Honduras Day 1
I still have a number of secondaries to complete, but I wanted to start blogging about Honduras before I forget the details of the craziness. So I'm going to post here from day-to-day a day-by-day run down of the trip.
Day 1 (August 21)
After a 4 hour flight delay from LaGuardia in Queens, we arrive in San Pedro Sula, Honduras at 11PM. With no hotel reservations and barely $50 worth of Honduran currency (the lempira), we attempt to hide in the airport and sleep there since we are planning to catch a bus out of town at 8:30 AM. We aren't in the mood to spend money on a room we'd barely sleep in, but the Honduran customs guards quickly convince us otherwise.
Forced to leave the airport, we tell a taxi driver to take us to the first hostel that was listed in our guidebook. During the 10km ride to the hostel, we learn that San Pedro Sula "es muy peligroso" and that people get killed wandering around at night over small things like money or jewelry. We arrive at the hostel essentially praying for a room, and the old woman who unlocks the heavily locked gate to the hostel assures us she has room for us.
She leads us up the stairs of this bohemian hostel that is falling over itself in original paintings. She loudly knocks on the door of a dorm, to which a half naked and infuriated British woman angrily responds. There is a miscommunication between the two, mostly because the hostess speaks only Spanish while the British woman speaks only English. Apparently, the bed the hostess thought was available for Lawrence and me was actually occupied by the Brit's friend who was still out partying. The hostess was not made aware of the Brit's friend staying in the room when she started her shift a couple of hours earlier. After 45 minutes of back and forth and dragging a bilingual hostel guest into the mix to try to straighten things out, the hostess finally understands the situation and proceeds to tell us there was no room at the inn.
With the dangerous streets of San Pedro Sula at 1:00AM and not another hostel in sight, Lawrence and I have no plan B. Luckily, the hostess understands our situation and allows us to sleep on the floor of the dining room/reception area for $5 each. Thankful, we set up our Thermarests under the dining room table and try to go to sleep. But it's tough to do in 90 degree weather and 90% humidity with the creepy paintings on the wall and the cockroaches crawling on the floor and the drunken twenty-somethings traipsing back from a wild night out every fifteen minutes. Exhausted, I finally manage to fall asleep, but poor Lawrence stays up. He hates cockroaches and is afraid we'll be taken advantage of with our passports/gear out in the open as we helplessly sleep under a dining room table. He drifts in and out of sleep until daylight with his knife in hand, ready to attack.
Day 1 (August 21)
After a 4 hour flight delay from LaGuardia in Queens, we arrive in San Pedro Sula, Honduras at 11PM. With no hotel reservations and barely $50 worth of Honduran currency (the lempira), we attempt to hide in the airport and sleep there since we are planning to catch a bus out of town at 8:30 AM. We aren't in the mood to spend money on a room we'd barely sleep in, but the Honduran customs guards quickly convince us otherwise.
Forced to leave the airport, we tell a taxi driver to take us to the first hostel that was listed in our guidebook. During the 10km ride to the hostel, we learn that San Pedro Sula "es muy peligroso" and that people get killed wandering around at night over small things like money or jewelry. We arrive at the hostel essentially praying for a room, and the old woman who unlocks the heavily locked gate to the hostel assures us she has room for us.
She leads us up the stairs of this bohemian hostel that is falling over itself in original paintings. She loudly knocks on the door of a dorm, to which a half naked and infuriated British woman angrily responds. There is a miscommunication between the two, mostly because the hostess speaks only Spanish while the British woman speaks only English. Apparently, the bed the hostess thought was available for Lawrence and me was actually occupied by the Brit's friend who was still out partying. The hostess was not made aware of the Brit's friend staying in the room when she started her shift a couple of hours earlier. After 45 minutes of back and forth and dragging a bilingual hostel guest into the mix to try to straighten things out, the hostess finally understands the situation and proceeds to tell us there was no room at the inn.
With the dangerous streets of San Pedro Sula at 1:00AM and not another hostel in sight, Lawrence and I have no plan B. Luckily, the hostess understands our situation and allows us to sleep on the floor of the dining room/reception area for $5 each. Thankful, we set up our Thermarests under the dining room table and try to go to sleep. But it's tough to do in 90 degree weather and 90% humidity with the creepy paintings on the wall and the cockroaches crawling on the floor and the drunken twenty-somethings traipsing back from a wild night out every fifteen minutes. Exhausted, I finally manage to fall asleep, but poor Lawrence stays up. He hates cockroaches and is afraid we'll be taken advantage of with our passports/gear out in the open as we helplessly sleep under a dining room table. He drifts in and out of sleep until daylight with his knife in hand, ready to attack.
posted by Christina at 12:14 AM
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