3-26 Copan Ruinas. For some reason, the whole scene in Copan Ruinas wasn’t nearly as appealing as the first time we’d come through. It was okay, but uninspiring. Since we were now looking for a place to stay for a while, maybe we were looking at it more critically. In any case, it failed to enchant us, but we were both too sick, tired and disoriented to jump on another long bus, so we dug in at the Posada Honduras for a while.
The days went quickly in Copan, partly because we slept a lot. Our stay was filled with many minor hassles that added up to a bad time. For one thing, it seemed like a lot of people were trying hard to rip us off. Not just the normal gringo price type of treatment, but hardcore ripoffs. For example, one morning we went to the market for some cheap breakfast. This rather large woman hailed us from a tiny stall and asked if we wanted to eat. We said we did, and she ushered us inside. Yes, she could make us a vegetarian breakfast, sit down, sit down! So we did… After the hour it took her to laboriously find, clean, chop, and boil some vegetables, we got plates of boiled veggies and rice. No salsa; she was out. The “orange juice” turned out to be glasses of ice with a splash of juice over them. In all, the meal was worth less than a dollar all up. She charged $8, an absurd amount. Yes, we had forgotten to haggle over exactly what we would get and how much it would cost. I made the mistake of trusting that the nice fat lady would only slightly overcharge us. After that, I was just pissed off at the constant hassle of people trying to see how badly they could gouge us, and even though I didn’t really want to, I started treating all the Hondurans like potential ripoff artists, which was unfair, but effective. After a few days, Maryse started feeling better, and I had regained the spring in my step that said I was ready to travel again. Honduras had been a disaster, basically, and we wanted nothing better than to leave, and quickly. With Semana Santa over, we should be able to travel quickly and without hassles, so we started planning our next move.
Back to Guatemala was the consensus. Although we’d heard a lot of good things about Nicaragua from fellow travelers, it was a long way south, and we decided to leave it for another trip. We began the process of girding ourselves for chicken bus travel once again.
I had developed an obsession with machetes for some reason, but every machete I saw was cheesy, with a crappy leather sheath obviously mass-produced to be sold to tourists. I couldn’t find an authentic looking machete anywhere. Several times I asked campesinos where they had gotten their very authentic machetes, but received little in the way of help. Finally, one kid suggested I try the ferreteria, the hardware store. Ah…
At the local ferreteria, there were several machetes hanging on the wall in the typical cheesy leather tourist sheath. Actually, most of the real campesinos just walk around with their naked machetes gripped in their callused hands. I didn’t want to go quite that authentic, preferring a leather sheath. Struck out at the hardware store. But wait! What’s that, behind and between all those new machetes? May I see that one? No, not that one. No, to the right. No, to the left. No, rightfrigginthere! Yes, that one. Yes, the old one. Please, may I see it?
After convincing the improbably young, cute, and personable girl at the counter that I really did want the old beat up one, I examined the prize. Old, oiled leather sheath with lots of braided tassels, embellishments, and rusting hardware. The machete itself was actually made in Honduras rather than El Salvador or China, and came to a wicked point, with an overall pleasing, balanced and unique shape. Score! I had found the last real Honduran machete in the country as compensation for all my other difficulties. Paying less for it than I would for a generic Chinese machete back home, I tucked my new toy, along with a sharp new file, in my backpack. “Ustedes son bien armada ahora,” (You are well armed now) commented the bemused clerkette on our way out. Well, the machete does make one hell of a short sword, it’s true…
Back at Posada Honduras, I set myself to putting an edge on the blade, which turned out to be a major task. After six hours, I had made the uneven and totally blunt edge into a perfectly angled, smooth, straight, razor-sharp instrument. It shaved the hair off my arm without any trouble. Success plucked from the jaws of failure.
Now fully psychologically prepared for departure, Maryse and I spent a couple more days enjoying our leisure before traveling again. Sad to say, we spent more and more time in the air-conditioned coffee shop of the nicest hotel in town, watching CNN and generally taking refuge from Honduras and Hondurans. Clearly, we were in the wrong place, but we’d do something about that soon enough. For now, we were content to sit back and sip some really good coffee while we watched the Pope pass into the next world amidst much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not his, of course.

3/24- A Thursday. We wake up in the fleabag hotel Roselle and pack as quickly as possible, then hike the few blocks to Via Via, which has good international vegetarian food and is run by a Belgian couple or something. They also have a couple of rooms in back, and we score the last free one. It’s a bit pricey but nice, and after we’re installed, I feel better. Breathe deeply, relax, shower, and wash away all the grime and disappointment of the trip so far.
Damn, I had been hoping to find a nice place to chill out, work a bit in exchange for room and board, and have a good time chilling by the ocean. Instead, I picked the most depressing spot anywhere, and it sucked the sweat off a dead man's balls, in Robin Williams' immortal words. I really wanted to believe that the worst was behind us, but I just didn’t feel that nice good vibe feeling one likes to feel. I was off my stride energetically.
Went to Hotel Maya to use the internet. After five minutes by the clock of staring at an Internet Exploder window waiting to load a single page, I told the guy at the desk that something was wrong. He didn’t care. Since at Hotel Maya you pre-pay for your internet time in advance, he didn’t have to care. My half-hour was utterly wasted, and I asked for my money back. He refused, and I insulted him in Spanish. By this time, I was developing a real hatred for Hondurans in general, which just kept getting reinforced daily.
Went and bought some cigars, although I’m not a big cigar smoker. They were cigars, and I got little satisfaction from smoking them. We went to Tunkul, the bar and restaurant next door to Via Via for dinner, had one of their gigante burritos (truly large) with Jerry, Andy, and Diego, a Columbian who spoke pretty good English. After dinner, I filled Jerry and Andy’s water bottles from my First Need purifier (always glad to have a chance to demonstrate my geeky gadgets) because they had forgotten to bring or buy any water and were thirsty. Gave everyone a shot of my mezcal from Oaxaca, they left, and we slept.
3/25- Moved to Posada Honduras with Diego for a neighbor. It was cheap, and not too unpleasant, with a nice courtyard with some shade trees and a little shelter with tables and chairs. Maryse was sick with the shits and general malaise, so we went for breakfast to Licuado Express, just up the street. It was run and apparently owned by a tall, large, and domineering European woman of some Nordic flavor. The “granola” in the licuado turned out to be raw mueslix, and the yogurt was totally unsweetened. The overall impression was of strict Germanic health food. We didn’t plan to return, and lingered over our food only because it was so hard to swallow, literally. Met a cheesy American guy who wanted us to rent a house with him and his silent Honduran (?) wife (?) but he had a bad vibe, so that wasn’t appealing either.
After the cheesy guy walked out, a nice-looking young American couple came in and we struck up a conversation. They had found a job teaching kids just outside of San Pedro Sula through idealist.net. I couldn’t help thinking “idiot.net” as they told us about their basically rotten experience. They said that all the kids lied constantly, stole, and were otherwise difficult. They were physically beaten at home frequently, and would tell any sort of lie in an attempt to get out of a beating. They (the Americans) also said that everyone seemed really lazy and just wanted a handout. Despite their trying to put a pleasant spin on their experience, it sounded awful, and they were committed for another six months. Their place was an oven with no AC, so they just sweltered constantly, etc. Suck city.
Maryse, feeling sick and awful, went to bed early and I went out on the town with the boys, after meeting a crew of locals and longtime tourists in the street who seemed intent on a party. We went to a local’s pad, which looked like the aftermath of Dresden. Yikes. Just a couple thin mats on the floor, crumbling walls, and a bare lightbulb. Half the place was filled with some sort of rubble. Not to incriminate myself, but some of the local guys had some half-decent herbage, and spliffs were puffed by some in attendance. One totally crazy guy had a little tiny drum made out of a dried gourd, in the shape of a miniature djembe, more or less. I played it a bit, and it sounded amazingly good for a drum of its size, better than I’ve ever heard. Jerry got inspired to go fetch his big ashiko, and the party was on.
The crazy local said we should go out to a Mayan altar to drum and celebrate, which sounded like a good idea until we got there and found it surrounded by barbed wire. When I pointed out that it was trivial to get over the wire, the other local guy (names withheld to protect the guilty) told me that the problem wasn’t the wire itself, but the police post just down the way, and the fact that we weren’t supposed to be in there. If we drummed, they would certainly come and bust us, weed and all. Claro.
Local #1 said that the altar belonged to us all, and that the police had no right to keep us away from our common heritage. Although I agreed with him totally, at least in principle, I had zero desire to see the inside of a Honduran jail, and agreed with the majority that we should find another spot. After more philosophical wrangling, practicality won out, and we walked half a kilometer to a nice altar in the middle of a circular clearing that the cops didn’t care about.
I drummed for a while, and we took turn on the big and little drums till 3am. Finally, I made my way back to my hotel while everyone else dispersed. To my surprise, the front gate of the hotel was secured with a padlock. I banged on the gate, and tried a few medium-loud “hola”s to summon the gatekeeper. No joy. Then I walked around the corner, looking for a back way in. Nope. Just as I was walking back up the block to the front, a really angry guy in a pair of tighty-whities came around the corner barefoot and motioned impatiently for me to follow him. I did, and he let me in the gate, totally disgusted. He did not respond to my repeated apologies, but just went back to bed after locking the gate behind me. Oops.
Sleep, the final frontier.

3/23- The alarm goes off really, really early, and I force myself out of bed and into rapid packing mode. Maryse is way better than I am at waking up in the morning and going to bed at night. I never seem to want to do either, actually.
Not wanting to miss our bus out of Trujillo, we hustle out of our room, but are intercepted by the ever-over-solicitous Gunther, who attempts to force us to have a cup of his “Gut Cherman Kaffe” before we leave. Wanting neither his coffee nor his proximity, we tell him we’re running late and just don’t have time, which turns out to be absolutely true. Undeterred, he tries to head us off at the pass, but fortunately, due mainly to his bulk and attendant inertia, we are able to get past the kitchen door before he can get out of it, and we have a clear shot at the gate. “Dere’s always time for kaffee!” shouts Gunther, angrily and incorrectly, at our retreating backpacks.
On the way out of Casa Ale-MANIA, Maryse notices that there are several international symbols on the sign. One is the sign for bed, one is the sign for food, another is the sign for swimming, and there is the universal sign for telephone. Inexplicably and oddly appropriately, there is a symbol that looks like it means “shouting man”- it’s a little glyph of a human figure with his hands up to his mouth, with circular ripples emanating therefrom. Perhaps Gunther was warning potential guests about himself? Bizarre, in any case.
We make it to the bus as it’s pulling out, throw our equipajes abajo, and jump on. There are even two seats together, just for us. Ah. As the bus heads out of Trujillo toward SPS, I breathe a great sigh of relief. Maryse and I feel like we’re escaping something awful, which I guess we are.
It would have been nice to go snorkling and/or scuba diving in the Bay Islands, it would have been nice to get to a Garifuna festival, it would have been nice to do a lot of other things, but at the moment all I want is to get the hell out of Dodge. Screw Casas Kiwi and Alemania, and screw Honduras.
Maryse drifts off to sleep as the bus winds its way back to the big, nasty industrial city of San Pedro Sula. Her head is up against the left side window, while I have the aisle seat. The couple in the seats just ahead of ours trade positions in an oddly rushed and clumsy way, with the woman taking the window seat. The reason for her hurry becomes apparent moments later, as she opens the window a couple inches and vomits without bothering to stick her head out the window. Maryse wakes up being simultaneously vomited on and grabbed by me, trying to yank her out of the way of the flying puke that the air from the window is spraying back into the bus. For some reason, she does not flip out, but instead pulls out a wet-wipe and cleans herself up. Partly due to my quick reflexes, she barely got any puke on herself after all, but the inside panel of the bus is coated with it. We move to other seats, ahead of the barfy woman, who doesn’t apologize or seem embarrassed in the least.
San Pedro Sula. Hot, humid, and overflowing with smells as foul as the temperaments of its unfortunate inhabitants. The bus drops us off at its terminal, which is dismal. Instead of a central bus terminal, there are a bunch of little, out-of-the-way terminals scattered around the city, which means that you have to take a cab from one to the other, because you do _not_ want to walk around most parts of SPS, at any time of the day or night, especially with backpacks, especially as a gringo. Muchas ladrones, we hear from everyone. We take what has to be one of the very worst taxis on the planet, an ancient Toyota with at least one badly bent rim and something really wrong with the suspension so that every bump produces a paroxysm of swaying, lurching and bouncing. Whatever, it gets us where we’re going, and we aren’t robbed, beaten or killed on the way, so we count ourselves lucky. Stopping at the bus terminal, such as it is, we are missed by inches by a chicken bus, which prompts our taxi driver to jump out and stand screaming at the chicken bus driver until the traffic lets the latter roll on, about a minute later. Lots of fun.
There is already a large line of people waiting for the bus north to Copan Ruinas, due to Semana Santa. We take our places at the back of the line, hot sun beating on our backs as we try to squeeze into the already-occupied shade of a corrugated metal awning. The bus is due in three hours, and I can tell it’s going to be a long wait in the unbearably hot, filthy dirt lot. There’s a really old campesino in front of us who keeps saying incomprehensible things, to which his wife (?) responds by winking at everyone around, and making “barracho” drinking motions with her hand. I go in search of something cold to drink.
Coming back, not a lot has changed. Maryse and I suck our freshly-squeezed orange juice out of plastic bags, which is actually more fun than it sounds, and then just toss the empty bags on the ground like everyone else does. When in Rome… And anyway, the place could not get any filthier. Three gringo guys show up: Andy, Jerry, and a fat guy whose name I forgot. Jerry’s been lugging a very large ashiko drum around in his backpack, which he had hoped that the Garifuna people would teach him how to play, but he never found any. They (the guys, not the Garifuna people) are all heading back to the States. There’s a slightly creepy vibe about Jerry and tubby, so I am not surprised when the big guy tells me that they have been working for a church project, his eyes flickering ever so briefly over my face, to see if I am part of the club or not. Ah yes, Evangelical Southern Baptists out to improve the world. In my opinion, they’d improve it more effectively by departing it, but what do I know? They’re nice enough guys, for people who would send me to Hell forever if they could because I don’t think that Jesus was a neocon and that starting Armageddon is good foreign policy. Anyway…
In Spanish, the words for “to hope for” and “to await” are identical: esperar. One thus “hopes” for a bus, which is exactly what we did. Finally, the promised bus arrived, only forty-five minutes late- not bad, actually. As the dilapidated old Greyhound-wanna-be pulled into the baking hot dirt lot, a ripple of anticipation spread through the waiting crowd, just as it would through any group of people in similar circumstances. I expected the people to be happy that the bus had finally arrived, and to be eager to get on it and get underway. What I did not expect was the total and utter chaos that ensued as the ripple of excitement blossomed into full-scale pandemonium. Rather than having any respect for the people, including old folks, women and children, who had been waiting patiently in line, most everyone just started screaming, shoving, and running around like crazed animals. Since the lot was tiny, the bus was forced to make something like a ten-point turn to get turned around. Forward, back; forward, back. Every time the bus stopped or paused briefly during this maneuvering process, the screaming crowd attempted, like their possible ancestors the pirates of the Caribbean, to board it. Oblivious to the fact that the bus was already packed with people, many of whom were trying to get off, the mindless crowd charged the bus again and again. For a minute, I was inclined to join the battle, but didn’t really feel like shoving someone’s grandma in the dirt for a seat on a packed bus. I gave up, and sat down on my pack with Maryse, the gringo guys, and the 10% of the hopeful passengers who had decided that the crowd scene wasn’t worth it. The bus finally came to a halt and opened its door. Massive stalemate as the departing passengers attempted to push their way through the embarking ones, and vice-versa. Finally, order of operations somehow prevailed, and those who were getting off got off. Then those who were getting on attacked like army ants. Throwing kids through the side windows, climbing in through windows, doors, and the hatches on top, the maniacally screaming crowd forced itself through all possible orifices and into the bus. “What is this, the last fucking chopper out of Saigon?” I asked nobody in particular.
More and more people got on, way beyond the bounds of safety, decency, and sanity, in that order. People were falling from the aisle into the laps of seated passengers, unable to rise because of the press of the crowd. After the bus had attained the absolute maximum possible number of passengers, a few more got on and the driver shut the door. There were about fifteen people in the front stairwell alone, and one poor old campesino (maybe el barracho?) had his face actually squashed up against the front windshield. The driver was trying to push the people back off the gearshift and steering wheel enough so that he could drive. Somehow, finally, the bus pulled away.
Feeling disgusted and dirty at being part of the same species who had just staged this repellent exhibition, I settled down to wait for the next bus, if there was one. An hour later, one arrived, a chicken bus this time, but I was way past caring. While I made sure that our luggage actually stayed in the hold until the doors were closed, Maryse went inside and scored us a seat. Smart girl she is, she checked the seats for legroom quotient and selected the most capacious. Some of the seats only had a couple inches between them, and we had a long ride ahead of us, so she chose wisely, especially for my six-foot self and my long femurs. Since the screaming idiots had packed themselves so efficiently into the first bus, there were plenty of empty seats on this one. We sat back to enjoy the ride to Copan Ruinas.
No such luck. The bus rammed a car backing out of the terminal, sending four mechanics, the youngest being about five years old, underneath in a futile attempt to fix the clutch. Lurching forward from ramming the car with the back end, the bus rammed a pole with the front. After grinding the gears for about a minute, the driver, who was taking all this stoically, got it in gear again, and tried a different line. We got clear of the bus station, but every shift was a major hassle, and getting into first from a dead stop seemed nearly impossible. I have never heard gears grind like that, and I couldn’t believe the tranny could last much longer.
After a couple blocks, we ground to a halt, and the crack mechanics dove underneath to try another fix. Meanwhile, some very grumpy cops showed up, pissed perhaps that they only had a VW Bug for a cop car, and a yelling round ensued, which seemed to be the cops telling the driver that he had to work on the bus somewhere else, and the driver telling the cops that he couldn’t get anywhere else without some work being done first, and then the conversation being repeated. The mechanics reappeared, and we got underway once again, with much grinding of gears. The cops were still yelling angrily as we pulled away.
Several times on the long, steep uphill ride that followed, the driver missed a shift and we rolled to a stop on an uphill grade. After much more screaming gear action, we’d get started again, only to blow a shift a few miles later. Each time, I held my breath, hoping that we wouldn’t get stranded at night in this chicken bus, in the middle of Honduras. We didn’t. The determined driver delivered us safe and sound, if not relaxed, to Copan Ruinas a few hours after dark. The driver, apparently unable to disengage the clutch at all at this point, rammed another pole with the back of the bus, and then got it rolling forward, toward the crowd of passengers standing on the sidewalk, including us. I saw the bus looming, and yelled “Cuidado!” but Jerry just looked puzzled when the bus hit him. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow to his backpack, and probably saved him from amputation of his heel by shoving him out of the way as the back tire of the bus rolled over the place where his foot had just been, taking a chunk out of the curb in the process.
As we all circled round to congratulate Jerry on his survival, guidebooks were opened and everyone looked for a hotel. In the midst of this scene, we were approached by a nice, smiling guy who told us in broken English that he could get us a good hotel with nice big rooms and a great view for cheaper than we were going to pay for the others, and it was just a couple blocks away. Like the bunch of gringo suckers that we were, we followed this guy to Casa Rosario, the worst fleabag motel in town. It was fifteen blocks away. The rooms were tiny and there were no windows, let alone a view. The place was a dump. I got pissed, and started telling the guy what a lying piece of crap he was. He responded by saying in Spanish that he didn’t speak English, which was odd as his sales pitch and subsequent hustling had all been done in functional, if inelegant, English. So I told him in Spanish that the rooms sucked and that he was a liar. He responded by pulling up his t-shirt sleeve to show me his bicep. Some sort of threat display? I would have liked nothing better than to have stomped this little lying piece of crap into the ground and then tossed him off his own roof, but it didn’t even seem worth the effort. Everyone else decided they’d just stay because it was too late to walk back across town, so by default, we stayed too, even though we didn’t know these guys at all. Herd mentality hits home. The scam was completed when the proprietress attempted to charge us all ten times the price the street hustler had quoted. I had to pick up my pack and say I was leaving before she said okay, you can have it for the quoted price. Totally disgusted, and with our hoped-for haven in Copan Ruinas a shattered dream, we went to sleep exhausted and embittered. Or at least I did. Maryse had probably regained her usual serenity, and slept peacefully despite it all.

3/21- A Monday, for starters. I gain consciousness sometime around noon, but it's not what I'd call much of a gain. Actually, I feel worse than I can remember feeling for quite a while. The pisswater that passes for beer in Honduras decieves you into thinking there's no alcohol in it just beause there's no taste, but there's some sort of hepatoxic agent there, as proven by my slamming headache and general malaise. Also, the horrible Belmont cigarettes had turned my tongue into something I wanted to spit out, and my lungs into reeking sacs of smoked tissue. It was not a good morning.
Easing out of bed, I try to use the experience to remind myself to never, ever, do that again. I manage to get dressed and make my way down to the shore, with a lot of love and moral support from Maryse, which is far more than I deserved. The ocean revives me a bit, and the Trujillo bay is spectacularly beautiful, with perfect water, almost no waves at all, and a long, sloping beach that means lousy swimmers like me can still stand up and touch bottom 100 feet out from shore. I get a bit overenthusiastic about my swimming, and try to see how far I can swim underwater, which means I am performing strenuous exercise while holding my breath. Surfacing, my head feels like someone is driving railroad spikes into it from several directions. I remember that I am badly hung over, and restrain myself to feebly paddling around in the giant bathtub. I will never drink alcohol again.
Reporting for duty at the bar, Chaz "asks" in her uniquely rude and abrupt manner if we can try to show up by 2PM. We say sure, whatever you say, and then privately discuss how to get out of there in the quickest possible way. Mercifully, Chaz goes away somewhere else, leaving me to sit on the barstool and pass out beer after beer to Tim and Bjorn, who seem unaffected by the last night's orgy of consumption. Bjorn's liver has got to be pickled, or something. Eddy teaches me how to make the house special drink, a "Kiwi Colada," which, oddly enough, contains no kiwi.
Tim attends to homework, grading students' papers on his laptop, and Bjorn explains to me how he came to fall in love with the Princess of Indonesia through his job as a soldier with the UN. They plan to marry, at least according to Bjorn. Bjorn also plans to open a bar in Thailand. Not clear how those two ambitions might intersect, and the subject never came up as one might think it would...
I eventually decide that a Marinero (sort of a Clamato thing) and some vodka, together with a bit of "salsa tipo Inglesa" (Worchestershire sauce) and some other whatnot, might make me the Bloody Mary I need to cure the still-heinous hangover. After three or four tries, I make a half-decent Bloody Mary analogue, and sure enough, I feel better. I play some pool, drink a couple beers over the course of the evening, and smoke _one_ cigarette.
Chaz starts bitching at me for something, and the inevitable confrontation finally ensues.
Me: "Okay lady, get this: I'm on vacation. I'm here to have a good time. Since I've gotten here, all you have done is be unpleasant, which is all you seem to know how to do. You don't train me or Maryse to do anything, then bitch when it's not done the way you want. You wander off without letting us know where we can find you, so we have to just do our best, which you later criticize in your incredibly annoying way. Now, I am not taking one more particle of your bullshit. You can either start being basically pleasant, making reasonable requests, and treating me nicely, or I am leaving."
Her: "You just need to get the chip off your shoulder, because every time I ask you to do something, you have a problem with it..."
Me: "Chaz, has it ever occurred to you that my reaction to you might have something to do with the _way_ you 'ask' for things?"
It hadn't occurred to her, nor could she be convinced that she had anything to do with my negative responses to her. Neither could she be induced to consider changing the way she was dealing with us, so Maryse and I held counsel, and Maryse tried to talk to her. Nope. Chaz just couldn't and/or wouldn't see what was going on, and thus our decision to leave was hastened and finalized.
Aiming for abstinence, I achieve moderation, and go to bed early to complete my recovery.
3/22- Up early (for me) feeling great. Maryse and I decide to go into Trujillo not only to get away from Casa Hell-On-Earth, but to locate some fresh water. Not only is the water system to Casa Kiwi broken, but there is zero agua pura anywhere, Chaz having failed to order any in preparation for Semana Santa, or any other eventuality like... a water system failure, for instance. The kitchen is boiling water to (hopefully) purify it, but somehow, a smoothie doesn't sound real appetizing, and I keep having thoughts of dysentery, so we head out.
The only problem is that there is nobody at all on the road, making hitching a ride problematic. After pointelssly walking for a mile, I suggest that we stop in the only spot of shade anywhere around, a lone roadside tree, and just wait for a ride. Maryse makes disparaging comments about my manhood, but I tell her to feel free to keep walking and prove her superior endurance; I'll demonstrate my superior intelligence by staying in the shade. A pickup comes along a couple minutes later, breaking the meager amount of tension we're able to sustain in the steaming heat.
We get in back with a couple of sorta-rasta looking black guys, who don't return our greetings much as we climb in. Halfway through the ride, one of them, looking at the hundreds of no-see-um bites on my legs, pronounces in his best Bounty Killer voice, "Plenty mosquitoes bite you, mon." Yeah, thanks dude, I noticed that myself... Actually, I think I look like I'm dying of smallpox, at least from the knees down.
On the way into Trujillo, we noticed a sign that said "Casa Alemania" and "Hostel". Yes! Someplace else to stay! We bought a few staple foods in Trujillo, and bought a young coconut that a guy cut open with his machete so we could drink the coconut water. Delicious!
On the way back out of Trujillo, we found Casa Alemania alter much searching, due to poor signage. The place turns out to be brand new, not really even finished yet, and is called “Alemania” because the guy who runs it, Gunther, is German. On the sign are printed prices which seem reasonable, and the idea of leaving Casa Kiwi is irresistible, so we go in and inquire. Well, it turns out that the prices are in dollars, so rather than reasonable, they are outrageous. A dorm room will set us back USD$20 for a single night, while a private room is priced ludicrously at USD$50. Whatever, we have to get out of Casa Kill-Me before it does, so we tell him we’ll be back in a couple hours with our stuff.
Taxi to CK, tell the taxi to come back and get us in one hour, pack in record time (so fast that I forgot my favorite hemp wifebeater) and say goodbye to Joel and Nindro, Bjorn, Tim, and Eddy- everyone but Chaz. As we’re waiting outside for the taxi to arrive, she comes out of the bar and says, in her depressed, petulant way, “You could have at least said goodbye.” Yeah, and you could have _at least_ given us a decent room, and been minimally personable, and had edible food, and trained us to do the job we were attempting to do, among other things, but you didn’t meet those minimums, so I don’t feel any obligation to meet your minimums, how about that? I said “Yeah, well, we could have, but we didn’t,” to her already-retreating back. Damn, what a wretched person. I have rarely been so glad to see the last of someone.
The taxi arrived “en punto,” miraculously enough, and took us to Casa Alemania, where we were looking forward to at least a comfortable night of sleep (albeit outrageously expensive) before heading out on a bus the next morning early. Gunther was a little odd, like overly friendly and solicitous, hovering over us and repeatedly asking if we needed anything else. No, dude, just some peace and quiet, actually. We had a melon from our Trujillo shopping, which Maryse ate part of, and we asked if we could store the remainder in the fridge. “Ya, uf course yoo can use da fridge!” shouted Gunther. Okay, dude, thanks, just calm down a little… The way his blue eyes shone in his florid, heavyset face was a bit disturbing, and I found myself uncomfortably evaluating the spatial relationship between him, me, and the large knife/small machete lying casually on the kitchen counter. Maryse put the melon in the fridge, and went to our new room to unpack, presumably. I was alone with Gunther.
Not wanting to be rude, although I had no real desire to converse with him, I started talking about nothing in particular, and he loudly announced that he cooked breakfast every morning. We could have some of his superlative German breakfast for a few dollars, but we had to let him know that night if we wanted any. Since we were leaving early, I needed to ask what time he fixed it, and because we are vegetarians and I suspected that a German breakfast (especially one prepared by the 300-pound Gunther) might run heavily to sausage, ham, and other forms of meat, I needed to ask what he was planning to cook. Approaching the latter first, I said, “What’s for breakfast?” He shouted back “Breakfast! I cook good breakfast!” I said, “Ah, what do you cook, though? I mean, what kind of food?” Apparently this was some sort of trigger for a trauma, or God knows what, because suddenly Gunther became very, very angry. “WHY YOU ASK TEN TIMES??” he bellowed, “I COOK BREAKFAST!!” He had the look of someone who is right at the point of launching a physical assault. I just could not believe the level of anger he was manifesting in response to my presumably reasonable question. Perhaps this was some obscure Germanic form of humor? Pretending to take offense for no reason? Male bonding, old German style? In a very level tone of voice, I said, “I asked ten times?” “Ya, sorry. I am stress from building hotel,” Gunther said, and stood there fuming. Ah, okay, so it wasn’t some sort of joke; he was actually just a psychopath. Great. “I’m stressed too, dude,” I said, to let him know that I didn’t appreciate his attitude, and might be likely to do something unpleasant if he raised his voice to me again. “Why you stress? You on vacation!” he shouted. Rather than gutting him like a fish with his own kitchen knife (my first impulse) I just walked away, to tell Maryse that Gunther was nuts.
Later, attempting to relax in the hammocks outside and read a bit before the sun went down, we looked up and saw Gunther hanging out of a second-story window, just watching us. Creepy.
Still later, Maryse asked me to get the half of the melon she had left in the fridge. I went to the kitchen, hoping to avoid Gunther, but he magically appeared, blocking my progress with his bulk. “Ya? You need something? Water? You want I cook you dinner? You…” I interrupted his manic questioning spree by pointing behind him to the fridge. “Our melon,” I said, not wanting to talk to him or spend any more time in his presence than absolutely necessary. “Ya, melon, okay!” he shouted, moving aside a few inches and continuing to hover. I edged around him, opened the door of the fridge and looked for the melon, with Gunther’s breath in my ear. Seeing a melon, I took it out and was about to place it on the table. “No! Is not your melon! MY MELON!” Gunther yelled, apparently enraged once again. “Sorry man, I’ll put it back and look for ours,” I said, which seemed reasonable enough. Nope. As I reached for the fridge door, Gunther actually grabbed my hand, and screamed, “NO!! MUST LEAVE DOOR CLOSE FOR FIVE SECOND!!!” I was totally speechless, and just stared at him physically restraining me from opening a refrigerator door. After the requisite seconds had passed, Gunther released my hand and said “Ya, now you open. Is okay,” and smiled his big smile with his bright, bright eyes. Slowly, carefully, with no sudden movements, I reached for the fridge again, keeping my eyes on Gunther, ready for anything at this point. I replaced his melon precisely where I had found it, located our melon, and removed it- slowly, carefully, with no sudden movements. Keeping my eyes on him, smiling neutrally (or so I hoped) I backed toward the door, mumbling my thanks and acting like I hadn’t noticed that he had just suffered another psychotic episode. I closed the door between us despite the fact that he was advancing toward me, smiled at him again through the glass to convey that I was not a threat, and fled to our room, to tell Maryse what I had gone through to reclaim our melon. Jesus.
We walk down the beach to a restaurant, have some really good fish, and talk a bit. Having checked the bus depot earlier, we know there’s a bus back to San Pedro Sula at 7AM, so we decide to get to sleep early. There is one other couple staying at Casa Ale-Mania, (I've decoded the secret meaning!) Americans, and we chat with them a bit. When I go out just before bed to have a last look at the ocean at night, Gunther is there, just outside the wall around the “hostel” dorm room, eavesdropping on all of us. Seriously creepy. On that disturbing note, Maryse and I go to bed, locking the door as best we can from the inside. I pray that I won’t see Gunther until the morning, if then.
He stalks my dreams, dressed as a Nazi, chasing me with a machete while screaming incomprehensible instructions about refrigerators and hammocks in a combination of German and Spanish. I do not sleep well.

(For both people out there who are reading this, sorry for the long lag with no posts. Some interesting things have happened, which I will report in the fullness of time. For now, I'll just try to catch up a bit from my notes.)

Entonces... 3/20- A Sunday. Woke up, or rather became more uncomfortable tossing and turning in the sweltering heat, wrapped in my now-adhesive silk "sleep" sack, than getting up to face the day. Maryse and I held counsel, and decided that, even through Maryse's rather rosy lenses, this place sucked badly and we wanted to leave. Now. I then segued into a round of pathetic existential/philosophical/psychodramatic wailing, along the lines of "Why me? Why did I pick this wretched place instead of someplace nice? What's wrong with my karma, my energy, my fate, my character, etc, etc..." Which, of course, led nowhere but into a useless spiral of guilt, recrimination, and self-hatred which Maryse handled easily by suggesting that I accept the fact that shit happens to everyone, get over it, and move on. Of course, she said all that in the most compassionate and sensitive way possible, being as she is the sweetest, kindest person on Earth, or at least in my world. I love her more every day, after four years of partnership. Anyway, her advice was (as usual) sound, and I attempted to master myself and pull it together to form a plan to improve our situation rather than just sweltering, being miserable, and feeding the sandflies with my blood. Somewhere along the way I fed a mosquito, too. But improving our circumstances meant leaving the area, because even if our hotel was wonderful rather than a total dump, the stifling heat and humidity would still suck.
The problem was that it was Semana Santa, the main Latin American holiday- what Christmas and New Years' are in the States. That is, _everyone_ travels and all the rooms are booked a year in advance, plus prices are high on everything, not to mention that thieves love to work the crowds... So making our getaway involved a certain amount of uncertainty and even risk. We did not at all want to get stuck in San Pedro Sula, the unwashed armpit of Honduras, for a crowded holiday, but we had to travel through there to get to anywhere else. Also, I had made a commitment to Chaz to help out for Semana Santa, and despite her not holding up her end of the bargain, I still felt a little guilty at the thought of bailing out. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, Chaz decides that it's finally time to train us to run the place. This she does by vaguely pointing around the bar and mumbling things that make no sense, and in no way resemble any sort of job training that I've ever seen. This absurd episode is interrupted by the arrival of our breakfasts, sad-looking, flat splats of eggs and beans with blazing white Bimbo bread on plastic plates. Chaz displays her first instance of courtesy by going away while we eat. After our ghetto repast, Chaz is already hitting the beer and talking with her old UN buddy, Bjorn the Norwegian, who has come down from NYC to visit her. Bjorn normally drinks himself comatose in the morning, passes out for a siesta, then drinks himself comatose again for dinner. He was working on his first good drunk of the day, and was therefore in the verbose stage of inebriation. He and Chaz were telling war stories about Mogadishu or something, and she ignored Maryse and me while we stood around waiting for the training to recommence. After several minutes of being ignored, I gave up and wandered away to read a book on bartending in one of the decaying hammocks underneath an alarmingly unstable palapa just outside the bar, so that when Chaz was good and ready she could come and get me. Maryse studied her Spanish.
Chaz appeared four hours later, very annoyed at our absence despite the fact that she herself had caused it, and could have at any time just said she was ready. She could, after all, see us from the bar. I tell her that I've been reading up on bartending, and learning some recipes, which seems to piss her off further. "You don't need to know how to mix drinks to bartend here. Everyone orders the same thing, and the kitchen makes it anyway." Oh, okay... Why not tell me that upfront? There's no "why" to any of it, though- Why is the money kept in a locked box, in a leather wallet with zippered compartments, and all the different bills in different spots, in neither ascending nor descending order, so that making change is always a lengthy ordeal? Why is there bug netting on all the walls, (or rather serving as the walls) but three-inch gaps between the wall, door, and floor? Why write down every single thing a guest buys or uses during their stay, with a different page for each day, rather than just have a stack of copies so you can make hash marks next to the limited selection of items...? And so forth. I am pretty good at seeing ways to improve systems, but with Casa Kiwi, where would you start? I saw nothing but room for improvement, to put the most positive spin possible on it.
My on-the-job training starts abruptly by Chaz handing me a plate with a fish on it. Nothing else, no garnish, just the one small fish. "Take this to that table there," she orders. Okay, I take the fish on the plate to that table in the corner, occupied by six moreños. "¿Para quien?" I grope, not knowing whose fish it is, smiling like an idiot. The table is clearly astounded to be waited upon by a tall gringo male, and erupts into rapid, slurred, totally incomprehensible Central American Spanish. I'm not sure what it's all about, but they don't look happy at all. I drop the fish at a random spot on the table, and mumble "un momento, por favor," retreating to the bar as fast as possible. I am beginning to suspect that I am in for an extremely embarassing experience, the only real question being its duration. I tell Chaz that I can't deal with the fish table, and she goes over herself. Five minutes of yelling in Spanish commences, with the whole table participating, before Chaz returns. No explanation.
Chaz leaves. No explanation, no direction on what to do in her absence, where to find her in case of need, or the expected duration of her absence. No introduction to the kitchen staff. No nada. No Chaz. For a few minutes, I can't believe she's just split. Then, I become stressed about my responsibilities, which I am unable to fulfill, never having had them explained in the first place. Kafka would have appreciated the situation, I think. Then, I take the attitude that if she cares so little for her own business, I probably shouldn't care much more either, so I just start drinking beer from the cooler in an attempt to assuage my preemptive panic concerning the next time someone comes to me with some request in Spanish I can't comprehend. The inevitable happens and someone orders something. I make it through the order-taking okay, only having to ask the bemused Honduran to repeat himself a couple times to get the order straight. But then, I need to give the kitchen the order. I've never met these guys, never been introduced to anyone but Joel and Nindro, and I'm a bit nervous giving them, literally, orders.
I start flailing away in my fragmentary Spanish, producing nothing but looks of confusion on the faces of the kitchen staff. Shit, this isn't working at all... When suddenly, one of the guys breaks into totally accentless English and says "Yeah, okay, one order of fish, one cheeseburger, and a piña colada, right?" I was stunned, to say the least, and the sensation was not unlike that of a man about to be hanged having the noose removed from his neck, or so I would imagine, having never been relieved of a hanging. In any case, I was saved. Turns out that Eddy had lived all over the States, and is a very professional cook and a masterful bartender, among other things. The burning question in my mind is why the hell his bilingual ass is in the kitchen while I'm attempting to take orders from Central Americans with my 100-word Spanish vocabulary. The only answer we can come up with is that Chaz trusts me and Maryse to handle her money, but won't trust a brown person to do so, which sucks deeply. I am tempted to rip off a bunch of cash to re-educate her racist ass, but refrain for the sake of my personal karma, a choice I am still regretting a bit.
With Eddy's help, I am able to resolve any linguistic difficulties and am confident that my inability to communicate won't result in a machete-wielding incident or something. I relax, and actually, the bar is nearly dead so I don't need to do much of anything. Tim, an American who's been living in Honduras for several years teaching English, and Bjorn, having recovered consciousness from his morning drunk, both take up their barstools, and we start chatting away. Both Bjorn and I have Norwegian ancestry, so we talk about manly Viking subjects, and being a bit drunk he brags a little about his physical prowess. A round of Indian wrestling ensues, which I win easily and repeatedly. This is followed by several rounds of arm wrestling, all of which I win despite his having about 20 kilos and several inches of bicep circumference on me. Combat phase duly completed, we move into pool, more beer, and several hours of Bjorn explaining how he can deal with getting beaten by a fellow Norwegian, but if I was Swedish, he would be obliged to kill me.
About 3 AM I get to bed, having consumed around 30 beers and most of a pack of the wretched Honduran Belmont brand cigarettes while playing pool on the warped and decaying table. It's like a cross between pool and golf, actually, as you have to take into account the dips, valleys, and slant of the terrain when making your shot, and you usually approach the pocket by a series of putts rather than a hole-in-one. I approached my bed in a similar manner, actually, but did finally manage to attain a horizontal position, followed very quickly by a deep, deep oblivion.

3/19- Woke up in our hellish room, showered in the dripping, feeble shower, and went downstairs. Maryse felt sick, and wanted to go in the ocean for a swim, but she still didn’t have a bathing suit to replace the one we’d lost in Oaxaca, so we determined to find one in Trujillo. We got downstairs just as the one guest with a car was leaving, and there was just enough space for us and the Belgian couple who were also hitching a ride. Got to Trujillo, but all the swimsuits were way too small, despite Maryse’s ass being of a normal, or even slightly petite size. There were lots of fat women around, so something was not adding up. All the clothing store people were mean and impatient, beyond unhelpful, and all the shops were sweltering. All of the above combined to bring on a crisis for Maryse, who felt sick, fat, (due to the tiny suits) stressed, and generally miserable. In response, she regressed to about two years of emotional age, and generally started whining a lot, until I was like, “what is going on, baby?” at which point she realized that she was pretty upset, so we sat down with a beer for me and a soda for her and talked about it. She cried a bit and told me what was going on, we had a bit of a catharsis, and moved on again, somewhat clearer and refreshed.
Went down to the beach and walked out on the pier to watch the fishermen catching tiny little fish with just a weighted, baited line (no rod) and then sat in a nice, overpriced restaurant and had some fish while watching the ocean. While we ate, various vendors came in and hawked their wares; we bought Maryse some “Tommy Hilfiger” shades for $4 from a particularly skilled and persistent gentleman.
Finally found a thrift store on the way back out of town, and scored a passable swimsuit for Maryse. Task accomplished, we set out for Casa Depression.
Hitched two rides back home from Trujillo, both drivers refused payment, and just wanted a handshake. Cool. Arriving back at our room in the light of day, the squalor was too much even for me. I hate cleaning up, and am normally a bit messy, but I am not filthy. Seeing the pile of gecko shit behind the bed, I went nuts and started attacking the room, taking down the shitty, moldy drapes, sweeping the floor, removing the absolutely disgusting and useless “Mosquito net” that could have kept out a bat maybe, but not a mosquito and certainly not the wretched sand flies… All the while I was pondering why I once more found myself in the position of cleaning up someone else’s mess. I felt like I was doing something wrong in my life to keep getting in this position, but Maryse said that maybe it was my karmic service to the Universe or something. In any case, I was not having a good time, sweating and having gecko shit dust stuck all over me. Four hours later, we were still cleaning, but getting closer to having a room instead of a dungeon. Had to sweep and wash the walls, mop the floor, scare away the spiders… Truly unpleasant work. The entire time the evil sandflies were biting me, no matter how much baby oil and bug dope I slathered on.
Filthy, we went to take a shower, and no water came out. Perfect! We went down to the ocean to get clean, in a truly foul mood. Well, I was in a foul mood. Maryse takes such things in stride way more than I do. Nevertheless, even she was looking a bit grumpy, and she was still feeling sick.
Went in to the bar where Chaz had taken up her normal post, and asked if she’d like to train us, seeing as we were supposed to be running the bar for the next two busy weeks. She looked annoyed, and said she’d train us tomorrow morning. Whatever.
Maryse then developed a terrible headeche, and started sobbing. She said, “I feel squeezed! I can’t breathe, my head is being squished, I can’t understand anyone…” Especially after reading Lowen on early childhood traumas, I was sensitized to the concept, and said, “Hey, it sounds to me like what you’re talking about is birth trauma, can you see that?” It hadn’t occurred to her that that’s what it might be, but it made sense. We talked about childhood trauma for a while, and about how neither of us felt like we had been welcomed into the world in a way that really helped us to feel safe and secure as children. Right when we were in the middle of that conversation, Joel and Nindro, the Honduran kitchen guys, came out and asked what was wrong. In our lousy Spanish, we just told them that she was feeling bad. Both of them sympathized, and then, amazingly enough, they said in to Maryse in English, “You are welcome here.” “You are welcome.” This being precisely the thing that she had not heard and felt as a child, it brought on another round of crying. Maybe you had to be there, but it was a beautiful thing.
We went to bed, emotionally exhausted but with a much cleaner room at least.

3/18- Up early to catch the Casasola Express to San Pedro Sula. At $5 each, it’s cheap for a long ride, unless you factor in quality of experience. The nasty ticket lady provided a bit of a foretaste of the unpleasantness to come. We paid our money, and took our chances… After a fairly uneventful bus ride, we found ourselves in a really nasty place: San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
SPS was hot, ugly, and dirty, just like its inhabitants. People were all lame, grouchy, mean… Furthermore, they all slur their words, so they are totally incomprehensible if your ear is attuned to Mexican Spanish. We have to take a taxi to the Trujillo “terminal” which is actually a tiny, filthy lot. There is no main terminal in the city, just a bunch of different lots that go different places. If you want to be spared from this nightmare, you must take a Hedman Alas bus, which is Mexican-style but for some odd reason twice the price.
At the Trujillo terminal/lot, it is raining, which turns the dirt lot into filthy muck, which infiltrates my sandals and has the consistency of baby poop. We pick the nicest-looking bus in the lot, and climb on board. All of our attempts to ask simple questions (like when the thing is leaving, if it’s direct to Trujillo, hom much it costs, and where to pay) are met with blasts of rapid, deliberately slurred Honduran “Spanish” and nasty looks from the driver and crew. Frustrated, I go inside where a somehow even less comprehensible black woman with a very bad attitude is flatly rude to me, waving her arms around while speaking as fast and sloppy as possible. I walk away from her while she’s still babbling. Now I’m pissed. For some reason, the phrase “shit people” is reverberating in my head…
I go out and buy some food from the nearest vendor, drawing nasty looks from everyone there. Seriously, the vibe in this place is BAD. Maryse and I eat on the bus, while the driver and crew laugh at us and keep looking over their shoulders and snickering. What a bunch of assholes.
I go back under the bus where our packs are stowed and lock them to a chunk of the bus. This is the first time I have really felt sketchy this whole trip. I keep going out to smoke just to have an excuse to check on the bags.
Finally the bus fills up and we leave, after a three hour wait. The bus is sweltering, but the breeze helps a bit. At every stop, there are street vendors selling everything imaginable, getting on the bus with their things, pushing them through the windows, whatever. Finally we get clear of SPS and its lingering shit smell. I start to breathe again.
Black folks start appearing more and more as we near the Caribbean Maryse spies litchi fruits outside the window, and we buy a bag of the slightly intimidating-looking things. They’re good!
After a long ride, we pull into the Trujillo bus station after dark. There is no bathroom. All the taxi drivers mob us, demanding that we get in their cab right now. Instead, I calmly roll a smoke and refuse to speak to any of them until I am good and ready. Damn, these people are unpleasant. A taxi rolls in, and misses squishing our luggage by about a half inch.
Having no other option, we get in one of the cabs and ask for our long-awaited destination, Casa Kiwi. The driver knows it, and off we go, paying more to be driven six kilometers than we did to get brought a couple hundred. Whatever.
Our driver, Jorge, speaks some English as he’s been all over the US working. He is of the opinion that nobody will ever be happy, because “when you have a house, you want a castle.” He seems to think that this is some sort of inviolable law of human existence, and predictably, he is unhappy.
On this sour note, we arrive at Casa Kiwi, unload our bags, and walk into the dimly-lit bar. There’s a sad, depressed-looking woman behind the bar, who just looks at us with her droopy eyes as we enter. “Hi,” I say, attempting to be cheerful, “I’m looking for Chaz.” “Yeah, you must be Tor. I’m Chaz,” she says. Okay, so Chaz is a woman. That’s a small surprise, but an irrelevant one. The bummer is that Chaz is this woman. She heaves herself off her barstool and says we can put our bags back in a side room. Okay. Making no move to show us to a room, she sits back down, so we join her at the bar.
This is the place we’ve been heading. This is our destination, where we’re planning to spend a month or more. This person is the one we’re relying on for room and board… I’m not too happy about it, but decide to be calm, take a couple days and see what’s up. Okay. We order some food, and I have a beer. The food arrives, and despite the fact that we are directly on the Caribbean, the fish is terrible. I am being attacked by “sandflies” otherwise known as no-see-ums in the States. Nasty little things that Chaz had assured us weren’t a problem.
Before I left on this trip, I had just started to work with a therapist who works in the lineage of Wilhelm Reich, in a system called Bioenergetics. The basic premise is that because of childhood traumas, we get not only mental and psychic problems, but physical energetic blockages. Most therapy systems just access the mental planes, but Bioenergetics gets at the physical. I got a book by the founder of Bioenergetics, Alexander Lowen, called “Depression and the Body” and had been reading it on the way down. Both Maryse and I had found the book really insightful and helpful. Arriving at Casa Kiwi, I found it to be a totally depressed and depressing place, reflecting the energy (or lack thereof) of its proprietor.
Finally, Chaz showed us to our room, saying, “there’s going to be a lot of guests this week, so you can bunk with me.” Okay, except the room she took us to was an absolute pit. Not having time or energy to argue about it, and with no other option in sight, we broke out our silk travel sheet and went to sleep to the best of our ability in the sweltering hot room. Opening the sliding door to let in some air, I also let in tons of the evil sandflies, which set about eating us as we fitfully tried to sleep. Maryse was feeling bad, and in general, everything was sucking pretty thoroughly. We had arrived.

3/17- Copan was pleasant enough that we decided to stay an extra day. Got up early, had a nice licuado at the hotel Calle Real, and then caught a three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi for the ruins. This time, we actually find the gate, which was closed for some reason the day before, and get into the ruins proper. We buy tickets for the exorbitant price of $10 US each and go on in, omitting to pay the extra $12 (!) apiece for the tunnel ticket; a good idea as it turns out. There are a bunch of macaws at the gate, kept there for the entertainment of tourists like ourselves, which works because we take pictures of them like everyone else is doing.
Moving on, we tour the site, which is pretty impressive. There are tons of stelae, and the style of carving at Copan is different than anywhere else, with lots more relief and some open work in the carving. The main pyramid is huge, with four-hundred-year-old trees growing out of it… The Hieroglyphic Stairway is extremely impressive as well.
We take a break for lunch at the rather uninspiring cafeteria next to the ticket booth, and try to feed a scavenger dog some of our spare fries, which she won’t eat.
Back to the ruins for round two. Snapping away, we check out the Juego de Pelote, and then cross over into the Acropolis compound. I’ve just taken a couple pictures of some nifty carven skulls when the camera runs out of batteries. Ah, well, we had pretty much done the whole thing anyway, so we go back to town to beat the heat.
Now, a lot of Americans seem to have some sort of reflexive respect and awe for the ancient Mayan culture. I don’t. For one thing, they practiced human sacrifice. For another thing, and more importantly in my mind, they destroyed their environment and therefore themselves. Yes, they clearcut their forests and brought on an environmental catastrophe that eventually put them out of business, like all empires seem to do. It’s nice to see the ruins, and have the experience, but I am not at all in awe; my feeling for them is closer to pity. I like to see the works of humans pulled down by the jungle, split by tree roots, and generally humbled. Silly humans.
We are the only people anywhere in sight on the way back out, and yet the moment I think “I’d like a tuk-tuk for the ride back,” one appears. Did someone phone him, is he psychic, or is the Hand of God directing everything? One way or the other, our day is going smoothly. We catch a shower and go down to Tunkul for some refreshments.
A guy we met on the shuttle bus on the way in is there. I’ll call him “Hose A”. Well, Hose A claims to be a painter, and launches into a delusional monologue about what a great bastard he is, actually comparing himself to Pollock and Basquiat. He continues ranting while we eat, but he’s buying the beer so I’m not overly annoyed… Then he starts telling us how great we are, and he’s not gay but I am very good looking… He’s also ranting about how he’s one of only three people in the world to know the location of Ciudad Blanca, the legendary Lost City of the Mosquito Coast. He goes to the bathroom twice, a bit odd. Maryse excuses herself for the restroom after the meal, and he tells me to put out my hand. I think he’s going to give me the secret bastard handshake or something, but instead he pours a bunch of coke on the web of my thumb and starts insisting I snort it. Um, no, thanks. I refuse his most impassioned pleas to snort this pile of coke in the restaurant, so he leans down and horks it. Maryse returns, we say our goodbyes, and make our escape. What an ass! Coke is bad mojo kids; this guy was like a poster child for an antidrug campaign. “Forget the ill effects on your health; do coke and you’ll just look as lame as this guy!”
Bed, in preparation for a long day of travel the next day.

3/16- After 3 hours of laying awake, I sleep for one minute before the alarm goes off. Pack and stumble into the predawn chill like zombies, waiting for our shuttle to Copan Ruinas, Honduras. Two Frenchmen and a tiny girl, maybe three years old, are waiting with us. A shuttle approaches, then another, but none stop. The appointed time comes and goes, and we wait. Finally, a shuttle stops and we climb on, only to discover that we are not on the passenger list for this one either. That’s probably just as well, because the little girl starts shrieking at the top of her lungs, “J’veux pas partir!” (I don’t want to leave!) and generally screaming her little lungs out while trying to climb through the glass of the side window. The van pulls away, and after the sound of the motor has faded out, we can still hear her bloodcurdling screams fading into the distance.
Our shuttle finally arrives, 45 minutes late. We climb in and say hello to our fellow passengers, none of whom return our greeting. Hmmm. Taking the last available seat, the rearward-facing one behind the driver and his copilot, we settle in for the long ride to the border. The side window next to us is open, admitting a freezing blast of air, but when I try to close it, I discover that there’s only one pane of glass rather than the more usual two, and I can slide it back and forth all day without reducing the ingress of the chilly wind. Maybe that’s why everyone was grumpy…
Maryse and I zip up our jackets and snuggle to preserve body heat, awaiting the dawn. The driver of the sagging old diesel Hyundai minivan apparently thinks that the clutch is an on/off switch, so every time he makes the 1-2 shift, he drops the clutch like he’s trying to break an axle, apparently oblivious to the slamming, lurching ride he’s providing his hapless passengers. This makes sleeping tough. I eventually give up trying, and let Maryse snuggle in my lap while I look out the front window. Driver’s ed is obviously not big in Guatemala; this guy has some very interesting ideas on how to pass people.
His basic procedure for passing is to tailgate the guy in front for a long time, sucking fumes in the open windows. Then, usually on an uphill right-hand blind turn, he arbitrarily decides it’s time to pass. So rather than downshifting, he just leaves the anemic van in too high a gear and floors it, producing lots of frantic pinging and lugging from the tiny engine, but very little acceleration. Moving into the left lane, we inch by the huge gas tanker or whatever we’re trying to pass, usually getting halfway by before some other huge vehicle looms ahead of us, lights flashing, horn blaring. Instead of admitting defeat and abandoning the pass, our intrepid driver stays with it in a display of unjustified optimism, perhaps hoping for a miracle of nitrous, until the last possible second, whereupon he slams on the brakes as hard as humanly possible, and tucks in behind the vehicle we’re trying to pass with inches to spare. Next, he waits for an inopportune stretch of road, floors it without downshifting, and inches into the left lane… Ad nauseum.
Between the abusive shifting, (low speed) abusive braking (higher speed) blaring horns and glaring lights from oncoming trucks, I am getting a bit agitated, and can’t understand how Maryse can even be attempting sleep. At least in a head-on, she’ll be safer lying down… The asian couple in the seat facing ours is totally stonefaced and stereotypically inscrutable, and will not return a smile. I stare out the windshield as we roll into Ciudad Guatemala.
There’s something very repetitious about Guatemala City… So many of the buildings look the same… Like that hotel there. Wait, there it is again… WTF? We’re lost, is what. Our bumbleclot driver can’t find the address he’s looking for. After 45 minutes of wandering, we abandon the chase, pick up two other people and head out, after stopping for directions six times to no avail. That’s fine with me, because a glance at the passenger manifesto reveals that they are planning to put more people in the already-full van. Losing those other guys is all that saved us from a very uncomfortable trip, or rather an even more uncomfortable one. Anyway, we leave. Or try to, because the driver can’t find his way out of the city. Half an hour later, we’re underway. Ai yi yi.
Leaving CG, we endure an awful descent behind a line of semis down an endless steep grade, huffing burning brake dust and diesel fumes. Of course, Mr. Lobotomy tries to pass constantly to no avail, endangering all of our lives and nearly causing a head-on collision at one point. I glance back and the asian couple actually look distressed. Maryse is sick from fumes, motion, stress…. We optimistically request a stop for espresso, and although the station does actually have an espresso machine, it’s not plugged in, so all they have is brewed coffee that tastes like a mix of very thin used motor oil and battery acid. In a nice symmetrical inversion, we are forced to nibble the dulces from Antigua in order to drink the coffee.
Trying to plumb the psyche of our driver, I begin to study his face in the rearview mirror. There are a couple of disturbing things there. Well, the first thing is actually something missing. He has a near-total lack of affect; that is, his facial expression is nonexistent and immobile. That’s usually a bad sign. Even more distressing than the suspicion of personality disturbance is his nodding head and drooping eyelids. The guy is fatigued, and every time there’s a pause in the action, he starts nodding off. I resolve to smack him hard if those eyelids close for more than a second, but he keeps it together, barely. Finally I can’t take the suspense anymore, and ask him if he’s okay to drive. Of course, everyone in the cab wakes up and starts loudly protesting that he’s fine, he’s the best driver around, etc. Whatever, hopefully now he’ll be extra alert out of machismo- I don’t care as long as we don’t die. I’m having mental images of his placid, immobile face as he drives the busload of us off the nearest 2000 foot cliff, blinking slowly as the ground rushes up to meet us…
On a whim, I turn back to the Asians and ask in English where they’re from. “Singapore,” comes the response in perfectly unaccented English. How’s Singapore these days? Very, very crowded. No space to live. They seem happy to be elsewhere.
Aside from the idiotic driving, the scenery is dramatic and beautiful, with deeply featured ravines and lush hills. The only thing is that every mile or so, there’s a smoldering pile of crap beside the road, with some Guatemaltico poking it with a stick, apparently with the intention of extracting a maximum of smoke from the leaves, plastic bottles, and whatever else. This results in a profusion of toxic stenches and a pretty lousy air quality. What the hell is wrong with people anyway? Other than the smolder piles, it would be beautiful… I did not think that I would encounter worse air quality that Mexico City in the mountains of Guatemala. The other thing is that nearly every diesel vehicle we see is emitting huge clouds of pitch-black smoke. Now, I own a diesel vehicle, and it’s really not that hard to get them to run cleanly- it’s just a simple timing adjustment, a tuneup. Nobody cares, nobody can afford it, what? It’s just sad to see such egregious pollution in such an otherwise beautiful place. As it stands, I wouldn’t want to live there just because of the wretched air quality.
We hit a checkpoint near the Honduran border and are stopped by the cops. They take the driver away, and much hand-waving and yelling transpires all around. The co-driver comes back to the van and rummages around in the absolutely empty glove compartment like he’s hoping the papers he needs can be rubbed into existence. Finally, we’re underway, but clearly there is a bad vibe in the cab. I ask the driver “¿Tenemos problemas?” and he doesn’t answer, but the co-driver is so upset that he says in English “Sixteen Quetzales!” and falls into sullen silence again. I must admit that after the wretched ride, I am perversely happy to see them suffer a bit.
After the mercifully brief passport ritual at the actual border with Honduras, we roll on for a couple minutes and then roll to a stop on the road. What now? Two flat tires, is what. Seriously. We limp another hundred yards to a Pinchazo place, and wait as the intrepid driving team takes both tires off, fills them with air, and puts them back on without fixing them! Don’t ask me why… Again, I am sadistically pleased that they have to lie on the hot asphalt, in light of the suffering they have caused their passengers.
Then, I notice my uncharitable feelings and reflect further. Well, these poor guys are just victims of the system, too. They probably got stuck driving the crappy van because they’re poor, or something like that. I look at the driver’s brown, lined, toothless face, and visualize him a couple years back, living in some tribal village somewhere, in balance with nature. Suddenly he’s hurtling down the road in a tin can; welcome to the industrial age. Tomorrow he’ll be doing customer service, answering questions about some Chinese kid’s suborbital scooter or something- welcome to the global age!
Wait a minute! I have tribal ancestors, too! What makes my loss of a tribal culture any less significant than his, just because my people went through it first? We can’t go back to tribalism, even though we might yearn for some of its aspects. We have no way forward but forward, into the unknown… But what about the Guatemalan Indians, who are losing their culture as we speak, who are being thrust into a technological world for which they are unprepared? Is their cultural destruction and enslavement just the price of our collective progress?
I’m really confused about these issues, probably because I can see too many sides. I truly don’t know the answers at all, but I guess my position is that we’re all in this together, and the way forward has to be based on economic justice for all, sustainability on a basic physical level, respect for all life including our fellow humans… That sort of thing. How exactly we’re going to get there, and the best ways to approach it… I’d love to hear your suggestions, is all I can say.
In the meantime, back at the van from hell, I am a bit manic due to lack of sleep and the total absurdity of the situation in general, so I’m cackling like a hyena, taking pictures, and scaring my fellow passengers by my apparent derangement, all of which earns me an elbow in the ribs from Maryse. “You’re scaring people, Tor.” Okay, honey, I’ll go back to pretending to be normal for a while…
I make conversation with some Spanish-speaking fellow passengers and discover some interesting news: The reason we were stopped was that the van, in addition to looking like a total piece of crap, has no license plate on the front and the one Nicaraguan plate on the back is half covered with a piece of black plastic, so the cops thought that it was stolen, which it probably is, because they have no papers at all for it. The cops wanted to make sure that we weren’t being abducted, which may have happened before with this van, as it has no inside passenger door handles. Thus, the necessity of a bribe.
Finally, we reach Copan Ruinas, and the van is reloaded with a crew of unsuspecting tourists for the return trip. Buena Suerte! You pays your money and you takes your chances. I resolve to see if a refund will be possible, but for the moment, I’m just glad we got there safely. A fellow passenger suggests a hotel, and we hike up to the Calle Real, a nice place on the hill above the town square, reasonable if slightly expensive at $12 US per night for a nice room with a TV, shower, towels, and two large beds.
Met a nice Canadian guy outside the hotel, and talked politics, as usual. He is of course reasonable, being a Canadian, and we agree that the US is getting out of control. We walk down to ViaVia, a restaurant and hotel/hostel run by some Belgian folks. Nice food, probably the best in Copan, but a bit pricey. Our Canadian friend appears, and we talk politics and philosophy for a while before heading off to visit the famous ruinas.
We decide to walk, and on the way see some happy Honduran cows licking each other. They pose for a couple photos, and then somehow we walk right past the main gate of the ruins and further on to Las Sepulturas, a sort of side exhibit. Totally clueless, we walk in and attract a guide who asks for our tickets, which we don’t have. He says, no problem, come on and I’ll show you around. He gives us a tour and explains some interesting facets of the Mayan culture while showing us the ill-names Sepulturas, which were not sepulchres at all, but rather the living quarters of the noble classes, according to recent archaeology. For one thing, they slept on stone beds (with soft mattresses, of course) containing the remains of their parents. Seems a bit macabre to us, but then the Mayans had a very different relationship with life and death than we do. They played their ball game with total dedication, and the player who most distinguished himself in the games was frequently sacrificed as a reward. They must not have known such a thing as a fear of death…
On the way out, we asked Marcial, our guide, what we owed him for his hour. He said give whatever you think is fair… I said I didn’t want to insult him; what would be good? He said maybe $5 per person. We paid him, and I asked what the average Honduran would make for a day’s work, and he said maybe $5 per 10 hour day, working construction. Ouch.
Met a German guy, Felix, on the way out, and we talked about politics, spirituality, and the infamous 2012 end date for the Mayan calendar. Seems like a lot of things are going to be coming to a head around then, and Felix is looking at buying some land in Honduras and going back to the land while the world sorts itself out… Not a bad plan, except he’s looking at land on the coast- too hot, humid, and buggy for me, as I am about to discover in Trujillo.
We head back to the hotel, agreeing to meet Felix in a bit for drinks at the bar. Shower and return, and he introduces us to Benjamin and Ann (I think…) some Americans who’ve been around for a while volunteering. They love Copan but are leaving soon. We go to Tunkul, right next door to ViaVia, for food (burrito gigante, plato tipico) and drinks, and the conversation gets deep. I tell Ben that he should really write about his spiritual experiences, and put it out there for some other folks to read and maybe draw inspiration from. Yesterday I got an email from him, and he thanked me for the inspiration… Glad to help, man. He’s a lot more unequivocally positive than I am, which is maybe a good thing. We talk about real Christianity as opposed to the storebought kind, and agree that our spiritual transformation as a world is where it’s at.
A good day, (all's well that ends well) and off to sleep.

3/15- Gillian worked all day so we were on our own in Antigua. I woke up and said, “I want juice!” Maryse said, “I want pain au chocolat!” and we instantly got into a fight about unclear communication. Sorting ourselves out, we agreed to communicate more clearly. Even after four years, we still sometimes get stuck in linguistic difficulties. I’ll blame it on her being raised speaking French, but I’m probably just an insensitive jerk as well. In any case, we got back into a good vibe and went about our day, hopefully with a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other…
Went to the market first, and found a juice stall. On the menu were fresh orange juice and fresh carrot juice. I ordered an orange, and Maryse ordered mixed carrot and orange. For some reason, this provoked total disbelief on the part of the juice ladies. They checked twice that she really wanted it, then made it while all the while casting suspicious glances at us. The juices arrived, and we tried to convince them that Maryse’s mixture was good. They were having none of it. Probably still talking to their friends about the weird gringa who mixed her juices, although I have no idea why the idea was so shocking to them.
The place with the pain au chocolat was closed, but a block later we saw a place that said “Dulces Tipicas” which got Maryse’s attention. She has a bit of a sweet tooth. We bought a selection of odd looking treats at random, and walked to the park to give them a try. They were so incredibly sweet that we couldn’t eat them at all, so Maryse suggested coffee. We got espresso to cut the sweet, and nibbled away on a park bench in the beautiful plaza of Antigua.
Right about then, a crowd gathered around a ranting guy in a revolutionary beret and an Osama bin Laden t-shirt who was staging some sort of demo in front of the government palace. We wandered over, and managed to gather that the protest was against the TLC (Tratamiento Libre Commercial or something similar) the free trade agreement with Guatemala that a lot of people think is going to hurt the poor and especially indigenous groups even more. Well of course it will. Isn’t that what “free trade” is all about? I took pictures, and the guy next to us said he worked in the building, and we could go in and have a look around when the demo petered out, which happened right about then. Apparently, the day before and that day there were major demonstrations in Guatemala City about the same thing, complete with clashes with the cops, but in Antigua it was tranquil.
The majestic double-decker front of the building is rather famous, and we poked around for a bit, took some pictures, and then went back into the square to wander aimlessly in the beautiful and tranquil park.
One of the things we noticed was that the high school boys would sit on park benches sort of draped over each other, hugging, and generally physically close. Not like gay or sexual, just really close and comfortable. You’d never see that in homophobic America, where we barely touch our loved ones, let alone our friends. I like that closeness, and even though it’s not a feature of my culture, I feel like I miss it. It’s nice to touch people.
Couldn’t get a shot of Agua, the famous volcano that towers over Antigua, because of all the smog. Antigua sits in a bowl, which doesn’t help, but it seems like all over Guatemala people just burn trash, including lots of plastic, all the time. Hello, compost, anyone?? The country is beautiful but damn, all the burning garbage is not only unsightly but unhealthy and disgusting. I think someone seriously needs to start a compost education program there. People don’t seem to be putting two and two together to figure out that if everyone burns trash, the air gets really nasty… Seems gratuitous to me.
By the way, the reason that the volcano is called Agua is because at one point its crater lake filled up with water and then the wall of the volcano gave way, totally deluging and destroying Antigua. ¡Agua! Antigua has a history of being destroyed by volcanoes, flooding, earthquakes, etc, which is why the Spanish finally abandoned it as a capital. After hearing all that, I reconsidered my brief flirtation with the idea of living there. It’s just a matter of time before it happens again…
I didn’t get a picture of the volcano, but I did get a picture of the beautiful and rather shockingly sensual main fountain in the plaza. It depicts several nude women holding their breasts; from the right nipple of each gushes forth a stream of water. Hmmm, I thought the old Spanish were Catholic prudes? Pretty titillating fountain, excuse the pun.
Wandered around town a bit more and came to the general conclusion that maps are mostly useless, directions are usually unreliable, service at restaurants is amazingly slow, you must ask for everything and never assume that you will be presented with a bill just because you finished your food an hour ago, and street names are a matter of debate, even among locals. That established, we moved on to a photo exhibition.
I’m sorry I don’t remember the name of the photographer, but when I find it I’ll stick it in here. The exhibition was titled “En la Guerra, Nosotros Perdamos Todos.” It was about the Guatemalan civil war, or uprising, or resistance, depending on how you see it. The bottom line was that a lot of poor people suffered and died trying to live with dignity and without being exploited to death. The photos were stark and deeply moving, frequently featuring themes like families discovering their loved ones in mass graves, or never being able to find them at all. Grim, indeed. Somehow, those people could still smile in the midst of all that… Maryse, sensitive and delicate as she is, cried a bit. She has the voice of an angel, so I asked her to sing a song for the people, for the pictures… She sang “Quand les hommes vivront d’amour” which says, in her words, “What it means is when people will live of love- when mankind will be loving, there will be no more misery, it will be peace on Earth- but we will be dead, my brother.” The song is about 50 years old now. Maybe we’re 50 years closer to that day.
After that heaviness, we moved on to a salsa lesson. Racist as it may be, I must say that whiteboys can’t dance. The dance instructor was so suave, and the crowd of stupid gringos so dorky, that it was fully as embarrassing as I had feared. Maryse looked good, at least when she was dancing on her own, but I do believe I sucked pretty thoroughly. To top it off, there were like twenty people in the tiny studio, so I was sweating like a pig, and everyone was stepping on everyone else. Before engaging in public salsa dancing, I will need some serious remedial instruction.
Went to Casa de Leon to await Gillian, and argued with an Indian American guy (Gandhi, not Sitting Bull) about politics. Again, I maintained that we would somehow muddle through to a better world, and he thought that I was a dreamer. Yeah, total war and environmental holocaust is probably much more realistic than a sane and sustainable future. WTF?? Le monde est fou!
Met up with G and went to the best internet place in town, Connexion, and attempted to burn a disc of photos so I could free up my camera’s memory card. Of course, it took far longer than I thought, and the girls were hungry. The dueña had to burn the disc herself, so we said we’d come back in a while and set out for food. For some reason, Gillian picked Frida’s. Now, Frida was a painter who was in a horrible accident, and if you’re at all hip you know who I’m talking about. I am not at all hip, and the girls couldn’t believe that with all my learning and erudition I’d missed the memo that Frida was “in”. Mea culpa, but that’s the danger of autodidactivism. There are some holes in my education, it is true.
Anyway, we ordered some drinks and a plate of very expensive “Nachos Famosos” to share. Maryse had some minty thing, I had a beer. The nachos arrived, and let me tell you, they were the saddest excuse for a plate of nachos I have ever seen in my life. Not the heaping pile of chips, cheese, and salsa one would expect, but exactly one layer of chips, about fifteen in total, with some cheese. Period. On a 10” plate. Flat. For SIX DOLLARS! Dude, for five bucks at home, I get a pile of nachos at the local bar you’d be hard pressed to finish with two people, full of salsa, guacamole, sour cream… so WTF??? I noticed that the clientele of Frida’s was exclusively gringos, the kind who wear Tommy t-shirts and always talk too loud. The décor was painfully faux-distressed (in Antigua, which is replete with real architectural distress) and I suddenly realized that I was in the midst of a _big lame tourist trap_! I was pissed. The obsequious waiter came by and asked how everything was. I told him that it was terrible- the nachos were very small and very expensive. He smiled, and said something in Spanish about that being the size of the nachos, and walked off! Okay, now I am ready to force feed him his damn nachos, but the women try to calm me down. I try it again with another waiter, making it clear that I am not at all happy, and he repeats the blow-off. I’m adamant about walking out right now and not paying for this insulting pile of crap, but Gillian prevails, and not only pays for the ripoff nachos, but for some deranged reason, insists on leaving a tip. WTF?? A tip is for good service. We got the exact opposite of service. I got in the headwaiter’s face on the way out, and said, loud, “That _sucked shit_ asshole.” He smiled, as he had our American money in his greedy little pocket, which is clearly all he cared about…
Okay, I go to some cheap place and the service sucks, that’s a cultural experience. I go to some scam ripoff and pay _more_ than I would in the US for pretentious food, and I damn well expect US-grade food and service or better. Bottom line, whatever else you do in Antigua, don’t go to Frida’s! Ripping off the legacy of a dead artist to rip off stupid gringos who saw the trendy movie… There is some heavy karma in there, just waiting to pounce.
The women thought I was a total dick, and said we should have just humbly submitted to the ripoff and left. I said that when people take shit, they are not only doing themselves a disservice, but dragging the rest of the world down with them by allowing lame people to perpetuate their scams. Everyone should demand excellence, and everyone should strive to excel. We continued arguing across the square in search of some real food, although I’d pretty much lost my appetite at that point. Turning a corner, we ran into Gillian’s friend Victor. We told him what had happened, and he told me I needed to let go of my negativity, which pissed me off some more. Let go of your own negativity if you want, bro, but my negativity is as much a part of me as my positivity, and I’ve got a lot of both. Furthermore, I plan to always call an ace an ace, a spade a spade, and a ripoff insult masquerading as a pile of nachos…just exactly that. So there. Victor did say, oh yeah, Frida’s is the most expensive and worst place to eat in town- lots of people get sick there. I can see that.
Victor then turned his attention to the ever-alluring Gillian, suggesting that he and she go off together to a bar while Maryse and I retrieved my disc and joined them later, but I was having none of it. I told him that we’d all go get my disc and meet him in a few. Perhaps sensing that this was not the moment to argue with me, he said he’d see us in a bit.
Got the disc and continued the argument with the ladies. I still maintain that refusing to take shit is the way I want to live, and that the world would be a better place if people showed more discernment. Whoever owns Frida’s is making a killing because people have no standards. They said I needed to mellow out. Whatever, we’re probably all right to a degree… I got over it, and calmed down, resolving to denounce Frida’s at every possible opportunity and leave it at that.
Meeting back up with Victor, he led us to the happening spot. Blaring music, no place to sit, yee haw. The previous tension was too much for Maryse, who started crying and had to go out in the hall. My psychic disturbance in the force was mostly to blame, and then the crowd, decibel levels… We reconvened at a quiet bar around the corner, and sat on the sofa with drinks and a veggie pizza on the way.
Both Victor and Gillian commiserated with the sniffling Maryse, Gillian saying that she’d cried every day of her trip down from the States for one reason or another. After much consoling and another minty drink, Maryse regained her composure, and we all settled in for a long talk from Victor about the realities he had experienced living in and running a business in Guatemala.
It wasn’t the most cheerful speech, as Victor’s take on Guatemalan culture was a bit pessimistic, or at least depressing. He said that they had no integrity, would steal from you, their friends, anybody, and that they were all disgustingly abusive towards women, to the point of groping women, or trying to rape them every chance they got. He told several lurid stories, and finished by dismissing “brownie” culture as simply inferior. Then he said that he could tell just by my body language that I basically wouldn’t take shit off of people, (probably true) and that I had to be careful, because it was hard to live in that culture with honor. Why? Because if someone wrongs you or your woman, you’re going to do something about it. And then if, for instance, you kick some guy‘s ass who just grabbed your girlfriend’s ass on the street, you now have a big problem, because that guy is going to get his friends together and at least jump you and beat you up, maybe get a gun and just shoot you next week when nobody’s looking. Very nice.
After this inspiring evening, Maryse and I went off to bed to try to get a couple hours sleep before our 4AM shuttle to Copan.