The Beginning of the End...and still no Coconut Cake.

Las Ruinas de Copán, Honduras, a World Heritage Site where reside well-preserved remnants of Mayan civilization, temples and giant stone stelae carved with the precision of DNA, is cool. Yeah, I'm not really a Ruins-head. But still cool.

The highlight of the trip from Copán Ruinas to Antigua, Guatemala -- where I was to meet my boy J-Whet -- was a pair of bars somewhere over the Guatemalan border: Bars El Mujeriego, numbers 1 and 2. Which literally translates to "Bar The Womanizer". Classy stuff.

Antigua was a trip. Reunited with J-Whet, my longtime partner in hoopin', Wire-watchin', tree-blowin' and appreciation of the English language, the smile couldn't have been smacked off my face. Though one of those sexy girls strutting around probably should have tried, the way I'd stop on a dime and swivel, following those hips while they walked away, smiling over their shoulder every few steps.

Yes, my game is on right now. And it's so not game. Just gotta drop an "Hola" and stare. Not gonna work in the states. Hell, maybe the game's in my hole-ridden, mud-stained Asics. Maybe little strands of charm are caught in the stubbly beard I'm sporting. Maybe Guatemalans have a healthy appreciation of Kriss Kross, 'cause I'm so de moda in my pit-stained t-shirt flipped inside out. Or maybe it's just that Jackson and I are two Americans walking the streets armed with dos metros, smiles and swag.

And for this I keep defying the rainy season odds, accumulating more kisses than mosquito bites, more at risk for the Human Influenza than malaria. There's the usual clubbing, which usually ends up in sloppy displays on the dancefloor. And then there's the over-40 set, who seem to have a vulture-to-vulnerable attraction to Pat.

Take, for instance, Bethy the street vendor, serving churrascos at the Antigua bus station. Rocking a mustache and a bevy of kids. Jackson and I dined at her stand our first night, lingering at her stand through the meal, beers, and half a liter of Quezalteca Especial, my favorite firewater. Bethy doesn't mind drinking on the job. So Jackson and I promised to return the next day, and upon arrival, already deep into the Quezalteca, I was greeted with a photo. Un recuerdo. Bethy abandoned the stand to buy us a bottle of XL Rum, dragging me along, hand in hand. People in the grocery store kept smiling in our direction, like I was just some visiting John with questionable tastes.

Bethy insisted I take her number. That I take her out to dance. (Luckily I'd already made a date with a married girl.) Eventually Jackson and I managed to pry ourselves away, but Bethy yelled something at a friend about being back in twenty minutes and again left the stand totally unattended, escorting us back toward the hostel. We made it a few blocks and Bethy indicated she'd reached the end. She pulled me halfway down a city block and proceeded to profess love and things of that nature. I sensed she hadn't showered in a while. All of a sudden -- though I pretty much knew this was inevitable -- she enveloped me like a boa and performed her best Species impression, trying lick my lungs. I had to strain to push her face out of mine. When I rounded the corner to find Jackson, a Guatemalan named Carlos laughed loudly and asked, "Did you get it?"

Now I'm back in San Pedro La Laguna, where Jackson is staying with my old homestay family, getting to know all my friends across town, and preparing to study Spanish for several months at my old school. Ah, and trying to figure out a way to get a new bank card or transfer money to a San Pedro bank, thanks to a bus-prowling ladrona who jacked his wallet and ATM card and proceeded to do exactly what I'd do with a stolen card: do some fine dining, Big Macs and fries at McDonalds to the tune of $6. Minimal damage but a hassle nonetheless.

Seeing all my old San Pedrona folk -- mis hermanitos y primos and still more matured women with kids who keep hinting at marriage -- is the perfect ending to this trip. Yesterday Jackson and I ate lunch and then went to the slightly contaminated beach Las Cristalinas with Clarita, Josefa and fam. Amazing people. Amazing Friends. Man, I'm gonna miss this place.

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?)

Travel Fact

Shampoo: I've used less than two ounces of shampoo in the last 8+ months, having yet to empty the 2oz FAA-approved Head & Shoulders bottle I brought to Mexico. Soap usually suffices, and my hair's still soft for the girlies.

Ode to Baleadas

Ay, baleadas. The Honduran national street food. Pick a city and, breakfast to latenight, whenever the craving strikes, you'll find busy assembly-line stands lining the streets. Meet the cast. The all important tortillera, stretching dough wide and thin, tossing it on the comal. She attends the comal, tossing readied tortillas into baskets nearer the women working the frying pans, who, in between stirring the beans, eggs, and meats, snags orders from the hungry masses hovering around. Then you pay the guy who hangs out, inhales the wonderful scents, and collects money. I want that job.

Fat, hand tossed flour tortillas, smeared with an oil-rich refried bean paste, then loaded with your choice of colorful decorations. Scrambled eggs. Crumbled cheese. Avocado spooned from its flesh. Curls of red onions or chimol. Juicy strips of tender beef freshly speared from the oil bath if you're feeling carnivorous. Maybe an extra tortilla, browned with bulging air pockets, hot off the comal. All for no more than L$25 fully decked out. Now my five day binge of nothing but baleadas and the occasional bagged mango doesn't sound so mad, huh?

Not only that, but my favorite baleada outpost in La Ceiba offered this greasy, to my knowledge nameless variation. The flour tortilla was tossed, then dumped into boiling oily depths to brown and balloon, until it looked like the crust of a Personal Deep Dish Pizza. Then it was treated like a baleada, save the folding, loaded with toppings. Like a big, brown and garnished edible sponge of cooking oil. Wonderful.

Currently I'm on a Tajadas con Carne Molida binge. Mountains of fried plantain chips, covered in a sauce of potato bits, sauce, and ground beef. 'Nuff said, no?

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.

I feel like dying

The way Tegucigalpa climbs and crowds from the valleys to the peaks -- crooked wooden planks strung with plastic sheeting fluttering in the wind like flags of poverty, the rusted red of tin roofing cutting swaths between foliage, as bunched as Brazil's infamous favelas -- looks entirely improbable.

It's the type of extreme density that makes more sense in a plane-bound metropolis, hardly so here where steep slopes jut so suddenly and sharply, houses affixed precariously to precipices as if secured by tacks, where it looks like The Hulk raged under the land, trying to punch his way out.

But Teguc was just a blip in a long day busing from Estelí, Nicaragua to Siguatepeque, Honduras, a nondescript city where I passed the night on the way to La Ceiba. La Ceiba is a grungy northern port city on the Caribbean coast, where the population is a diverse brown and black, Latino and Garífuna respectively, and panhandlers can pester you in Spanish or English. Ceiba is Honduras' party capital, where beer flows freely and girls six-to-sixty, fit to flab, can bust out the Punta, the traditional ass-physics-defying Garífuna dance. The Garífuna celebration of God's generous endowment of rump. Awaiting me in Ceiba was La Feria Isidra y Carnaval de la Amistad en La Ceiba, a wildly popular annual festival that hops barrios nightly, culminating tomorrow with the city center Carnaval.

Nightly Ceibeñas and the visitors packing out every hotel stream to the designated barrio, where beer tents and busied aproned women waving skewers and spatulas prod and flip smoking slabs of carne and chorizo on oil-bathed grills line every street, funneling the hordes doing their best to spill as little beer as possible in the storming swirls of humanity swarming and sidestepping their way between any of the various stages scattered across the barrio's intersections. One advancing army -- los rockeros -- hellbent upon seeing someone reproduce amusingly accented Metallica classics. The opposing flow, more agile, avoiding collisions with grace and shimmying hips, gravitates toward thumping basslines, reggae and reggaeton, where smooth-moving masses of dark brown and blacked skinned Ceibeñas groove, sweat glistening, in clothed and standing simulations of sex. I join the white-teed, twisted 59fifty-capped admirers along the edges. Rhythm and booty. My dry eyes alert me I'm not blinking. If I turn around, I can enjoy professional, scantily clad dancers doing 360° revolutions, thrusting their midsections in and out, opposite the movement of their cocked arms. Air sex. Then they're back to back(side)-to-crowd, when preposterously sumptuous posteriors flap faster than Hummingbird's wings.

If there's a good place in the world at this moment to risk contracting HIN1, malaria, or AIDS, it's probably La Ceiba -- for the feria-driven influx of Central Americans, the Caribbean coast location, and proximity to San Pedro Sula, respectively.

Accordingly. La Ceiba: almost dying and going to heaven.

Got that WMD

There's nothing that lifts the spirits faster than spying a chubby faced tot behind the dash of a Power Wheel, cutting circles around Estelí's Parque Central's centrally located gazebo. The fact that families pay money to have their kids scoot around in Power Wheels, often escorted by the surly, chain-smoking entrepreneurs, is fun in itself. More fun, however, is the chubby-face factor. Funnier than fat, sausagy fingers -- "chorizitos" -- are kids with faces that look like they're filled full of pus, like a giant wasp swooped down and stung them smack on the cheek.

My most recent resolution is to avoid killing any more goats. Yesterday while running toward Managua on the Pan-American, I startled some goats grazing roadside. The pack of goats proceeded to run uphill, and I continued on for another twenty meters, reaching the halfway point of my run, at which point I doubled back. At which point I noticed the goats sprinting back downhill, chased by three barking dogs. As the goats exploded out from the bottom of the gravel driveway, one of the smaller goaties neglected to look both ways before crossing the street and got smacked by a pickup. He was in the middle of the road, looking quite stunned at the new shapes his body and bones had taken, as I continued on...

Lastly, the true test of a man's passion for his mango is the number of half-inch to inch-long yellowish, fibrous strands snagged and dangling from his front twelve when he drops that mangled, much gnawed upon pit.

Coke Floats for Redemption

I've been spending my last few weeks bouncing between Masaya and Estelí, Nicaragua -- in the former invading the humble but cozy dirt-floored homes and kitchens -- spaces your hanging clothes would find suffocating -- of my adopted families; in the latter, trying to work my charm so I can flirt with creating my own (i.e. striving to arrive at that delightful point where it'll be necessary to pray that prolonged exposure to heat doesn't proliferate undetectable lesions in sheer rubber prophylactics).

Masaya, besides being a treeless incinerator, is the home of some of my best Central American friends. I breakfast in Everth + fam's market comedor, then spend my afternoons lounging with Marbel + company, gobbling up homemade comida tipica -- i.e. torta de pescado: dried, deep fried fish -- gulping down tistes and chichas. I drank ant-and-dirt-specked sap scooped directly from a machete-hacked tree trunk, the so-sweet chicha. The Powerade bottle refilled with milky white Chicha that I'm lugging around will have to wait the fifteen or so days it takes for heavy fermentation to soften the sweetness. ¡Sabrosisima!

Everth, wife and child escorted me to Catarina, a chilly pueblo 8km outside of Masaya, set on the crater rim overlooking la Laguna de Apoyo, deservedly known for its mirador. They then proceeded to treat me to a tipica platter costing half the month's rent for their concrete enclosed patch of dirt.

How do I repay the kindness heaped upon me, the undeserving karmic abyss disguised by a nice smile? By introducing the world to Coke Floats.

Barbecue's Revenge

With the end of humanity now in sight, courtesy rebellious barbeque, I hope women will start throwing themselves at me. And less in the 28 Days Later we-wanna-share-the-plague-and-pain type of throwing oneself as the let's-get-it-on-in-these-last-moments type of forwardness.

Yesterday in Managua, on one of the many inner-city bus rides I took between Mercado Huembes, Plaza Inter, and Mercado Oriental, a girl near me vomited violently several times. Later a guy, without first assessing the floor, plopped down in the seat, his black boots swimming in the white sea of clam chowder -- of a chunkiness to which Campbell's aspires. I was gonna warn him but I felt like I needed a laugh. Mostly because riding city buses in Central American capitals, supposedly, is the russian roulette for muggings, so everybody is constantly mad-dogging everyone else, brandishing bags of mangos as if they were bricks, making sure the thorns of those dozen roses are prominently displayed.

Anyway, I figure I witnessed the introduction of barbecue's revenge to Nicaragua, and being on a packed, vomit-sloshing US school bus has probably ensured my quick demise. I'll be dead next week. So be it. So far, though rather quickly, said virus has only manifested itself as brutal purgings of the bowels -- which are making me suddenly thrilled horrible karaoke is blaring from the bar next door. Every time I fall upon the toilet seat is sounds like the Gremlin who squeezed into my anus is being skewered.

At least, before I die, I've rediscovered the joy of tipping. Which is to say rewarding good service when it isn't an obligation. I typically eat street food or in grungy market comedores, or I'm buying fruit by the bagful. Minimal service eating where tipping is unheard of. But yesterday morning, at a random comedor stuck in a dirt-floored, covered space between the long onion and watermelon galleries in Masaya's public market, I was spurred to generosity.

Of course the breakfast I wanted didn't correspond to any of the dozen covered pots of various meats and vegetables and concoctions atop the woodfire stove. I rattled off a short list of what would satisfy my cravings: gallo pinto, queso, y maduro. I was assured my demands would be met and was pointed to the plastic table with the rice and bean residue-soiled tablecloth. The ladies went to work.

After ten minutes appeared a heavenly platter of greasy gallo pinto, maduros y queso frito, mas la mitad de un aguacate, dos huevos fritos y un cafécito. The family chatted me up, Everth, the father of two-year-old cutie Belinda, had his daughter walk over and kiss me on the cheek, and proceeded to bill me C$30. Which is to say there was absolutely zero concern I was being given a gringo-weighted bill. Which is to say, in several emergency situations, I have literally considered wiping my ass with larger quantities of money. So I dropped a Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. BAM. Fifty Córdobas.

It's an incredible feeling to stuff yourself on a made-to-order feast, all in gracious company, then, in a place where tipping doesn't happen, dtop 66% of the bill, all this and walk out only US$2.50 lighter. Though, now that I think about it, my intestinal perturbance might have something to do with the family's use of avocados as the tool with which to soften and flatten raw steaks.

To top off a nice dining day I visited my first Nicaraguan taco stand. Nico tacos are like taquitos, rolled tortillas filled with spiced, shredded meat, served with cabbage salad. I had two chicken tacos, pulled fresh from the simmering oil-vat. They were intensely flavorful, all that crispy fattiness balanced by a pineapple sweetness, hot peppery bite, and juicy meat.

Today I breakfasted again in the market, treated to the same fresh feast at whatever hour I arrived (frickin' McDonalds, and all you have to do is reheat some frozen shit!). Afterward I chatted for hours with Everth, and carried his daughter around the market while he purchased a variety of fruits I'd never tried, so I could eat again. The guayabana with its incredibly sweet white flesh; nisporo, with its sapote but smaller, juicier imitation; hocote, simple and sweet. Tomorrow I've been promised anona, a red-skinned, sweeter take on the guayabana.

When I returned to my hotel, the owner delivered a note my good friend Marbel had left in my absence. I hadn't seen her since she suddenly stopped appearing for work at the quesillo stand, at which point I stopped eating quesillos. I called her up, her husband scooted over on the mini-moto and scooped me, and I spent the afternoon eating homemade baho and chocobananos in the humble family home. I got to hang out with Marbel's awesome kids, mom and sister, share laughs and compliments over old photo albums, and then share the majority of my 1800+ photos on the viewing screen of my digital camera -- many from parts of Nicaragua they'd theretofore, well, only seen in pictures.

And I was reminded again of one of the trillion reasons I'll regret dying soon, without having the pleasure of returning to NC for an eastern style BBQ-sandwich: People making you feel at home far, far from home. Good ol' southern hospitality.

If they catch fire, toss 'em in the lake.

Today I went to La Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake near Masaya, Nicaragua. It was picturesque, just like Lonely Planet had promised. Yay! I hiked down to the water, touched the water, decided it would be nice to swim in, decided then that I'd prefer not to be wet, took a few pictures, then hiked back up to the crater rim, at which point I was dripping sweat, my khaki pants soaked through, and I decided a swim would be nice. Apoyo is at the wrong end of the journey.

This advisory, taped to my hotel room's wall, might be more interesting:

DO NOT USE the fan as clothes dryer. could overheat and cause fire. Think about their safety.

I guess clothes and/or fans, I'm still a bit confused, are something of sacred commodities around here...