I apologize for the long delay in updating this thing. Long travel days, a week in the Caribbean without electricity, and all sorts of crazy mishaps have made communication a rarity over the last ten days or so. Our trip is quickly coming to an end, and we are now back north in Guatemala, getting ready for one last crazy jaunt through the Chiapas region of Mexico before heading home. A lot has happened in the last week and a half. Here are some of the highlights:
Managua, Nicaragua
Our bus to Honduras was leaving at 4AM. We had to be at the station by 3:15, leaving us little choice but to sleep in the part of town known as Barrio Martha Quezada, home not only to the international bus station but also every crook, pimp, drug dealer, and street urchin in town. Our Lonely Planet recommended that if you had to sleep in the Barrio, you might as well sleep at Hotel Monolitico, located right next door to the Tica Bus station. We foolishly took their word for it.
As our cab pulled up and stopped at the iron and barbwire hotel gates, a kid ran out of the hotel door, grabbed our packs, and ran back inside, motioning for us to follow him as quickly as possible. We did, and were greeted with stern warnings as soon as we had paid for the room: Be very careful here. Don’t go outside. If you go outside with money, they will cut your throat!
It was enough to scare the crap out of us, but we needed to get some dinner, and so the kid who had rushed out to take our bags was sent with us as a sort of escort.
He was a less than savory character himself; 24 years old with a sizable beer gut protruding from his stained and tattered shirt, long greasy hair slicked back over his head, and a seemingly infinite capacity to discuss women and sex in the most graphic terms our limited understanding of Spanish would allow for.
At first, as he described the nationalities and bodies of “his girls,” I assumed he was simply listing off an exaggerated history of his own personal sex life. But then he kept asking if we wanted to meet them, if we wanted to maybe go get a drink with a few of his girls after the meal. I had an idea where this was all going, but gave him the benefit of the doubt and explained that we were too tired and just wanted to get some rest that night.
He reluctantly accepted, then turned to stare intently at a girl making her way down the garbage-strewn street.

"Do you know her?" I asked
"Yeah, she’s my girl."
"Oh, you mean your girlfriend?"
"No, my girl. She’s Honduran, with this incredible body and huuugggee tits. You can have her tonight - I’ll send her to your room. Very cheap!"

And so we finally understood. He was a pimp, and we were sleeping in a whorehouse. We turned down his offer, paid for the meal, and returned to our filthy hotel room which seemed even dirtier now that we knew it could be rented by the hour.
I was sitting on the corner of my bed later that evening, watching TV and trying to forget just how disgusting my surroundings were. Suddenly, something dropped out from beneath the soiled mattress - a small plastic packet, with a US fifty dollar bill wrapped around something inside. It was basically a crack baggie, and I fully expected to find cocaine or crack when I opened up the package. But I was wrong - as I tore through the plastic and unrolled the fifty dollar bill I found no drugs, just four more fifties and a 100 cordoba note. A literal fortune in Nicaragua, over $250 US of obvious drug money.
We weren’t sure what to do with it. We didn’t want to give it to the pimps who ran the place, as we were still a bit upset that they had failed to inform us that we’d be sleeping in a whorehouse before we had paid for the room. Leaving it there for a drug dealer to pick up didn’t make much sense either. Fuck it, we thought, let’s just keep it. And the next morning, as we ran past the thieves and dealers who waited for us like wolves outside the hotel gates, I had a great big smile on my face knowing that I could now afford one last little adventure up into Chiapas, Mexico.

La Ceiba, Honduras
We’ve stayed in some pretty shitty hotels over the last two and a half months, but Hotel Caribe was the first to actually have shit smeared on the walls. With no sheets on the beds, no water in the sink, and a toilet that wouldn’t flush, we were glad we only had to call it home for one night.

Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras
Utila was incredible. After a two hour boat ride through the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, we found ourselves on an island that seemed to be frozen in time. Though it is over 20 miles in diameter, Utila contains only one small village, where old wooden houses are built on stilts just a few feet from the ocean’s edge. Electricity is virtually non-existent - over the course of five days, we probably had power for a total of three hours. The streets are crowded with bicycles and motor scooters, and the towns only church attracts hundreds of people under its big white tent, listening to the preacher shout his sermon in Spanish and Garifuna English.
Most of the inhabitants are Garifuna, mixed descendents of African slaves brought over by the English and indigenous Caribbean peoples. They speak this crazy, magical sort of English that sounds more like singing than speaking half of the time.
Our days in Utila were spent snorkeling on the reefs that start immediately off the beach, riding bicycles around the island, and relaxing in the pool at our "hostel", which was the fanciest place we have stayed yet on the trip.
It’s been so long since I was able to go snorkeling on a reef, and I forgot how amazing it is. The coral formed all sorts of crazy passageways through the shallow water before dropping off in a straight wall about forty feet to the sandy ocean floor. Fish of every color surrounded you, occasionally in schools so thick that you could practically reach out and touch a dozen before they swam away. With the water around eighty degrees and visibility limited only by your eyes´ ability to absorb light, it may have been the most enjoyable day I’ve ever spent in the ocean.
We ran into two old friends in Utila - Adam and Dan - and they made for good company in the evenings, grabbing dinner and drinking wine out of the bottle under the Caribbean stars with Chad and myself.
Seeing as how this is already the longest blog I have ever written, I should probably wrap it up. But I must mention one more thing about Utila - our roommate Javier, an Argentinean ex-pat in town to study for his diving instructor certification. Javier was a nice enough guy, but he apparently suffered from night tremors, which made for some interesting 3 AM moments... On our last night in town, we’d all gone out to a huge dinner of fresh-caught marlin and hit up a few bars on the way back to the hostel. At some point in the night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, Javier shot out of his bed screaming at the top of his lungs "HEY! HEY! (INCOMPREHENSIBLE SPANISH) HEEEEYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!" and ran towards the door, opened it, and slammed it shut again. He turned on the lights and scanned the room, panicked, before shutting them off and falling back into bed, totally unconscious and unaware of what an insane display he’d just put on. Chad and I tried our best to sleep with one eye open that night - Javier seemed like he was one step away from unconsciously stabbing us in our sleep. He spent the rest of the night periodically sleepwalking, lumbering around the room before collapsing back into his bed.
And now, after two long travel days of cramped busses, vomiting children, crazy ex-pats, bad movies, and a serious case of the trots, we are in Antigua, Guatemala for the third and final time. On Monday we will catch a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, and slowly head east back towards Flores and the much dreaded flight home.
Till next time amigos.
Travis

A few photos
The bathroom at Hotel Caribe. The brown stuff on the wall ain´t chocolate.
The beaches in the residential “suburbs” on Utila
The wind-swept north shore of the island
And the peaceful southern shore
Can you see the gecko in this photo?
So long as we were in town, we thought we’d shoot a promotional campaign for Gatorade.
So glad to be back in Guatemala because I had missed the chicken busses so much!