Day Eleven - One more dirt road please....
I woke up early and walked around town. All the locals were getting ready for
another tourist day. I was looking for a cup of coffee, but nothing was open
yet. I asked a lady walking down the street where I could get one. She led me
to a house that doubled as a hostel. I think she worked there, because she went
in and made me a cup to go. 2 limperas (11 cents), I only had 5 limperas, so
she got a tip. This vacation is going to break me. I headed down to the plaza
across from the church to drink it and started a conversation with two 19 year
old kids in the military. They taught me some Spanish and I taught them a
little English. They asked all the usual questions-name ,age, what I did back
home. I liked these kids, they were polite, and had no reason to be, they were
carrying M-16's. We all shook hands and said goodbye, and they thanked me for
talking to them. I thought that was unusual. I headed towards the hotel, the
restaurant was open and their buffet was calling my name. The food was good and
it was even better knowing it was included in the room price. Curly met me
there and we had a good talk about God, I think he was trying to save me. I
might of let it slip that I didn't believe(wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what
I mean), so they would talk to me the whole trip. Moe never showed up. When we
went back to check out, he was waiting out front to go to someplace for
breakfast. Curly must not of given him the memo about free breakfast. We made
him load up and leave with an empty stomach. Our first stop was about a hour
and a half down the road in the town of Santa Rosa. I was looking for a cigar
factory that was suppose to be here, to buy some for friends back home. Not
knowing where it was, I headed for centro and ended up at the main plaza in
front of the Cathedral. I was a little late for the start of mass, but jumped
in anyway. Standing room only in this big Cathedral. They had a Spanish guitar
mass, the music was awesome. Curly was in the park satisfying his fetish for
shoe shines, I didn't have the heart to tell him we'd be on a dirt road in a
little while. With a tourists guide book of Honduras and a cartoon map, we
located the factory, but it was closed on Sunday. So we headed down the road. I
remember reading about a water park/fish farm before the next town and wanted
to stop for a fresh fish lunch. We located the road to it, where there was a
crazy looking old guy waving his arms around, with green snot halfway down his
face. I felt bad for him and wanted to see what the trouble was, but he looked
like he was carrying something I didn't want to catch, so we scooted past him.
We road back to a nice park setting packed with locals, that looked surprised
to see us. My buddies were once again surprised I found us a fresh fish
restaurant in the middle of nowhere. All the people there were real friendly,
and wanted to talk with us. We ate another great meal, said our goodbyes and
headed for the dirt road to La Esperanza. I didn't have a map for Honduras,
except for the cartoon one out of the tourist book, but it gave the towns that
had roads between them, so I knew where I wanted to go. The only Spanish you
really need to know to travel is the name of the town you want to go to and how
to point. In this case it would be La Esperanza and point straight, if they say
no, you point in a different direction. Then you drive a little farther and
point some more. I know more Spanish then that now, but I didn't when I first
started traveling. It would help to have one of those high fluent college
educations like my friend Juan, but then you might get to much info, like don't
go down that road its to dangerous.
The road wound around through the mountains. It had a lot of pot holes, g- outs
and rain ruts, but a nice 3rd and 4th gear road. It dumped us out in a town,
that I don't know the name of, because its not on my pirates treasure map,
where the road turned to pavement. Which shortly ended in another town not on
my map and turned to dirt again. Where I had to stop and play the pointing game
again. This time we got pointed down a skinny road heading into the higher
mountains I kept seeing to my left. This road was awsome and climbed up at
least 10 miles. where it started getting cold again. We crested it and went
down into La Esperansa. We stayed at Hotel Ispan Nah. A real nice place with a
restaurant they opened up for us and secure parking for the bikes for under
$20. We had a good meal in the restaurant on the roof of hotel. We chose the
inside seating. Two days ago we were in the hotest town in Guatemala, now we
were in the coldest town of Honduras. It actually dipped into the 40's that
night and the wind was howling. I used all the covers that night. Tomorrow I'd
be delivering my buddies to their mission
Day Twelve
