Ok, so I guess in Star Trek this would be a Captains Log Supplemental. Its just one of those occurrences that was so typical of my stay here that it had to be recorded.
Yesterday I went down to Ceiba with Jonathan and Wendy to do a spot of shopping and then we drove back up to Wendy’s where Elly and I had planned to do some planning in Wendy’s guest house. Beautiful cottage, big sofa, Jungle Chill, brilliant.
The weather (here we go again) had been wonderful all day but started to shower lightly mid afternoon on and off. When I say shower I mean just that, lightly rain for intervals and then stop, nothing, nada. At 4.30 I heard the final bus pass by the road and realized it was probably time to make my move. Past five in the Cuenca is this unspoken ‘danger time’ for getting a ride, the last bus had gone and soon it would think about getting dark, a process which takes all of about 20 minutes before you find yourself with nothing but the light of the moon to guide you past all the snakes.
Of course, this is Honduras so the space between deciding to leave and actually leaving was about 45 minutes by which time the rain had got a little heavier. After stopping by Wendy’s to borrow an umbrella and as I walked the rain showed no signs that it was planning o leaving me in peace anytime soon. I got about 20 minutes up the valley when I realized that the umbrella had long since ceased to function as a device to stop me getting wet and become more of a fanciful decoration. Within two more minutes I have taken refuge on the porch of the tourist centre where I am stranded with the guy who works the night shift. A nice enough chap, related to one of my students but hardly the worlds greatest conversationalist. He pulls a chair into the doorway and motions for me to sit and in between the occasional utterance of “tan feo el clima” I am wondering why he hasn’t turned off the air con.
So there I am sat, dripping wet in what feels like a fridge. Every mode of transport that passes is a motorcycle with two or three people piled on it or worse, a bike with a Honduran teenage boy. After about 40 minutes the light has all but disappeared and I have adopted a pose akin to a meerkat, peering down the road for the faintest glimmer of a headlight. To top it all off I have food shopping which I decide not to peek at it for fear of what the soggy mess in the bottom of the drenched cotton bag might imply for my finances next week. Finally a few trucks pass and I dive out into the road, which is fast resembling a river only for them to pass me by, one stopped packed full of young men only to break it to me that they were only going about 7 more meters to Omega Tours Bar, as if I’d realistically be waiting for a jalón to go 7 meters.
SO, there I was, hanging out on the porch, frozen counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to see if it was moving away or getting closer….like you do at school. It was miserable. As if to tease me it felt like about 50 trucks went in the opposite direction back towards La Ceiba. I would later find out that one was in fact Jonathan coming to see if I needed rescuing, but of course he didn’t see me as I was only running out to the road for the trucks going the other way. I believe that is what they calls sod’s law, although that doesn’t really translate to Spanish out here.
Eventually, I see a truck, its Earl from the School in Rio Viejo and they say I can ride with them, however they’re pretty full so I have to get in the back. It seemed my efforts to keep dry had been for nothing as I climbed into the back with some large box covered with a tarp. When you’ve been riding around in the back of peoples pickups for a few months you kind of get used to being squished in with things, but the big heavy tarp covered objects never cease to worry me. I had got a ride to Pital with a Coca Cola fridge a few months back and the whole time I kept my eyes glued to the ropes wondering how terrible yet at the same time ridiculously ironic it would be if I were to be killed by a Coca Cola fridge. All that student campaigning coming back to bite me huh? Well I don’t know what was under this tarp I hid what was left of my shopping under the skirt of it and laid down at the side of it, hopelessly clutching my borrowed umbrella over my face. It was a futile effort at best (indeed, resistance is futile right?) but I think it worked a bit, well, my face wasn’t as wet and oil covered as my clothes when I finally slid out the back at Las Mangas. I don’t know how Victor managed to hold back the laughs when he answered the door to me, I must have looked like a drowned rat.