Going to the Islands
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2005
1
21
25
Trip End
Jun 05, 2006
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Roatan, Bay Islands,
Honduras
Sunday, October 2, 2005
Our first taste of Honduras was not an overwhelmingly pleasant one. The countryside was beautiful, as with everywhere in this corner of the world - roads cut through lush rainforest, which periodically opens up to give tantalising glimpses of golden beaches, but the people were less welcoming. In Venezuela, off the gringo tourist trail, we had been an amusing curiosity to many, and people were keen to chat. As we travelled up through Central America, people were more used to seeing tourists, but were still friendly, even if a little overbearing at times with offers of taxis, hotels, tours etc.
Here, the reception was noticeably different, what I would describe as a hostile indifference. Also people spoke very quickly, and/or with a very different accent, and we really struggled to understand even the simplest conversations. This was a bit of a blow as in Guatemala we'd begun to feel comfortable speaking in Spanish, and perhaps had been deluding ourselves as to our level of fluency. As a result people lost patience quite quickly, and in restaurants, for example, random plates of food were slapped on our table with minimal ceremony.
Despite having seen many around by this stage, I still didn't feel comfortable with the prevalence of guns on display.
Angels Trailer
Like Guatemala, every other shop had an armed security guard on the door, most with discretely holstered pistols, but a sizeable majority brazenly caressing pump action shotguns, with the odd Uzi to be seen. On one of our buses to La Ceiba, I looked up from the book I was reading to see a pickup truck overtake us, and a man sat in the back wearing an IRA-style balaclava, holding what appeared to be an AK-47. The colour drained from my face, and I imagined that we were about to be pulled over and robbed. But no, just a couple of everyday joes on their way to who knows where. I decided not to mention this to Andrea, and went back to my book. One thing I loved about travelling on the buses, was the wave of vendors that washed around us at every stop, selling water, cold drinks, fruit, sandwiches and anything else you could think of. They would tout their wares with tuneful chants, delivered so quickly that it took us a few goes to work out what they were actually saying. Soft drinks are called "refrescos", or "freco" for short, and water is, of course agua, thus the commonest chant was: "freco-freco-freco-freco-freco-freco-freco-agua-agua-agua-freco-freco-freco-agua-agua-agua" whilst holding a basket aloft, sometimes coming on to the bus and going up and down the aisles a couple of times, seemingly without drawing breath. There were various others, but I think my favourite was by the ladies selling fresh prickly lychees who would wail "leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee-leechee".
Every Side Mirror Photo Tells a Story
Haunting. I can hear it in my mind to this day.We sensed something slightly menacing in the evening atmosphere of La Ceiba's streets after dark, so after a quick dinner, we retreated to our hotel room, and treated ourselves to a 3 hour Friends marathon on satellite TV. Wonderful!
The next morning, after a fairly bumpy 3 hour ferry crossing (you wouldn't believe me if I told you the name of the film they were showing, but it had a nautical theme and starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio) we arrived in Roatan, the larger of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras.
We caught a taxi to our lodging, a wooden cabin a full 20m from the beach in little village region called the West End. We had realised that after this trip, we might not get the chance to laze on a Caribbean beach very often, so had decided to make the most of it, and thus had allowed ourselves a week of chilling out here, and that after noon, the chilling commenced.
Over the next few days, we got up early to ensure maximum lounging around on the beach time, and strived to prioritise our time to allow for afternoon snoozes. The rest of the time, we just relaxed.
The weather was lovely, not too hot, and we spent many an evening at a beach bar called Sundowners, an ideal place, as the name suggests, for watching the sun set. We even came 3rd in a quiz night, which we were quite proud of, as most of the other teams featured 5 or 6 regulars. We were just 3: the TeamRees Two aided by an American woman who owned a bar in Belize, but had come here for a few days holiday.
Fishermen at Rest
I use the word 'aided' generously, as at best she didn't know any answers, and at worst was a bit of a nuisance, eg. for one of the 'arithmetic' questions, (number of players in a netball team plus etc.etc. ...)(insistantly) "there are 52 states in the USA not 50, don't forget Alaska and Hawaii! I should know, I'm from the US..."I managed to do a few scuba dives. The reefs around the Bay Islands are great, the visibility was really good, and it's one of the cheapest places in the world for diving (about $20 US per dive). Banzai! Andrea tried diving but didn't like it much, so instead we did quite a lot of snorkelling together.
The island wasn't big, long and thin, about 30km x 5km, and one of our best days was hiring a scooter and exploring, which was really great fun. We both vowed to buy a scooter for commuting purposes when we got home.
Then, one evening, something very strange happened.
We were walking through the village on our way out to dinner. The evening was mild, and quiet, with only a few people out strolling along the sandy beach road. As we were about 100m from the restaurant, Andrea stopped walking, and was pinching her trouser leg, about half way up the thigh.
"Hmm... I think I've got something in my trousers" she said, slightly puzzled, and tried to work it up her leg, thinking it was a piece of tissue. After a couple of seconds, her expression changed from puzzled to concerned to mildly traumatized, and she said "It's moving!" as she stamped up and down to try to shake out whatever it was.
"WHAT IS IT?!?" she kept saying, now jumping up and down. Out of her trouser leg dropped what looked like a baby sweetcorn, about 4cm long, yellow, tapered at one end. But this was no sweetcorn, it was WRIGGLING!
We both stared at it with equal portions of shock and disgust.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" said Andrea, looking like she was about to be sick. It looked just like a huge worm or severed tentacle, and then, much to the amusement of two passers by, Andrea took her trousers off, to check for any companion Alien invaders.
Eventually, after we'd calmed down a little bit, we investigated a little further, and found that it was most likely a tail of something, probably a lizard.
We ran through a few scenarios of what could possibly have happened, and the only plausible (if unlikely) explanation we've been able to come up with is that a lizard ran up Andrea's trouser leg as we were walking. When Andrea felt something, she grabbed it by the tail, thinking it was a tissue, at which point the lizard, feeling threatened, detached the tail, and made good it's escape, down the same trouser leg. The tail, due to electrical nerve impulses, continued wriggling for about 30 seconds after detachement.
Implausible? Got a better explanation? We're waiting for suggestions...
