Honduras Travels

ROATAN and COPAN RUINAS, Honduras

The woman on the plane studiously memorizes tropical fish. She pores over a picture of a blue tang, contemplates the features of the banded butterfly fish and wins respect by focusing on the mean-looking six-gill shark.

She is a diver, she says, and she wants to know what she is seeing under the sea.

She will see a lot, since the coral reef that surrounds Honduras’ Bay Islands is one of the largest and most diverse in the world, home to as many as 800 different types of fish.

The Factory

San Pedro Sula is known as the AIDS capital of Central America. It’s not the type of place I normally visit. There are gangs and drugs. It’s a big city with lots of poor people.

Today, is a sunny Sunday and people crowd the shaded areas of the central park people-watching. Every square-inch of shade is taken so I stroll.

People chat while sipping on plastic bags of fruit licuados through limp straws. Ice cream cones melt rapidly making knuckles sticky. A man selling plastic snakes has one of his snakes nibble at a passing pretty girl. He smiles like it is some brilliant strategy that should be documented in the annals of flirting: “Hey baby. I sell plastic snakes for a living. Wanna go out?”