Recipe for a rainy day

Hello Honduras. I like you, I feel you should know that. I like that your people are friendlier than Guatemala and that the visa officials seemed to like my name a lot. I like that you are slightly cheaper than Guatemala. I really really love how the buses are not those crowded minivans but the old yellow school ones, and that I don't have to argue to get a better price. I pay the same as everyone else, and don't have to worry. But oh, Honduras, you could be treating me a bit better.

It's nothing big, as traveling affairs go, and I won't bore you with the details, although complaining about bad journeys could be raised to the level of a sport among backpackers. Just a few wrong buses one day after a early early start; the next, the one hotel in town that might have fitted my budget looking extremely condemned; a lot, a lot of walking with a backpack that I know has got heavier since Texas; and today, it is raining. And my hostel moved. I think that there should be a rule that when a hostel moves, it notifies Lonely Planet, who use their extreme superpowers to magically change the map in every one of their guidebooks. So this particular set of circumstances has meant that most of my time in Honduras so far has been spent inside a bus. Not lounging on the beach as I would like to, although hopefully that will come soon. Not in this weather though.

In a further note, I think my Spanish is actually getting worse. I wonder how this is possible. Maybe my brain has turned to mush.

Honduras has been particularly beautiful though, from the bus windows. Lots of pointy blue hills with trees on them, the tops obscured by clouds. In Omoa, a beautiful bay with a calm dark sea. Today, gashs of red earth between the hills. And a church with a basketball court. Odd. This is old pirate country, exciting times. Back then, this area of the world was bursting with riches and ripe for the picking, overrun with outlaws and slightly-more-legal outlaws called privateers. All the Europeans seemed to be at it; Spain in the lead, but competing with England, France and Holland, all who wanted a slice of the rich fruit pie called America.

Tomorrow, if it hopefully stops raining, I will take trip to a Garifuna village. Hopefully there I will be able to track down some of the culture that I've read about but seems hidden, below the surface. All I've seen of the Garifuna so far are people on the buses that have darker skin than the rest and a few sellers of coconut bread. It's been hard to pin down any sort of culture, even in Livingston, although there I saw some of the older people dressed in gingham and hats. It was very cool in a Doctor Dolittle sort of way. If it is still raining, maybe I could continue the policy of comforting myself with chocolate, crochet and the internet.