My brain's in your booty.

OK, who's hiding the chili dog? I didn't see anyone board the bus with a foil-wrapped wiener, but my mouth is watering. Hmmm, the scent strengthens when I lean back in my luxurious leather seat, trying to reposition myself in whatever manner will keep my legs from crashing into the next seatback and minimize the poking of metal under my ass. Ah, nothing like riding a US school bus, still with original seating, as an adult. But the scent. Nobody is munching anything except mangos and tajadas. And there's only one guy sitting --- oh, God. There's no chili dog. It's just campesino. One of those it's either really delicious food or pure human filth moments of confusion, reinforcing that my traveling learned lapses in hygiene are relavitely minor. Puro campesino. Coming to a chicken bus near you.

In the last weeks I've bounced between Santa Rosa de Copán and Copán Ruinas, Honduras, relishing all that which I'll soon be lacking: Baleadas, enchiladas and my newest addiction, tajadas con carne molida o pollo frito; dirtbike treks bumping and jerking and teetering up a down rutted mountain paths and forest-traversing firebreaks; sitting riverside, cliff diving, feasting on wild growing exotic fruits "sanitized" in water that could be teeming with runoff and Hepatitis; "helping" teach English classes at a local university, thanks to daily invites from my new Honduran-American friend Mario, which essentially meant swelling the address book with the real phone numbers of stunning, college-aged, English-studying morenas...oh, yes, and a job offer has followed; above all, social norms that say I can gaze and drool after anything that saunters or struts down the sidewalk. Despite the lust contorting my face as I pause and turn, thumb and forefinger massaging my chin, my head bouncing side to side as I follow that booty down the street, that I've so far refrained from excessively lewd cat-calls qualifies me as a gentleman. I fear my neighbors and the police back home won't be quite so compassionate when I'm admiring their high school-aged daughters. (Can I say that, like my newfound predilections for flagrant horn-honking and pissing in DUDE-there's-people-milling-around public, it's just something I learned in Central America? Will the neighbors appreciate that excuse when I'm making my court-mandated door-to-door introductions?)

I like big butts

After five blissful days of bouncing butts and street-vended baleadas -- that comida tipica comprising, quite literally, the full extent of my diet besides the occasional bolsita de mango maduro con sal y vinagre -- I decided a change of venue might restore sleep and vitamins to my life.

I bussed from hot and hectic La Ceiba to the-phrase-snail's-pace-would-imply-things-actually-move-here pueblito Gracias (a Dios), Lempira, Honduras. The hotel attendant asked me if I'd visited the old Spanish fortress overlooking the town. I replied yes. "Usted ha hecho todo. Ya conoce Gracias," she said with a laugh, before resuming staring at the wall. I hadn't even sliced my first morning's breakfast, two ripe sapotes.

And yet I stayed another day varying the diet -- tacos y enchiladas, horchata y fresco de Guanabana for lunch; pinchos de cerdo con repollo, tortillas, y papas (boiled in, I believe, oil; not fried) for dinner. And the nightly pint of ice cream and the availability of delicious banana sodas, i.e. Tropical, bred one delicious float. I shot some hoops during the day, smiled at girls, and met a girl working in the market who must've had one of those third world marraige-at-first-sight-of-white moments.

Even with nothing to do but sweat and chitchat with townfolk, it was difficult deciding to leave. Good food + slow pace = great place. I was sitting in my hotel lobby, having technically vacated my room by the appropriate hour, pondering staying another night. A friendly thirty to fortyish mother even offered me a room in her house, gratis. She was so nice. We met, she dropped the Usted form for Tu, and then decided sharing her Skittles by hand didn't suffice, shocking me when she leaned in and tongue fed me candy and saliva. I left town.

And good thing too, because if I'd stayed I'd probably never have seen the rugged, reeking campesino board the bus proudly sporting his clean, cute Motorcycle Slut hat.

Next I hit Santa Rosa de Copán, a rather untouristed city that -- like Gracias, Ceiba and, I think, every city in Honduras -- is dominated by dudes keeping the hair gel industry thriving during these difficult times and female examples of genetic perfection. Honduras and El Salvador, save the coasts, are off the tourist map. Probably because guys are worried about getting caught oogling a gangbanger's girlfriend. And with more salvatruchas and dieciochos and latinas-whose-DNA-you'd-want-to-sample per capita cruising the calles than in any other Central American countries, that's thinking prudently.