It's really hard to say goodbye--to Honduras, to each other, to this amazing experience we've had.
We spent our last evening having a BBQ dinner in a thatch-roofed restaurant on stilts over the water.
But what stands out most for me is what we've learned. Yes, we learned about writing stories and we learned about Honduras. But we also learned about ourselves. A quick trip through any of our blogs reveals personal growth and discovery. And if that's not what education is supposed to achieve, I don't know why I teach.
It's raining again, which isn't terribly surprising in January, but the weather won't keep us from snorkeling or from visiting Oak Ridge, where we will have an opportunity to meet and interview several life-long Roatan residents and get to know more about the issues that affect this island and the people who live here.
Darkness hasn't stopped us much, either. Last night, Meghan, Katie and I went on a night hike down to the dock. We tried not to step on an army of leaf-cutter ants carrying enormous (compared to them) pieces of foliage and flowers down the path. The tide was out. We shined our flashlights into the depths and found a baby baracuda, two kinds of crab, some sea anemones and corals, and a lot of tiny fish. When we turned our lights off, we saw flashes from bioluminescent creatures below us. We figured out how to light the surface of the water with a flashlight to offset the camera flash and reveal what was below. These creatures and photos are exciting right now, but we're pretty sure they'll look pathetic after we go snorkeling this afternoon.
Sometimes when I read a “36 Hours”
piece in the New York Times (or any so-many-hours piece in any
publication), I think, “No way would I want to do all that – and
eat all that – in such a short amount of time." Those pieces
typically race from breakfast, through a museum, past a park, to
lunch, for a stroll, past a sculpture garden, for a swim, out for
drinks, to dinner, to a show, out for dessert and to bed, when any
one or two of those things would have made for a lovely day.
I think that's how my students were feeling when they awoke this morning. They were nice enough about it, but they made it clear that they needed a hang-out day. And that's what we're having.
We cooked pancakes for breakfast – comfort food! -- and spent the morning working on stories together. Then we fixed a simple lunch of leftover vegetables, cheese and bread. Elbia taught us to make tortillas, which is more difficult than it looks, and laughed as we attempted to form anything resembling circles. Afterwards, we sampled the jams and salsas Elbia makes from produce grown here at Marble Hill Farms, and Meghan washed and sorted the beans that we'll cook and mash to eat with our deformed-looking tortillas tonight. Then we put on our swim suits and headed down to the water for a salty swim. Soon Jorey and Amanda will be on shrimp-deveining duty.
Shopping, cooking and eating together has been a delightful way to get to know local markets, local foods and the local people who've joined us for various parts of this process.
It's not easy for me to slow down like this. At heart, I think I tend to be a 36 Hours-type traveler, trying to make use of every last minute. But sometimes, slowing down lets you absorb something else and something more about a place and recharge your batteries in the process.
The blizzard that buried Chicago is down here now, and the term “raining buckets” doesn't begin to describe what's falling from th sky. This is the kind of rain that strips exposed soil from hillsides, swells rivers beyond their banks, and makes traveling on the road a terrifying prospect. Fortunately, we had planned to make this our first morning for sleeping in, and everyone seems to be taking advantage of that.
Last night we had our first access to a full kitchen, so several of us went shopping and we all pitched in to create, eat and clean up after a huge feast. We've been a bit deprived of raw vegetables for the past week because it's safest to eat cooked food in a country where the water isn't potable, so we enthusiastically devoured carrots, cucumbers and bell peppers. Today we'll get a tortilla-making lesson from Elbia, who makes the jams and hot sauces sold here at Marble Hill.
Internet access is now good enough (I hope) that I should be able to post some photos, so I'll let those tell part of the tale of our visit to the Cooperativa Juan Pablo Segundo, where for nearly 30 years an enterprising woman named Rosario Lobo has been teaching young mothers to sew brightly colored baby blankets, cloth bags, throw pillows, wall hangings, potholders and other household items so they can support themselves and their children. Like those women, we had to come and go via canasta.
Getting there is exciting (or worse, if you have acrophobia), but the reward is meeting Rosario and her daughter, Leslie, and learning about how they transformed the lives of so many local women.
They work in a large room filled with second-hand sewing machines and bolts of fabric. The images in their work come from this environment: sea turtles, dragon flies, birds, landscapes. Much of their work has been picked up by sustainability-oriented businesses elsewhere in Honduras, including two we've visited: Omega Lodge and the bird park outside Copan Ruinas. Some is sold in gift shops. But they certainly need more means of distribution, which is something Michael Gray plans to help them achieve.
It's so easy to take access for granted: internet access, marketing access, physical access. This trip has been full of reminders that you don't have to travel very far to feel a lack of easy access, which makes everything harder. For the people who live and work here, that's an ongoing challenge.
I haven't been able to get online with my computer for days. At first I chalked this up to the quality of our internet access, but when everyone else was able to connect and I wasn't, I realized that this computer was partly to blame.
After much experimentation, I made a startling discovery: This poor little computer has a lot of baggage. Over its short time on this trip, it has tried – sometimes sucessfully, sometimes not – to connect with a wide array of networks. At a certain point, it just couldn't handle it any more. Like someone who has been jilted by too many flames, it decided to stop reaching out to new ones.
So I went in and deleted the names of all those formerly local networks. And voila, the little Asus is willing to connect again. I should be able to post more often now.
Today we will begin working together on the stories we're writing for specific target publications. The blogging has been (and will continue to be) a great way to process where we've been, what we've seen and done, and how we feel about it all. But ultimately, this class is about more than journal writing. It's about travel writing, a large and varied form of journalism that is meant to share observations, insights, helpful information and great stories with specific audiences that are larger than any of our sets of family and friends. Travel writing has to adhere to the standards of all reputable journalism: acccuracy, honesty, utility (if it's a service piece) and compelling writing. And it must have something new to offer. We aren't, after all, going to discover any new places. We aren't explorers. And we aren't going to write the be-all-an-end-all guide to Honduras. We aren't here long enough or traveling widely enough. That's the domain of guidebooks, not the kind of travel writing we're attempting to do.
Rather, we nibble off small pieces of the larger pie. We notice something or meet someone who seems to represent a larger aspect of the place we're visiting, and then we share those stories with our readers along with an explanation of their significance.
For example, we noticed that the people of Copan Ruinas dote on their children but leave dogs to fend for themselves in the streets, where they don't always fare very well. What does that tell us about Honduran culture and the priorities here? We noticed that in Copan and here near the Parque Nacional Pico Bonito, there are multinational gypsy communities of young foreigners (jewelry makers there, river guides here) who use their skills to enable them to live a life on the road, with all the financial insecurity and instability that entails. Again, what is significant about that? And who would be interested? If we were to tell that story, what other information would we need to include and who would we talk to in order to get it?
This kind of thinking and questioning will be the main focus of today's workshop. We'll brainstorm story hooks and angles and explore how to structure and tell stories for specific publications. As we work on these stories, our future workshops will be less about content and more about style. We'll help one another make each story as effective and enticing as possible by examining all that nitty-gritty stuff that makes writing great: strong ledes, clear purpose (sometimes expressed in a nut graf, sometimes not), active verbs, varied sentence length, avoidance of cliches, lively descriptions, economy of language and so on.
I think everybody is worried about their ability to do all this.
They're still a little overwhelmed by all the new experiences, the beauty and unfamiliarity of the environment and the pinch-me thrill of being here. I know they can do it, though, and I'm confident they'll help coach each other through it.
(photo coming soon when faster access allows me to upload it!)
Every time you change locations in Central America, it seems to take a whole day. The key to phrasing it that way, instead of “you seem to lose a whole day,” is finding value in transit.
Today's ride from Copan Ruinas to the Omega Lodge in the Pico Bonito buffer zone took nearly eight hours. Along the way, we revisited images we had seen from the day's drive to Copan Ruinas—images that convey a lot about Honduras.
We passed a Chinese electronics factory. Imagine: A Chinese company finds it financially advantageous to build a factory here. No doubt ease of North and South American distribution is one factor, but certainly cheap labor and lax environmental regulations are, too.
We passed all sort of people—men, women and children, old and young—scavenging wood for their outdoor kitchens. Cooking indoors in this climate would be oppressive. They carry these loads on their heads, shoulders and backs as they walk, or strapped on the backs of their one-speed bikes. Young boys driving donkey carts clip-clop by; whole families zoom past in the backs of pick-up trucks.
Any time we stop at an intersection or one-way bridge, people descend on us with armloads of fruit, baggies of juice and packets of snacks. Between stops, we see women holding parasols to protect themselves from the sun, dogs that look abandoned and neglected, and children who are clearly well cared for, despite their parents' poverty.
The road is a mess in places. There are landslides, potholes and patches. Often the lanes lack clear markings. Cars tailgate, honk and pass regardless of the twists and turns.
Sadly, there is often garbage dumped on the sides of the roads. Much of it consists of plastic bottles, a result of the need to drink only purified water here and the lack of recycling or bottle deposits. Sometimes the piles of garbage are on fire, spewing smoke. But beyond them are verdant rolling hills—the natural beauty of the Honduran countryside.
Hondurans aren't particularly bad drivers—I've seen worse—but they do drive too fast for nearly all existing conditions and don't adhere to most of what I know as the rules of the road. Still, they're more or less careful and courteous. They toot their horns to greet, alert or thank each other, not out of anger. None of the drivers I've asked recognized my crude translation of the term “road rage” or the concept.
The most disturbing event during today's cross-country drive occurred at one of the traffic checkpoints. Until then, I wasn't bothered by the clean-cut, uniformed guards who ensure that drivers have proper identification. But today, several of them stopped Michael Gray and demanded a bribe. He handled this with his customary calmness and caution, but the incident reinforced what we had read about corruption in the police force. Different from Chicago? Perhaps not. But for a country that depends on tourism, it's not a good thing. And after that, I held my breath through all subsequent traffic checkpoints.
So, is a day on the road wasted time? Is it an interruption of the travel experience? Or is it an integral part of it, offering views of a country you'd otherwise miss?
I've always regarded travelers' checks as the equivalent of cash. From Italy to Costa Rica, I've been able to spend them or exchange them for cash with little or no trouble. Not in Honduras.
Yesterday, I visited two of Copan Ruinas' three banks, seeking to cash in my American Express travelers' checks. Here, banks aren't the imposing stone edifices we construct in the United States (though in recent years, even those have lost much of their architectural dignity, with mergers and acquisitions leading to ever-more-temporary-looking plastic signage and drive-through branches that seem about as secure as fast-food joints). In this town, banks are tidy storefronts with wand-wielding guards outside and long lines of patrons inside waiting to pay bills or cash paychecks.
I greeted the guards and walked into the first bank, where I was politely informed that I couldn't cash any travelers' checks. Try Banco Occidente, the teller suggested. So I walked down the street to that bank, where I learned I could cash only $400 in checks per day.
It turns out that travelers' checks aren't welcome here. Apparently, most businesses are unwilling to accept travelers' checks because there's a 30-day delay between the time they cash them and the time they see the money. Banks don't welcome them either.
Fortunately, I am able to speak enough Spanish to explain my situation. Look, I told the teller, I'm traveling with 10 students and we need to pay for food, lodgings and everything else with dollars or Lempiras. She considered my predicament, then came up with a solution: Write a letter explaining this and providing your contact information. Come back tomorrow, and you'll be able to cash these checks.
So I did—on a yellow legal pad with a gel pen. Then I brought it to Cid, the nephew of the owners of the Iguana Azul (where we're staying), who traslated it into perfect Spanish, again on a sheet torn from a legal pad. Today I returned to the bank, travelers' checks and letters in hand, and presented them to the teller. Two phone calls, several dot-matrix print-outs and numerous hand stamps later, I was standing before a teller who was counting out my cash in 500-Lempira notes (about $25 apiece), all by hand. I stuffed this considerable wad into a money belt, tucked it into my shirt, and tried to look nonchalant as I left the bank.
So the next time you see one of those ads suggesting that American Express (or anything else, for that matter) is welcome everywhere, don't take it seriously. Everywhere is a very large place.
Our day began in the dark at Midway Airport in Chicago, where we groggily caught our 6 a.m. flight. The first inauspicious sign was use of the modifier "intended" in the boarding call 's reference to an on-time departure. We did manage to get out before the snow began falling in Chicago, but we got caught in morning rush hour on the runway. The result: Our 50-minute layover in Atlanta was reduced to 30 minutes, during which we had to take a tram from concourse B to concourse E and run the entire length of the terminal, while the final boarding call was being annouced overhead.
We made it--barely-- and with a hitch (which Meghan will write about). But in this business, all's well that ends well, and we're at the end of the most worrisome portion of the trip.
Now we have five hours in the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, where glorious green hills beckon from behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. One side of the airport is hot, noisy and crowded; the other is inexplicably cool, quiet and comfortable. So we've spread ourselves and our stuff out on the carpet on the nicer side and everyone is online.
Our final leg is a short hop from here to Honduras, where we'll meet Michael Gray of Uncommon Adventures and sleep off today's adventure, which was anything but common.
This year, I'm hoping to travel even lighter than I did last year. Such decisions cause complications. The first one the trade-off between bringing along a Mac laptop (bigger, heavier, easy to type on, familiar OS) and an Asus eeePC (smaller, lighter, trickier to type on, unfamiliar OS). I'm spending time with it this week, trying to get on friendlier terms with the minuscule keyboard and twitchy touch pad. I'm also trying to encourage it to get along with my camera.
This is my first attempt to upload a photo. I'm curious to see whether it's the right size and what happens to the name/caption. Here goes:
