Stupid Beta
Tegucigalpa got old fast. It’s a big city, but there’s not really all that much to do. The real reason I went to the city was to change my flight out of Costa Rica…I thought it would be easier than doing it over the phone. I decided to give the city a shot, seeing as how I didn’t see any of Guatemala City, and I was curious about the big cities. I checked out an art museum that was decent, but nothing earth-shattering. I ran across some Garifuna dance troupe performance one evening, which was pretty cool. But mostly I just walked around the city stopping traffic or sat in the park making friends. It was exhausting. I thought I would stay two days – enough time to see the city, but there really wasn’t much to keep me there longer than that. Plus, Hurricane Beta was hovering off the coast of Nicaragua, where I was headed next, so tht would give me some time to see where it was headed.
On the third day, Hurricane Beta was still just hanging out, so I decided it would be best to wait another day. Having more time in my schedule now, it wasn’t too much of a loss, save for the excruciating boredom of nothing interesting to do. This was a day of reading, emailing, and updating this journal. Oh, and watching the weather report. It looked like Beta was heading north, through Honduras, and I would finally be able to leave the next morning, hallelujah. The next morning, I packed my bag and headed out. As I was leaving the hostel, the owner guy told me he heard that Beta changed course and was heading right where I was. Oh man. I was headed for the northern part of Nicaragua, in the mountains, and have read tons about how Hurricane Mitch devastated the entire region back in 1998; some places are still recovering. Well, knowing that these parts were devastate-able, I checked it out at the local internet hot spot, and sure enough, the damn thing changed its course big time and was headed straight through Nicaragua.
Well, this just sucked. I mean, whatever, it’s nature and it happens, but I really just wanted to leave. This was the third hurricane that had affected my trip; the first one I didn’t even know had happened until that aftermath flooding hit Guatemala, which luckily I didn’t get stuck in. Wilma amounted to nothing where I was, but did keep me holed up in a hotel for three days. Now Beta was keeping me in Tegucigalpa.
I took my backpack back to the hostel and checked back in, grabbed a coffee and went to the park to read the paper. I didn’t even care who up to me to make friends. The first person I ran into was a guy I had ran into a few days earlier. He was nice enough, though I really wasn’t interested in talking to anybody, particularly in Spanish, which involved way too much thinking. After a while though, I agreed to meet him later for dinner…I figured my crap mood would dissipate and a night out with a local would be more interesting than sitting in the hostel, wishing away Beta. Luckily, I was in a better mood, perhaps with the simple idea of having something to do, and we did have a lot of fun. Besides that, I did end up getting an entire night of dinner and drinks paid for. Ay? Not so bad…
The next morning, however, I was all over getting out of there. Went to the internet cafe (sans backpack this time), and sure enough, Beta had weakened quickly over Nicaragua and was now just a tropical storm. Little bit of rain…no problem. That’s normal stuff. And so, I was off. Packed my bag, caught a cab to the bus station, and took the next bus out.
This was one of my more favorite bus rides…old US school bus with new, used-to-be plush-but now-pretty-nasty seats. I sat all the way in the back row, which was just one big row of seats. On my left, next to the window, there was a woman with her daughter on her lap. Women with children almost always have them sitting on their lap. This way, you can pile up to 6 people in one seat (these are school bus seats; 3 on the bottom, each with child). The girl I think may have been retarded, which I slowly came to realize during the trip as she blurted out nonsense occasionally, and she was a little too old for this to be normal. To her credit, it did take me a while to realize what she was saying was nonsense. Anyway, on my right was the cutest little boy, a really nice man, and a cute teenage girl. When we pulled out of the bus station, we all discovered at the same time that our seats weren’t secured to the bus very well, and when we hit bumps, it was more like a roller coaster ride, where you could feel your stomach being left behind. The little boy got the biggest kick out of it, and just giggled…he was so cute. We all talked a little about the hurricane and the kid was reading the paper I was trying to read better than I could. Soon thereafter, I woke up to find him passed out practically in my lap, with his head sunk down in his jacket. Just adorable.
Tags: Honduras, Tag Index
Tania
December 8th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
“…she blurted out nonsense occasionally, and she was a little too old for this to be normal.” I remember when we used to say this about Tania. Ahh, nostalgia.