Some words...followed by an idea for discount cribs

Kickin' it in Comayagua with my new friend Eric was a great time. A kindrid spirit (aka closet fatty) in pastry pursuits without weight gain, he's showed me around Comayagua while we walked between ice cream shops and reposterías. The only way my time in Comayagua would be improved would be if I could say I'd accidentally dropped an -a from my friend's name.

Comayagua is another mountain-encircled gem, with 60,000 citizens big enough for big city luxuries like malls, expansive markets, and gangs. But it's also small enough that you recognize people day-to-day and daytime danger is minimal, maybe nonexistant. And while there's a definite lack of street food vendors, the inner-market comedores are cheap and delicious while retaining sufficient mystery as to the sanitation of preparation. Plus Honduran enchiladas (perhaps my favorite food in the world) and baleadas cost mere pocket change at almost any restaurant. Yep, it's kinda like heaven.

My favorite image from Comayagua is a lady on the sidewalk, perched beneath a sun-shielding umbrella, crouched amongst a collection of squeeze-bottle chilis and ceramic dishes filled with salt, cutting and bagging chunks of fruit to sell, her infant child scuttling about at her back, clawing at the bars of his blanket-bottomed crib: the stolen grocery cart in which mom transports her entire operation.

The problems with conscience

A conscience is exactly the kind of handicap that can interfere with many professions and pastimes. Gang member for example. Like when a Peace Corps volunteer related the story of a friend riding a San Salvador city bus when a heavily-tatted, shaved-headed banger snuggled up and proceeded in English:

"See these tats?"

"Yep."

"Know what they mean?"

"Yep."

"Now you're gonna empty your pockets without making a scene."

"Yep."

Five dollars changed hands but, with a stretch of road remaining, and both parties in jolly moods for the opportunity to chitchat in English, conversation ensued.

"So, where're you from?"

"The US."

"What're you doin' here," snarled Mr. Salvatrucha.

"Umm...volunteering, trying to help the people..."

In the long pause the sneer evaporated. "Oh."

At the next stop, when the aisle flooded again with people vending snacks from fruits to cookies to ice cream cones for "una cora" Mr. MS-13 whipped out the $5 and procured snacks to share with his victim.

Isn't MS-13 kinda cute?

(If you're esily disgusted, now's a good time to move to the next post)

Likewise, a conscience makes you a pathetic sex tourist, concerned with the two things sexcessful booty bangers never consider: broken hearts and broken condoms.

Mom and dad, really, would it have been so hard to neglect us as young'uns, fostering an upbringing morally bankrupt?

My Valentine

Why is she asking me for a regalo? "Si," I stammer, "Uh, voy a dejar un regalo cuando salga." Patricia and her friend laugh, trade fives and a fist bump, and one of them squeals, "¡Un bebe!" I'm watching the faces of Patricia's 10-year-old kids, but nothing registers, no disgust disrupts their smiles toward me. "Somos amigos," I insist again, having already turned town a request to be Patricia's boyfriend, nevermind that we've talked for a total of ten minutes in our lives and that I'll be leaving Comayagua within days. To say nothing of the fact that Patricia is thirty, has kids at least ten years old, and is shaped like a cream puff. That she has no education, sells tortillas and bags of green mango chunks spiced with chili and salt for a living, and is openly propositioning me for sex in front of her kids.

She says she'll be my girlfriend even if I leave tomorrow. I have her phone number.

We're sitting on the curb and she keeps brushing my thighs with her fingertips, which is actually less comfortable than when she stands and starts gyrating her gelatinous jiggler at the level of my face, rotating like the food carousels she's obviously raided one...million times too many. I swallow a terrible prediction for her adorable daughter's fate, but stop myself from washing it down with another sip of water, sipping being a nervous tic, when I recall Patricia's lips sharing the bottles rim.

(Later, instead of spending an extra seven Lempira (US$0.40) on another refillable bottle, I'll rinse my bottle with a substance that advises swallowers to contact the nearest undertaker upon ingestion, as backpackers will momentarily forgetting that I'm not stricken with the poverty I so regularly observe.)

Ahh, shit, on the other hand, in Patricia I could've had a Valentine's date for the first time.

Sometimes I don't want to be bothered with titles

The more agreeable temperatures in Alegria's altitude allowed me to retain fluids, quickly shifting my urine's color from desert sunset orange to clear. With that healthy boost I returned to running, resuming the calf-and-quad killing hill training that has characterized my every run in El Salvador. And when I say hill training, I mean that in the most literal sense. Hill training. A single hill. As in I'm way up in the mountains, so running means flying down then climbing back up. Like 22 minutes straight up. By the end casual observers think I'm running in place. Jabba the Hut slithered by yesterday and looked like a comet in comparison. (What he's doing in El Salvador I'm not sure. I was too out of breath to inquire. Or care.)

From Alegría it was time to investigate Perquin, an old FMLN stronghold near the Honduran border, an area afflicted by ghastly military attrocities during the civil war. It's another tiny blip on the map, nestled high up in the mountains...blah, blah...but with an interesting Museo de la Revolución. (I didn't make the hike to El Mozote, a nearby village that was the site of a wartime massacre, but I plan to trek it with an ex-guerilla guide when I return.)

Perquin is notable for a few other things. We hung out with Peace Corps. volunteers gathered to translate for a group of kindly geriatrics working for Eyecare, enjoying free pie, beer, and wine for our whiteness, thus the assumed association with people affecting the lives of more people than pupusa vendors. We also discovered that not a single person in Perquin -- not even the tourist police or tourist information office -- understands the bus schedule. After waiting for two hours for a bus that, quite simply, never came, someone casually advised, "A veces, cuando el bus esta corriendo tarde, lo no viene aquí.."

Oh.

So we ended up stuck in Perquin for another night, which was far from a tragedy; rather, another "last chance" for pupusas, a circumstance, I'm convinced, was willed by Lord Pupusa so I could stumble and gorge myself upon pupusas de res. With at least four other pupusa variations rumored to be smacked out nightly in remote corners of the country, I'll be back to hunt before long. But first I have to zip to Costa Rica for a few hours to reset my CA-4 (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras) Visa for another 90 days.

Yesterday morning the bus to Marcala, Honduras decided to show, so we endured what I imagine feels like a four hour earthquake while crammed inside a tight metal closet as we traversed the 50km stretch from Perquin, El Salvador to Marcala, Honduras on a fully-packed chicken bus. The unpaved mountain pass cost a bit more than usual, perhaps, but I attribute that to the fact that the bus driver has to buy a new bus after every trip. The border crossing was the only interruption in the trip, a stampless excuse for border officials to extract an unofficial cash sum from any passing foreigners. Technically, all CA-4 border crossings are free. But on Friday the 13th it cost $3. Hardly worth disputing and feeding the Central American legacy of disappeareds.

In Marcala lunch was devoured and another country's tasteless Pilsener was chugged for a pocket change $2.75. Then I connected to La Paz, told Emma I'd terrorize her cute, single friends in Chile, and ended up in Comayagua. Fresh of the bus and girl-travel-partner free, I was basking in the well-kempt beauty of Honduran city babes. Trying to find a hotel I fell into conversation with a mango-vending 30-year-old with a litter of kids, whose husband has bounced sometime in the last year, and she insisted I take her number within a few sentences of revealing that information. If the kids call me "Dad" the next time we cross paths I might have to cut short my stay in Comayagua, which, regardless, is but a short stopover for baleadas and enchiladas hondureñas on the sprint to reset my Visa.