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Published: December 16th 2008
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FERIA DE SAN ISIDRO FESTIVAL in all its glory
Kind of like a PG version of Mardi Gras, there are scores of people throwing beads from windows, bands playing, people wearing elaborate costumes, kids standing in trash cans, and floats with costumed people driving by. Unlike Mardi Gras, there is no baring of breasts. One word, damn. Where's Phoebe Cates when you need her? Everything under the sun was at the festival and the energy was contagious. The great thing about festivals like this, are the same reason why I enjoy NY subways. You see all types of people interacting. The young and the old, the rich and the poor, the locals and the foreigners. It’s a microchosm of the world gathering in La Ceiba for the week to party, eat, sweat, and get some beads. Let me emphasize the word sweat because it was frigging hot! My sweat’s sweat was sweating, it was so hot. We were with our NY friends who were also sweating like it was going out of style.
Apparently the festival started in 1846 by some Spaniards who were honoring San Isidro Labrador who is the patron saint, not of dogs, but of campesinos
(Spanish word for a farmworker) with a party. Like the name of the city, the tradition stuck.
In case you didn’t know this about Danielle, she is a very careful person. I tend to leap and then look. She looks, looks again, tests the wind velocity, puts on a jump suit, and then leaps. Generally, her way is better, especially when you’re in a foreign country. However, she was killing me about our backpack. We were warned by Udo (the owner of the Lodge) and our guide book that there were a lot of pickpockets at the festival. This sparked Danielle’s fears. Every two seconds she’d be checking the backpack to make sure that no one stole it even though it was a frontpack (I was wearing it on my chest). Granted, it had our passports in it and was pretty important in our life, but I think she thought that the thieves of Honduras were built like Mr. Fantastic and could stretch their fingers into our backpack and take all of our money without either of us ever seeing it. After a couple of hours, she was able to relax a bit.
FOOD HIKE
You know
when you’re with a group of friends at City Walk, and one of you wants a burger while the other one wants pizza and another wants sushi. This is typical. In Honduras it got harder, because it turns out, that our New Yorker folks were vegetarian. Now Honduras is not the most vegetarian friendly place in the world, so we spent a good hour walking around trying to find a restaurant that would be okay for everyone. Brent and I would scout ahead because some of the restaurants were closed due to the festival and the ones that were open only had meat items. Being sweaty and hungry is no way to be, so when we finally stopped I felt no guilt that I wolfed down carne asada in front of them. Hopefully they'll forgive me.
Our four cool New York folks decided to call it quits early and go back to the Omega Lodge. We ran into our friends Jeremy and Sarah (the ones from Copan at the Ex-Pat bar) and decided to stay out late with them and their friends to go to a bar. While we were waiting for Jeremy and Sarah to change, we hung
out with this young girl from Quebec who is the spitting image of my friend Marielle except this girl was Canadian and spoke French. Marielle isn’t Canadian and eats French food so it's close. This girl was learning Spanish at the same school that Jeremy and Sarah and for the life of me, I cannot remember her name. If any of you run into a French Canadian girl who speaks broken Spanish, have her email me to say hi. We met Jeremy and Sarah at this girl’s apartment and then went to another bar with all of their friends. They were nice, but when you travel for a long time in a far away country, the conversation sometimes gets a little stale because it always is about your travels. It gets tiring to say the same thing to new people every time because I know there is more to all of us than just our travels. But there’s just not enough time to get any farther than that. I assume it’s the same for conventions and such, like if you have a gaggle of water purifier salesmen, the conversations will be primarily about water purifiers, or if you’re a dork
at the Star Trek convention, you’ll talk about how Spock could totally kick Khan’s ass or something standard like that.
RAFTING
The Jungle Lodge is an eco-lodge, so they had rafting trips that Danielle (the former raft-guide), and I jumped at. Being the dry season, the water level was extremely low, so we spent some of the “rafting” trip jumping off boulders into the water. I have to admit, and hate to admit, that Danielle is much braver than I am. She’s like a little kid who’s skiing. They just head downhill and go without any hesitation. If I go quickly, I won’t think about it, but the second I start thinking about it, I’m doomed. But seeing that I did not want the others in the group to think I was a pussy, I did all the jumps and pretended like it was no big deal. Now you know the truth. Don’t tell anyone. We met some really cool people in our group. One guy was working for a charity organization in Central America and I forget his and his wife’s name, but they were pretty cool. There was also Dennis and Paula from Arizona who were
great too.
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