Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Ants in the bed, cold showers and non-stop staring. Also I threw up last night, for no earthly reason. And I didn’t find the town to be nearly as beautiful as the LP writer did. So we decided to move on, destination La Palma, El Salvador, breaking up the trip in a place called Nueva Ocotepeque. But first we went back to Pupuseria Paty’s for a quick lunch. Not realizing the only type of pupusas ever on offer were the chicharron and queso mix, we asked what type of pupusas they had. Our waitress, who remembered us from yesterday, seemed irritated that we asked. “Lo mismo,” she said, with slightly narrowed eyes. (“The same.”)

A family’s little boy came to lean on the wall near us and watch us eat. Michael asked him his name and then introduced himself as Miguel and held out his hand to shake. The little boy looked delighted though he tried hard to supress his smile and shake like a grownup. Afterwards he ducked his head and squirmed. It was really cute. I let Michael finish my chicharron pupusa.

We got another taxi down to the bus station. Remembering that it had cost thirty lempiras to come up, we resolved not to pay more than that to go back down. So when the cab driver quoted us “catorce” each, Michael said, “No, no, caro… treinta.” (“No, no, expensive… thirty.”) Halfway down the hill, he turned to me and said, “Catorce… that’s fourteen, isn’t it?”

Crap. We had both heard catorce and thought we’d heard cuarenta, forty, even though the two sound nothing alike. Well, a lucky day for the taxi driver then, a couple extra lempiras and a good “dumb gringo” story to tell his buddies. (So then the big one says, “no, twenty-eight is too expensive, make it thirty!”)

I spent the rest of the ride pulling together my Spanish to joke with the driver about it and let him know we’d realized our mistake – not to ask for the lower price of course, but to just have a nice little moment. But as soon as we pulled up to where the busses stop and were retrieving our backpacks from the trunk, the bus boys were all over us. “Copan? Gracias? La Entrada?” When we said we were going to Nueva Ocotepeque, they shoved us at a bus that was leaving right that second and we piled on.

The bus was not great, but it was quite decent, and the ride involved some nice green scenery. Pulling into the side street that served as the bus station in Nueva Ocotepeque, our bus clipped some guy’s brand new car, and then I lost my balance when climbing off the bus, tried to brace myself on something and ended up with my hand wrist-deep in a pile of sand and gravel. Gross.

We got a super-nice room in town, tiny, but antless and with a TV and a beautiful bathroom. They promised hot water, and after we were well checked in, it turned out that right now the water is “tibia,” which I had always thought meant “warm,” but apparently in Honduras means “hypothermically cold.” Apparently the hot water starts at 6:00 am and runs out when it runs out. But there is cable and we are watching the heck out of it.
We took a short dinner break (fried chicken, yum) and then came right back to the room. There’s nothing really of interest in this little way-station town, especially not when you can be watching Pulp Fiction dubbed in Spanish, with English closed captioning for the hearing impaired. In the morning we’re heading for La Palma. I can’t believe we’re leaving Honduras so soon, but we are really beginning to feel the time crunch and anyway, we expect to dip back in on the way to Nicaragua.

TIMES VOMITED (Megan): 7

HOURS ON THE BUS: 129.5

 

Post a comment:

Name:
Email:
URL:
A pig says:
Comment: (HTML is allowed)

International Hotel, Nueva Ocotepeque.

Cable TV.