Sunday and Monday, April 18 & 19

After our cliff diving adventure we thanked our guide for the amazing adventure and relaxed at the restaurant. Just as we were about to leave, we saw this couple we had met at the brewery the night before, Stacy and Harrison. They had been at the park as well and we all needed to get back to Pena Blanca. They spoke better Spanish than we did, so they helped us figure out we couldn’t get a taxi as cheap as we wanted to, so we’d have to wait for a bus. We walked to the edge of town and were told the bus might be awhile. Stacy thankfully hailed a truck for us on her third try, so we rode in the bed of a truck to the town and walked to the brewery from there. When we arrived there was some confusion about our lodging for that night since we were switching rooms; I wasn’t even sure we’d have a room the way it was sounding. Bob, the owner, took care of it though and things were all squared away. I was frustrated at my lack of understanding of Spanish again, tired from the long day, and then the confusion about our lodging for the night as well put me in a bad mood, but I rested a while and then had some dinner and felt better. We talked to Stacy and Harrison over dinner about a ton of things; Harrison was a Peace Corp worker and Stacy had taught English in Ecuador for a year. We met a variety of people at the brewery, which is always cool to hear everyone’s stories of why they’re in Honduras and where they’re from and where they’re going. I love it. It had been cloudy and thundering all day and it finally rained that night, which was so calming to listen to as I was falling asleep.

Monday we got up a decent hour, had breakfast, and called a mototaxi, who arrived later than we hoped. We got a bus to SPS from Pena Blanca and when we arrived arranged our transporation to Santa Rosa with a nicer bus line. We left around 2 pm, but then around 15 minutes outside of SPS, the bus breaks down. We are sitting in this hot bus, while the driver and ticket guy are trying to fix it. Eventually I got off the bus; I couldn’t handle sitting in the heat just sweating anymore. We waited for an hour for another bus from this line to get there, but when another bus towards Santa Rosa came, we jumped on it and lost the money we paid for on the broken bus. New tickets bought, we headed towards Santa Rosa at like 3:30ish and arrived around 6:30ish. I saw no buses in the terminal, only taxis. I ran across the street to get money from the ATM because I had none, and the ATM WAS OUT OF MONEY. It would happen.

At this point I was extremely frustrated because there were no more buses to Gracias so we’d either have to pay a taxi $30 to take us there or stay the night. Thankfully another guy needed to go to Gracias and we split the cab ride with him, with just enough money to pay the $10 each. The cab ride was a thrill ride: in the fog, at night with twisty roads and the cab driver’s car was not top notch, either. In Gracias, we called a mototaxi to bring us up the mountain and we didn’t even have money to pay for it! Thankfully our moto-driver was our neighbor and let us pay him back later. All I wanted at the end of this crazy long day was to take a shower to wash away the sweat, dirt and frustration. I got home and…we had NO running water. It had off all day so all our dishes were dirty, no one had taken showers since yesterday. That was the last straw for me. I did NOT want to be in Honduras that night. I wanted to go home to the United States where everything was clean, efficient, doesn’t break down and if it does, it’s fixed ASAP or get great customer service. Needless to say that was one my least favorite days in Honduras and unfortunately put a gray cloud over an otherwise awesome weekend.