Tela, and Hello Friends (episode 3)
The bus ride to Tela was an adventure itself. From Cofradia to San Pedro Sula, I sat next to a young man on his way home from school. He was dressed neatly, in a clean uniform, probably belonging to some private school. My gringo travel companions and I had crammed ourselves into the back of the bus, and we were by far the loudest bunch on the bus. The boy next to me kept looking at them strangely. Finally I said
-pshhh...esas gringas locas
Which seemed to break the ice enough. He (like almost everyone I spoke to) immediately asked me where I learned to speak spanish (-Spain) and asked me what I was doing in Cofradia. I told him I was on spring break and helping out at one of the bilingual schools. He knew which one.
We were dropped of on the corner of the road in San Pedro Sula. Immediatly an old man approached us and pointed the direction to the bus station. He pulled me aside
-Don't walk there
-Why not?
-You are a large crowd, and its dangerous
So he hailed a cab for us and we all got in. We probably got ripped off, but I didnt care. We arrived at the bus station and boarded a bus to Tela. I stared out the window during the majority of the two hour ride. The mountains in Honduras seemed to pop out of nowhere- we would be driving past fields and fields of sugar cane, and all of the sudden a great monster of a mountain would emerge. Just like that- no warning, no foothills.
We arrived in Tela and went to a beautiful hotel. Although all 7 of us were crammed into a smaller room, I was quickly impressed by the quality of the room. Cable tv, running water, hot water. It was pretty great. We immediatly climbed into our swimsuits and caught the last few hours of daylight. The water was warm and the beach was almost empty. It was perfect.
My travel companions did their thing, and I after a good swim I crawled up onto the sand. Instantly, a wave of loneliness hit me. It's like that sometimes, things get so perfect and beautiful that I just wish someone else was there to appreciate it with me just the way I do. I've never been one for best friends- i've always had good acquaintences. Maybe I should've joined a sorority (then again, maybe not). Maybe I shouldn't have isolated myself so much. I thought of Jack Kerouac's comment about having his poems and novels as children. Maybe that's me too. Who knows.
There is a strip of small stores that line the beach and we decided to wander through. We passed a pair of the most beautiful hippies in the world. They looked like Granada hippies. I nearly died. They were selling turquoise jewelery. The woman with braids and dredlocks in her hair greeted us "Hello Friends". Her boyfriend stood nearby, having his hair braided by a beautiful older woman. At his feet rested a drum and bells. I instantly thought of Benjamin, the israeli boy who would walk around barefoot with bells on his ankles. From the restaurant nearby I heard them playing the drum and singing and laughing. And for a moment I was tempted to create an adventure out of it, to go over to them and sit with them and sing and ask them where they were from and learn about their past. That exact scenario has happened in my life many times, and has always ended with an interesting story. But I was too afraid to leave the group of people I had traveled with, too afraid to mix the person I was in spain with the people I know from school. It's a completely different side to me that I don't think I've ever expressed at Hamilton, so I have absolutely no idea how they would react. And with only 5 weeks left of school, I'd rather just allow people to see me the way they're comfortable seeing me. I guess what counts more is knowing that underneath all this, there is another side of me, another facade that I can pull on when things get too dull.
After three blurry days in Tela, we took a ride back to San Pedro Sula. I was sad to leave Honduras, and sad because I felt I had only a tiny glimpse of the life and the people there. It's strange how nice people are to you when they believe you're traveling alone. it's a phenomenon that I"ve only just begun to notice, being that I don't really travel completely alone very often. But when I was walking on my way to customs/immigration in the airport in texas, I was approached by a beautiful older man with a thick Honduran accent. He asked me where I was in Honduras and all about my work there. His motions were large and energetic, like a grown up child. He mentioned his home town, and said that the next time I'm in Honduras, I should go there because it's very simple and nice. We parted ways at the Customs office, when he walked of into the line labeled "Visitor" and I got in line labeled "US citizen". The officer looked at my passport and asked me how I pronounced the name of my hometown. When I told him, he replied "Its different than it looks. that's really cool." As he let me pass, I thought about the last time I had walked through customs, and how the officer didn't say anything to me except "Welcome Home" and how it gave me chills.
Welcome home.
-pshhh...esas gringas locas
Which seemed to break the ice enough. He (like almost everyone I spoke to) immediately asked me where I learned to speak spanish (-Spain) and asked me what I was doing in Cofradia. I told him I was on spring break and helping out at one of the bilingual schools. He knew which one.
We were dropped of on the corner of the road in San Pedro Sula. Immediatly an old man approached us and pointed the direction to the bus station. He pulled me aside
-Don't walk there
-Why not?
-You are a large crowd, and its dangerous
So he hailed a cab for us and we all got in. We probably got ripped off, but I didnt care. We arrived at the bus station and boarded a bus to Tela. I stared out the window during the majority of the two hour ride. The mountains in Honduras seemed to pop out of nowhere- we would be driving past fields and fields of sugar cane, and all of the sudden a great monster of a mountain would emerge. Just like that- no warning, no foothills.
We arrived in Tela and went to a beautiful hotel. Although all 7 of us were crammed into a smaller room, I was quickly impressed by the quality of the room. Cable tv, running water, hot water. It was pretty great. We immediatly climbed into our swimsuits and caught the last few hours of daylight. The water was warm and the beach was almost empty. It was perfect.
My travel companions did their thing, and I after a good swim I crawled up onto the sand. Instantly, a wave of loneliness hit me. It's like that sometimes, things get so perfect and beautiful that I just wish someone else was there to appreciate it with me just the way I do. I've never been one for best friends- i've always had good acquaintences. Maybe I should've joined a sorority (then again, maybe not). Maybe I shouldn't have isolated myself so much. I thought of Jack Kerouac's comment about having his poems and novels as children. Maybe that's me too. Who knows.
There is a strip of small stores that line the beach and we decided to wander through. We passed a pair of the most beautiful hippies in the world. They looked like Granada hippies. I nearly died. They were selling turquoise jewelery. The woman with braids and dredlocks in her hair greeted us "Hello Friends". Her boyfriend stood nearby, having his hair braided by a beautiful older woman. At his feet rested a drum and bells. I instantly thought of Benjamin, the israeli boy who would walk around barefoot with bells on his ankles. From the restaurant nearby I heard them playing the drum and singing and laughing. And for a moment I was tempted to create an adventure out of it, to go over to them and sit with them and sing and ask them where they were from and learn about their past. That exact scenario has happened in my life many times, and has always ended with an interesting story. But I was too afraid to leave the group of people I had traveled with, too afraid to mix the person I was in spain with the people I know from school. It's a completely different side to me that I don't think I've ever expressed at Hamilton, so I have absolutely no idea how they would react. And with only 5 weeks left of school, I'd rather just allow people to see me the way they're comfortable seeing me. I guess what counts more is knowing that underneath all this, there is another side of me, another facade that I can pull on when things get too dull.
After three blurry days in Tela, we took a ride back to San Pedro Sula. I was sad to leave Honduras, and sad because I felt I had only a tiny glimpse of the life and the people there. It's strange how nice people are to you when they believe you're traveling alone. it's a phenomenon that I"ve only just begun to notice, being that I don't really travel completely alone very often. But when I was walking on my way to customs/immigration in the airport in texas, I was approached by a beautiful older man with a thick Honduran accent. He asked me where I was in Honduras and all about my work there. His motions were large and energetic, like a grown up child. He mentioned his home town, and said that the next time I'm in Honduras, I should go there because it's very simple and nice. We parted ways at the Customs office, when he walked of into the line labeled "Visitor" and I got in line labeled "US citizen". The officer looked at my passport and asked me how I pronounced the name of my hometown. When I told him, he replied "Its different than it looks. that's really cool." As he let me pass, I thought about the last time I had walked through customs, and how the officer didn't say anything to me except "Welcome Home" and how it gave me chills.
Welcome home.
posted by Jessica @ 7:01 PM
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