So long and thanks for all the fish

Get it? I know you think you do. So I just spent ten days or so on the bay islands in Honduras. And then the last week back in the highlands near the border with El Salvador. But back to the islands. Yes tropical. Yes reggae. Yes beautiful. Yes lots of tourists. Yes eco-system in extreme danger. And believe it or not: NO Español.

The Honduran Bay Islands were originally populated probably by the Maya, but by the time Robinson Crusoe washed up on Utila (yes that´s where we went) they were all gone or dead. Probably dead, from smallpox and all those nice european diseases. But after Crusoe the islands were essentially populated by English speaking (although their English is far less comprensible than Peter Tosh´s) people. They were part of the good old British empire until they were ceded to Honduras in the 1800´s. And the Spanish speaking Honduran´s only started immigrating there in the 70´s.

And now that the entire class is asleep, you are probably wondering who cares? No one, I just thought it was interesting to go to a place in Latin America and have a white man angrily explain to me that he WAS a local and that he hated the "fecking Spanish" (as the locals refer to the people of the rest of Honduras - I know, glorious irony) and that I had better speak English with him. So much for trying to speak the local language.

Anyways after a couple of days on Utila we had realized that the ¨Spanish¨ were truly fecking up an amazing island life by bringing in huge cars (the whole island has like two km of roads - wait, can you even call that roads? or is it just road?) and creating a population explosion (those catholics and their fifty children). It´s kinda sad that irony sometimes. In trying to make the islands more Honduran and less British the Honduran government is importing an unsustainable way of life. I know, I know we norteamericanos really like our ridiculous cars too. And some of us even like standing in the street and simply reving the throtle of our motorcyles for 45 minutes. Which is exactly what this guy has been doing ten feet behind me. Sure, I see how manly he is. Is that why he has that sloppy grin on his face?

On the Bay Islands we also learned that honesty is at best a questionable policy. I wanted to spend my birthday where I feel most at home, in the water. I wanted to begin a SCUBA course and get certified. SO, I filled out the questionaire honestly, stating that I had been diagnosed with asthma. First mistake. The second was to take the recomendation of the dive shop and go to the local Doc. to get him to sign a medical release. Hah. He had me blow in a tube and then proceed to tell me that I was going to die if I went diving. Seriously that´s the words he used. Probably going to die. He told me I had to go back to the mainland to see a specialist who would make me run up and down stairs for a half hour and I had to prove that that didn´t make my lungs tired. Sound a little ridiculous? Well baby, you ain´t seen nothing yet.

This one goes out there to my fellow asthmatics who are tired of being treated like geriatrics. Oh and even more so to you smokers (wish I could say I never ate that sweet, sweet forbidden fruit): All while examining me "Doc" (John´s Hopkins Grad from the pretty papers on the wall) was smoking. No, not in private. In the examining room and with the unabashed flair of a true lifer. Oh, and did I forget to mention: fecker was drinking beer out of his coffee cup as well. Yup, that´s right. It was ten in the morning. And the worst part was the metherfecker was wearing the most ridiculous tie-dye outfit I have ever seen. And I have four Grateful Dead and four Phish shows under my belt to back that claim up people.

So, yeah I was bummed. Auna was really sweet and sympathetic and offered to help me do what any red blooded american man wants to do when met with a farsical, yet insurmountable and very real rejection: get pissed. That´s drunk in British-ese. Yeah we started early and hard and had a grand ole time. But in ending up in the bar where all the divers end up at the end of the night, we gained two very valuable insights. First, Never lie to your bartender. Once you´re drunk you´re going to tell the truth, so you might as well start with it and not look like an ass. Besides when you tell the truth about things like your birthday to nice, nice, pretty, pretty Australian bartenders named Sarah you might get a free beer (or was it shot of tequila, Auna isn´t around to tell me and I can´t recall). Also, when you tell her the truth about why you aren´t diving on your birthday, she and her divemaster boyfriend (a nice, nice man whose name went bye bye with the tequila) will convince you and your hot, hot, nice, smart, nice, hot fiance that you should do only one thing: LIE.

Now for those of you with the ole "I trust doctors disease", the reality is I could have a bronchial spasm and die anywhere. Wait here it comes, while I´m typing this blog... up, nope false alarm, just a burp. Seriously, whether I´m here, 100 ft under water or on a mountaintop, I´m pretty much fecked. Unless I´m actually in a hospital that is. And I loves me dem hospitals.

So I went through with the dive training and here I am to tell the tale. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done. If anyone reading this has ever considered diving, do it now. Then go some where with a reef and dive that. Oh, and if you´re a PADI official, that asthma stuff is just my sense of humor, read my file, I have zero health problems. The wildlife is amazing enough but the act of diving underwater is incredible. It´s like flying. I have done a slo-mo, headfirst dive into a sunken cargo ship at 100 ft and it was like... undescribable. And the wildlife. Sweet Jesus. I swam with a loggerhead turtle whose shell was larger than my torso. I got charged by a four foot barracuda (minutes after hearing a story about one taking off a lady´s ear for the earing). I hovered above an enormous spotted eagle ray for what seemed like forever. I watched 30 or so reef squid move in perfect squadron-like postions as if they had telepathy. And the most incredible thing I saw was while hanging over the front of the dive boat as we raced to our dive site: 20 or so dolphins leaping and diving with the bow of our boat, following our exact movements and all only two feet beneath my face.

So where was my lovely weef-to-be during all this? Unfortunately, she didn´t take to it like I did. But I´ll leave that tale for her to tell. Her blog for these adventures is called "scardy cat in paradise". In fact, I´m realizing that my laziness combined with sickness of the last week has allowed her to publish two blogs probably making this entire tale redundant for most ya´ll. It´s true, I have no friends of my own. It´s okay, I understand, she is the prettier one.

A couple last things about the cayes. If you go there, get off the main islands. Don´t stay in a resort, but get to a smaller cay with no roads or cars (when´s the last time you´ve been in a place like that?), trust me, you´ll thank yourself. Also, Most of the laws there go out the window. There is no police presence and those guys smoking dope and blowing in your face are the closest thing to law enforcement ya git. So let them smoke their joints the size of babies arms, don´t stare at them, smile at them when they pilot your dive boat and they´ll probably help keep the really crazy drunks off your back. Lastly, the food was all fried. And I mean FRIED. They had access to some of the best lobster and game fish in the world and they fried it. All of it. In fact here in the mountains they fry everything too. Honduran canola oil conspiracy?

Here in the Highlands we´ve had a pretty good time. It´s been 70 degrees and occasional rain. We´ve actually been able to take hot showers. It was sooooo hot on the bay islands. The one day that the easternlies (those are the winds that brought that columbus dude there) didn´t blow I felt like marshmellow. Yup big and white and sweating in the fire. And square. Very square.

First we went to Santa Rosa de Copan and I had a bit of a hangover so I don´t remember about a day. Auna has just joined me and is now reading over my shoulder, smirking and saying, "a bit?, A BIT?". Hey when on the cayes... or whatever. After I recovered we got to know this little mountain town and fell in love. It´s really pretty. Colonial style archtecture with cobblestone streets and all. Also we managed to find some nice non-fried food.

Annnnnd! we toured the Flor de Copan Cigar factory. If you´ve ever smoked a Honduran, it´s probably come from there. They make hundreds of different styles and produce at least fifty different labels all under one roof. Well okay two roofs. They have a multi-year process of taking tobbaco from all over central and south america, humidifying it, fermenting it, roasting it and grading it before they ever start rolling their own. They de-vein it and roll it using molds in a three step process then pack it all up into boxes that they make right there under their second roof. Quite literally wood and tobbaco goes in and boxes of cigars come out. "Factory" doesn´t really work as a name because they do everthing by hand. Okay, they use one fork lift to load the trucks. Oh yeah, and one more super cool little machine that "breathes" through each cigar to make sure that not too much or too little air can be pulled through. Auna and I did the whole tour in Spanish and came out understanding a lot, like who knew that the temperature of the fermenting tobbaco during the fermenting process determines the tobbaco´s strength in nicotine. No, they don´t work like phillip morris and raise the levels to hook and kill you, they actually try and make sure it´s not to high so as not to take your head off. Anyways, I hear tell that their cigars are reeeaaaal nice. As a PADI certified diver I would never consider doing anything so risky with my lungs.

After Santa Rosa we went to a even smaller town called Gracias. We landed in town and found it a little more than difficult to find a room. It was the culmunation of their month long celebration of culture and most of the inns were full. We decided to do a hike in the local national parque called "Celaque" or box of water in Lenca (another pre-columbian non Mayan tribe, the currency is named after their last chief, Lempira). It´s the water source for eleven rivers, some as far away as El Salvador, which, umm, isn´t really that far away. And so, We took a lunch, used our Spanish skills to avoid needing a guide (and to save some lemps on transportaion) and had a great day. It was real romantic like to be off alone together and hiking. Auna and I hiked Mt. Si for our "first date", so this was pretty sweet for us. It was a truly beautiful place with next to no human presence. The hiking was steep and high. At where we stopped we were at over 2000 meters which is a whole lots of feets.

We saw one of the most amazing creatures I have ever seen. It was like a gigantic moth and a mouse had been caught in that machine from the movie the fly. Yup, that´s the best description I can offer. Sorry, the upload rates here are abysmal here or I would load the pic I have. We later found out from one of the parque guards (he was effectively doing his guarding while stretched out sleeping in a field with his radio, dogs, gun and of course his machete - I love Honduras) that the name of this beast was Alma de Perra. Yup that translates to soul of the dog. or more crudely: Soul of the Bitch. Sounds like the best album Motorhead never made.

After the hike, to celebrate I proceeded to get really, really drunk. joke. Seriously, I got really, really ill. In fact I´m kinda missing some spots due to fever and intense body aches. I don´t really remember much of Gracias other than trying to eat fried chicken and french fries (by the way that´s far and away more common here that tortillas and beans). I couldn´t do it. Auna got sick too. She´s had a mean head cold and has actually had trouble staying warm. And she had to take care of me because I was beyond non-functional. It was bad. But I´m pulling through, and Auna got us on the bus back to Santa Rosa de Copan and we´re back in a nice room at one of our fav hotels and we´re resting up for San Salvador. I got´s me an awesome weef-to-be here folks. Trial under fire shit for realz dawg.

Thanks to everyone who actually read all this, and thanks to those who started, realized they couldn´t stand my pointless rambling and switched back to watching vids on youtube. Is anyone besides "Ivy" (whoever you are: I don´t know how to spell, and I´m sensitive about it, so leave me the feck alone, okay?) actually reading this? Should I continue to bother? Whatever, I kinda like it. No, I lie. I love it. And I hate myself for that.

Much love. Adios.