Live from Honduras

Hey, this is crazy. I'm in Honduras, and that often means that things don't go as planned. I know that's true of life in Costa Rica, and life in general, but when we lived here, we learned to expect (or at least be open to and not quite as disappointed by) the unexpected. Shall I begin with my bus trip?

I left San Jose at 3:00 am, on a bus line called King Quality. And it's pretty much that, with a few small exceptions. This was a pretty good trip, I was able to sleep a lot, and I probably needed that. Another highlight was that the movies they showed weren't quite as raunchy as the last time. They showed one called "She's The Man," another called "Second In Command" with Jean Claude Van Damme. By the grace of God, the DVD player was very sorry, and so they skipped a lot, and I'm not sure either of them finished. The sound is kind of bad, and if they put on the spanish track, it's a lot easier to ignore. And the spanish subtitles will nearly always translate the dirty words in a much softer presentation. With those advantages, I just about finished two books in between my naps.

The bus wasn't full at all, so I was able to stretch out my legs. An elderly woman and her grown daughter were traveling in front of me, though, and the elder's violent motion sickness was a distraction every so often, poor thing. Later in the journey, the daughter started praying over her, in a similarly violent manner (which isn't funny, rather it represents conviction), and I prayed along silently for her health. There was also a man with a US passport traveling with his wife and another lady, and he had to have the biggest lungs ever known in a human. I didn't see them myself, but I did hear him coughing up various parts of them every so often, poor smoking sufferer. They kept the bus air conditioning at about 55 degrees, so it was a frigid ride, but that is one of the attractions I suppose of traveling in the "Avion Terreste", the "earthbound airplane", as they promote it. A bathroom on wheels, meals and a couple of drinks, and of course the B-movies are all included in the round-trip ticket, total cost about $74.00, taxes and fees at the Nicaraguan and Honduran borders not included.

The direct bus to Tegucigalpa from San Jose is actually the direct to San Salvador, El Salvador. That means you have to change busses in a place called Jícaro Galán about an hour into Honduras. That's no big deal if you know what's going on, as you simply wait at a hotel called El Oasis until the San Salvador-Tegucigalpa shows up. It's a double decker, all the fun thrown in at no extra charge. I waited more than an hour for the second bus, and I was the only passenger to make the switch. As I waited, I watched other busses pass on the highway in the dark (it's about 7:oo pm by now), and I believed I saw the King Quality bus go by without even slowing down. That didn't bother me, I'm expecting the unexpected. I started to make my plans to stay the night at the hotel and find a bus to Tegus the next morning. We had been at this hotel a couple of times when we lived here, and it's got a great pool, and AC! But my new plan was dashed as the real King Quality did in fact pull in, and accepted my ticket even without the correct boarding pass, which they failed to issue in San Jose. What are details like that compared with the overall adventure that life is?

I arrived in Tegus at around 9:00 pm, not bad. But no one was there to pick me up, and so after waiting a spell and arguing with the taxi drivers that wanted to help me (I didn't know where I was supposed to stay, or that might have been a good idea), I hatched a new plan. First, I asked the guard there if they sold phone cards at the terminal (don't read too much into the word "terminal", it's not what you picture) and they did. Right on. Now, to make a couple of calls, which wouldn't be a problem with the list of numbers that Edwin just gave me before I left. But my agenda wasn't in my back pack, I thought I put it there, where is it?!! Okay MacGyver, think, what to do now? My memory doesn't serve, but I remember that I do have my PDA, into which I haven't yet put the new numbers, but which may contain some old ones from the year 2000. I tried a couple of wrong numbers, but they were wrong numbers. I finally got a hold of my friend Darwin Pineda, who grew up in the church at Tegus and has served as the youth minister there. He is studying medicine and works at the morgue right now. Fortunately he wasn't on a call. He said he would make some calls for me, and eventually showed up in a taxi with a friend who drives it. Saved at last, we started to leave the terminal, and went past the police station a half block away. They pulled us over, the driver forgot to put on his lights. And when they asked for license and papers, he realized that he left his license at home, in the rush to get out with Darwin to pick me up, pobrecito waiting alone at night at the terminal. Diay. We were parked there for about 30 minutes while they argued and cajoled to avoid both a fine and a bribe. But we left, we arrived up at the church, and I don't know what time it was when I went to bed.

Turns out that the Pastors, Jorge and Manuel, had indeed gone to pick me up, but at 6:00 pm thinking that's when the bus arrived. Not finding me, they returned and assumed that I would be coming the next day. (Yes, we had discussed all this, but the internet phone connection was pretty sorry, that's the way it goes.) But all's well that ends well, if you don't get your panties in a wad on the way. 18 hours on the bus had left me hungry (no evening meal from Jícaro Galán apparently, just a boxed apple nectar) and I was embarrassed to tell Manuel that I hadn't eaten by that late hour, especially since he was half in his jammies. He left me to rest at the clinic apartment, and I gave thanks to God for a good trip, and for the two bowls of raisin bran and milk that had been left by the last group that visited Tegus. I found the list of phone numbers later, by the way, I had put my agenda in my suitcase so as to make my backpack lighter on the bus. Still live from Honduras.....