Weekend 1 of Being "Just a Traveller"

The joke among PC people in Honduras is that there´s a hierarchy amongst gringos -- PC volunteers of course are highest, b-c of time spent in the country and language skills etc, bilingual teachers are second for the same reasons, and lowest on the scale are "just travellers," often speaking no Spanish and spending just a few days here. But now I´m technically one of them, at least for the time being!!

Kelly and I have spent the last few days in Tela, the beach town we visited a few months ago. We came here to see for ourselves if the weather is as rainy as everyone said, and we found out that it is (so we won´t be going out to the Caribbean Bay Islands for the beaches there). On the Caribbean coast the rainy season is Nov-Feb, unfortunately, so it´s at least cloudy every day. We had backup plans tho, and yesterday took a kayak tour through Punto Izopo national park, spying egrets, herons, kingfishers, jesus lizards and bunches of "cocodrilios," which are, unfortunately, crocodiles!! We also had lunch in a cool Garifuna village called Triunfo de la Cruz, which is the 2nd largest Garifuna village in the world. These are the black Africans who are descended from a crashed slave ship 200 years ago, and they´re said to have preserved African culture, language, etc. Today we were planning to go to a botanical garden to hike some of the trails there and see some cool flowers and trees, but it turned out to be beautifully sunny so we quickly ran back to the hotel to change and went to the beach instead!! It was absolutely gorgeous, and tho our luck ran out around 2pm it was more than enough sun to soak up all of our troubles.

In the morning, we are going to take several buses to the border town of Omoa, which sounds pretty cute and has a hostel that´s described by the Lonely Planet as being the best in Honduras. From there we´ll cross the border into Guatemala, go to Livingston, another cool Garifuna town, and take a boat down the Rio Dulce, then more buses and get to Tikal, the big famous Mayan ruins, by the end of the week. I´ve been remembering how to be a good traveller, having just a licuado for breakfast then buying bread and fruit at the market and snacking all day to save money and eating a big (but still cheap) dinner. We´re trying to stick to a $20/day budget, which shouldn´t be hard but just requires effort to be sure I don´t splurge and screw it up.

AND, I want to give a big shout out to my baby brother Scott, who is no longer a baby but turns a whopping EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD tomorrow! How am I possibly old enough to have an 18 year old brother?? Happy birthday! Feliz cumpleaños! (In Honduras after we sing "feliz cumpleaños" to someone, it´s followed by a song that goes "Nos queramos pastel ... y coca cola tambien," which means "We want cake and coke too!" Very Honduran. If I were there I´d sing it to you myself, Scotty boy!!)