8

Tuesday and Wednesday were my last two days in Utila. I went on four more dives during that time and saw a monstrous (6 foot or more) moray eel writhing about in a shallow cave under a wall of coral. It rained a lot more than usual during these two days, the rainy season beginning to set in across the north of the country. This brought out the island´s sandflies in droves and, despite the constant use of very strong insect repellant all over, I wound up with dozens of itchy little bites. The thought of being done with ravenous hordes of insects made the thought of my departure from Utila a little bit easier. Nevertheless, I am considering returning for a month or so in the future if I decide to go for PADI DiveMaster certification. I traded e-mails with a group of BICD people on Wednesday night, all of them jealous hoping to hear news of my dives in the Galapagos.

Early on Thursday morning, a blue taxi van met me in front of my hostel to take me to the single, lonely airstrip on Utila. Its really nothing more than a wide slab of concrete out in the bush; no buildings, no complex of the slightest sort. There is a little corner of pavement that is designated as a waiting place for passengers and a drop off for luggage and it was here that my cabbie left me, alone, a mile out of town.

A few minutes rolled slowly by before another cab pulled up. Five people got out with their baggage and waited silently with me. Then a man on an ATV drove up to us and began collecting tickets. He asked me for mine and when I gave it to him, he handed it back: ¨I am collecting for Sosa Airlines. This ticket is for Atlantic Airlines. Their agent should be here shortly... if they are even flying today."

Huh?

At about this time, we heard a low overhead buzz and saw a little twin engine plane come up over the trees and dive sharply down toward the runway. As it pulled to a stop, I saw that it was marked "Sosa Airlines." This was not my plane, although it was just before 6:30 AM, the scheduled time of departure for my flight.

While the other passengers were boarding --- they would get off the island for sure that day --- a young woman on a moped pulled up to us. I recognized her as the agent from Atlantic and began to feel hope returning. The Sosa agent sidled up to her and asked, rather bluntly, if Atlantic would bother sending its plane out to pick up one passenger. One somewhat frustrated and anxious passenger who had a flight to Ecuador he needed to catch on the following day.

"I think so,¨she said. She took my ticket. We waited. The Sosa agent left. Finally, after some 20 minutes, another little plane roared up over the trees, dove maniacally for the tarmac and skidded to an earsplitting stop. My flight arriveth.

I was not the only passenger, as it turned out. The flight had originated from another Bay Island, Roatan, so a stop in Utila en route to the coast was not out of the way. Otherwise, perhaps it is true that they would not have bothered to send a flight for me that morning. But even so, the reality is that I had other options of getting off of Utila. As more sandflies picked at my arms and neck, swimming the 20+ miles came to mind.

It was an easy flight to Tegucigalpa. The view of Utila from the air, upon lift off, is striking because you can make out some of the coral formations in the shallow blue-green waters. After 15 minutes, we touched down in La Ceiba (www.traveljournals.net/pictures/3453.html), Honduras´s third largest city, on the northern coast. A sweeping wall of jagged, lush green mountains shrouded in mist (www.travel-to-honduras.com/pictures/410/Pico-Bonito-National-Park.htm) (www.travel-to-honduras.com/pictures/411/Planes-in-La-Ceiba.htm) effectively isolates La Ceiba from the immediate south. To clear these peaks, the connecting flight to Teguc spent more than a little time flying due north, back toward the ocean, in order to build up the necessary altitude to continue back south.

Then, an hour later, Teguc. A sprawling city of over 1 million, nestled in a valley (or several valleys) between green hills and mountains(www.greatestcities.com/users/solisweb/Central_America/Honduras/Tegucigalpa/). A mess of cabbies waved me down in the ariport parking lot.

"Hablas Ingles?" I ask the driver.

"Un Pocquito," he shrugs.

I ask him in very basic, halting Spanish if he knows where the Hotel Granada II is and how much it costs to get there. The cabbies standing by grin, laugh and practically applaud my broken, mangled efforts.

"Ey! Good Espaneesh!" says the toothless dispatcher.

In the cab, the driver tries to chat a bit. Where am I from, where did I fly from, how long am I here, did I like my visit to Copan Ruinas, etc? I understand more of what he is asking than I do of how to properly respond. Still, he seems to grasp what I am trying to say and approves of my own approval of Honduras. Then, he tries to convince me he knows a better hotel than Hotel Granada. I don´t really doubt his sincerity, but I have a map and I know where I want to be on that map to get a good look at downtown Teguc during my single day here. He doesn´t push me. In the end, he drops me at Hotel Granda I.

"Pero, quiero numero dos," I say. There are three Hotel Granadas in close proximity, according to my guidebook, which suggests that the second and third might be a little better, if not pricier.

"Uno es mejor (one is the best)" he says. I check into it. After my time on Utila, it seems positively luxurious. My room has a double bed, a chair, a small desk and a fan. It is spotless, as is the bathroom. The showerhead gushes hot water. Moreover, in sharp contrast to my previous accomodations, the room is cool, and dry, with none of the stifling humidity. The room costs a little less than $12.

After all of this, its still only 9:00 AM. I grab some breakfast and read a Spanish newspaper article pronouncing Kerry the winner of the third presidential debate. I then spend some time in the central park, centered around an old 18th century cathedral, watching the vendors sell an eclectic assortment of batteries, keychains, radios, sandals and watches.

I spend an hour and a half in the National Art Museum, where I am one of maybe three visitors. The exhibits on the ground floor begin with early Mayan and Incan ceramics and sculpture and progress to 15th through 18th century religious paintings and silver works. The second floor houses more modern works by Honduran artists. Some of it I like, some of it I don´t, but a couple of surrealist 20th century paintings alone made the visit worthwhile. Unfortunately, I can´t find any reference to these pieces online. Should you ever visit, look for a painting entitled "Acechar del Jaguar."

For lunch, I searched about for Honduran fast food burger joint, "Bigos." Just as I was about to give up, I stumbled on one. The "gigante" burger was plenty of food, without fries or any side. Its a big burger topped with fried egg, something very similar to French dressing, and sweet, caramelized onions. Now that´s a tasty burger.

I almost needed a siesta after the Bigos, but instead spent the next several hours wandering the streets around downtown, trying to find a book to read in English (I failed) and trying not to get too lost (I failed again). The latter was not entirely successful, because the map I had did not reflect the fact that many streets rise precipitously up steep hills, keeping you from connecting to what appears on the map to be a perpendicular street a single block over (it is, but you are suddenly 100 feet above it with no way to connect). In this way, I wound up somewhere above the downtown city center, in a dusty street on the brink of one of the barrios. Some bored kids on porch stoops watched me pass, then pass back when I realized I was on a dead end with no real way out but the way I had come. One of them yelled something; what was I looking for here? I kept walking, said calmly but roughly: "I have to go this way now" in Spanish and backtracked to where I had started. I was a lot more cautious with the map from that point on.

How have I been handling withdrawal from my constant diet of Asian food? Its been tough. When I stumbled on Restaurant Lai Lai that evening, I knew I had to eat there. The chow fun with everything was enormous and cost roughly $3.50. It could feed 2 people easily (or one of me, which it did). And no, I didn´t get sick.

In the end, I would like to say that I spent a great night out on the town, sampling the city´s nightlife. I had a number of decent places picked out from my guidebook, all within a 5-10 minute walk from my hotel, and was eager to spend a night in a city again, coming from two weeks spent on an island of 6,000 people. But it didn´t happen. Absolutely wiped out and thankful for a clean, comfortable room, I lay down on my bed for a few minutes to grab a little bit of rest. This was at roughly 8:15 PM. The next time my head rose off the bed, the clock read 2:00 AM.