates this, I think it is fantastic and I cannot commend every one of these people highly enough. The welcomed me as an equal. In this often harsh section of the world, after being hijacked, overcharged, sworn at, and swindled… a little acceptance does great things for me. Thanks, folks.
The next morning, the crew and I get to do some hiking before setting out and they are kind enough to drop me off at an intersection with numerous busses coming by. It takes a while for a bus to appear and in the meantime a Honduran guy walks up to me and says hola. His name is Andres and what follows my meeting him is about 4 solid hours of conversation in Spanish. I didn’t know I could possible speak so much Spanish, but I think I owe it all to Andres. He just liked talking to me. He would repeat himself and try different words as often as needed and would wait for me to finish my sentences, which is something almost no one else here does. It was a blast. Andres even bought me an apple and gave me his contact information so I could come and stay at his place the next time I am in Honduras. This guy is awesome.
He even helped me find a hotel closer to the bus stations than the one I was heading to, because it was on the entire other side of town. The upside is I am right up the street from the terminal. The down side is that this is the first hotel I have been to, despite costing more than almost any place I have stayed in my trip, that has cockroaches. The floor in the bathroom is soaking wet, and someone else’s hair is all over the bedding. Lesson: Always ask to see the room before you pay, cuz you damn sure are not getting your money back. Ah well, at least there is free coffee. I’ll just sleep in my clothes on top of the sheets. This is a rough transition after all the hospitality of Heart to Honduras. Time to sleep; I have a 6 am bus to catch.
