Chapter 1: Getting there; Ottito; San Pedro Sula; Christmas evening’s meal at my Godmother’s house
Very early, Christmas morning
A funny thing happens when leaving for a trip and your alarm goes off at 4 AM and it’s pitch black outside: you wake up immediately. This never happens when you have to be at work that day. But the mere fact that this is Christmas day leads my point along a familiar path: you want to wake up, you can’t wait what’s about to happen, even though, “my god it’s early!”
Why? I’m on my way to Honduras!
All Packed and ready to go, the taxi arrives 10 minutes late. We bid very sad farewells to our dogs and, with one fell swoop, we’re on our way to LAX.
Flight takes off at 7 AM, so while planning this trip I thought, “You know, the airport can’t be that bad on early Christmas morning! Who travels on Christmas morning?” Um, at LAX? Turns out everyone does. It took one hour to get through our line, and FORTUNATELY there was this one Federali who was asking if anyone needed to leave on a 7 AM flight (he was letting us cut through the baggage security check.) He saved us an hour that would have made us miss our flight.
Outside the sun was starting to come up; inside we headed toward our gate after a rather painless walk through security. Time has this different way of moving along when you’re just. wanting. to. sleep… notably when you’re not asleep. But with the open ended schedule that lay ahead of us (12 days of NOT having to wake up and go to work), I can’t imagine anything would make me feel all that tense. Why? I’m on my way to Honduras!
Honduras is one of the original countries in Central America. For those playing at home, there is also Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. Caveat: I never understood why Panama was never considered originally to be part of C.A., but it wasn’t. Caveat #2: Belize used to be called British Honduras; it’s now Belize, it’s own little country. But that sort of fucks up all the flags of Central America with the 5 stars and what not, now don’t it?
Oh yea, one other thing: my Mother’s home country. She grew up in a small northern coastal town called “Trujillo.” Trujillo was the first town that Christopher Columbus—while on his 5th voyage—set foot on mainland North America (1502). Honduras is quite the 3rd world country with ironies to this point that play out all over the place (much more on this later). It’s heritage is of Spanish, Mayan, and Catholic culture. It gets hot —fricking hot—and has plenty of rain, rain, rain. You can read up more here, if you’d like.
The flight from LA to Honduras is actually via Miami. We had a 2 hour layover there which, if American Airlines treated us right, would put us in San Pedro Sula at about 6:30 or 7 PM Central time. Thankfully, while in Miami, I saw no Hurricanes (those who know me well will understand this strangely out of place comment).
Oh, and did I tell you? My Mom is meeting us there! Yup, she and my Step Dad go down there maybe once a year, and since she lives in Orlando, it’s much more of a hop, skip and jump for her. So, she will be with us for most of our trip. Our LAX to Miami flight is 5 hours, but the flight from Miami to SPS is just 2. (She got there a couple days before.)
The only memorable part of the flight (and that’s a good thing) was the fact that I bought Albert Camus’ The Stranger as an audiobook for the ol’ iPod. Be that as it may, I remember almost nothing as I dozed in and out of sleep while trying to listen to this book. Imagine if I were talking to you….the lunch people were far and away the most….where did you put that truck? I know we parked it…. Ok: You get my point? I was very unsuccessful at maintaining alertness during both flights. Sleep, which I needed, was good for whatever festive possibilities lay ahead this night.
As we land and “de-plane”, I had some trickle of memories (smells and the humidity), but not many as I would eventually have because, well, it was already dark outside and you could barely see anything. The airport was new (still small but it now has air conditioning!), and since I hadn’t been here last since I was 15, I don’t suppose I’d recognize too much in the dark. We made our way through Customs, found our luggage, and walked toward this big automatic sliding glass door.
Ottito
Outside this door was a mass of people with their passive faces pressed against it. We half expected them to flood the gates, but they were, in all honesty, just waiting. I looked around for the one familiar face picking us up and finally saw the wave of a hand.
Growing up, and visiting Honduras, I quickly came to know one unfettered truth: I had a large family. My mother is one of twelve! Now, three died at early age, so in essence she was one of nine. But you can imagine the numbers of cousins (primos y primas), Aunts (Tias) and Uncles (Tios) that I had to wrap my head around. I swear that even after first four times I visited there as a kid I was still meeting new people—rather, relatives—every time!
But this hand, waving from the crowd is, was, and probably has always been, my favorite.
Ottito is my primo (cousin). He’s my age, so he and I grew up together (when I was in country on summer vacations). He was the son of my Tia Ondina (Aunt) and he was, at least while growing up, based in Trujillo. Now, he was all grown up, married, with kids, and living as a civil engineer in San Pedro Sula.
And that laugh. Oh my God. Ottito… (quick note: In Spanish cultures, many of you may already know that the suffix “ito” means little. Many times kids are called their name with ito at the end for such a long time that it sticks throughout there adult life, especially if it’s to differentiate between similarly named father and son. So, he’s technically Otto, but he’ll always be Ottito to me. ) Anyway, Ottito’s laugh is the kind of laugh where you could be dead exhausted tired, almost entirely asleep and, if he starts laughing—even in the other room—you’ll at least start to giggle. It’s this rapid fired huhuhuhuhuhh not at ALL unlike Woody Woodpecker. His laugh is unmistakable, and would constantly punctuate the trip. Let the memories begin.
Ottito started as a gentleman by giving first greeting to my wife. He immediately assured Christina that his English was horrible but that he was going to sputter, stutter and try to speak English as much as possible. He also quickly noted that his eldest daughter was completely bilingual.
The hug I gave Ottito (and that he gave to me) was the first in a series of emotions I am grateful to have experienced. I quickly realized how much I had missed him. For all the notions of career and Los Angeles, and the fact that I had not seen him in so long, it was this extra bit of unreadable energy that made me immediately blurt “It had been way too long.” This feeling would carry throughout my trip.
We climbed in his truck, and headed into the city (the airport 20 minutes from the metro area.)
San Pedro Sula is the 2nd largest city in Honduras, second only to Tegucigalpa, the capital. As a kid, it always reminded me sort of as a progressive city compared to the country’s more rural, third world view. It had paved roads, and —to my young eyes—had the hustle and bustle of a big city.
But like all truths, San Pedro Sula had changed, grown up, etc whatever. I was warned in e-mails ahead of time that it would be almost unrecognizable. Well, that was not really the case. However the first of two disappointing parts of the trip was literally just minutes away; something I had no idea or warning…about.
The end of that paragraph was a little melodramatic, wasn’t it? Haha. Well, for small (if not good) reason: You see, when you come to a foreign country—scratch that—when I come to a foreign country, I like to feel like I’ve been transported. Like I’ve gone to a new or different place. So when visiting Honduras, the last thing in the world I would ever, EVERY FRICKING WANT TO SEE, was this:
Ugh. Applebee’s? And what??? A fricking Office Depot? Pizza Hut? Burger King????
I’m not in Honduras! I’m on International Drive in Orlando! UGH.
Ok, I got over it, but I never really got over the fact that San Pedro Sula had become viral breeding ground for America’s chain restaurants. The worst part were the signs were at least TWICE the size of their “American” counterparts, if not larger. So, it really polluted your line of site.
But wait, look! There’s the hospital where my sister Karla got her ears pierced! And that’s the street to my Tia (Aunt) Vilma’s house! Ah, my memories were ready to flood the dance floor!
Christmas Meal at my Godmother’s house
It has always been a small source of pride to me that my Godmother was actually from Honduras. My Tia Vilma, she was the eldest of the women Crespo (my mother’s maiden name) and she always had this flair about her. And I loved the way she always called me “Papi.” So she was my Madrina, and we were just minutes away from her house.
The first person to greet us at the fence was, of course…my Mom.
Surreal; the last time I saw her was in Orlando on my last Christmas visit. I gave her a big hug, and then the onslaught of relatives came out.
“Hola Papi!”exclaimed my Tia Vilma.
You see, they hadn’t seen me since I was 15. So, they were just as excited as I was. Funny story: my mom called Ottito 3 times during our drive home from the airport. “Where the hell are you!!!” was essentially these conversations’ theme. The drink had been drunken, if you must know!
From Left to Right: My Tia Vilma, y Mom, Nuria (my cousin, daughter of Vilma), and Alessandra (I’m drawing a blank, but I think that’s her spelling; she’s my cousin Charlie’s girlfriend)
From Left to Right: Miriam (cousin, daughter of Vilma); Ottito
From Left to Right: Tia Vilma, Charlie (son of Vilma, cousin), Lourdes (cousin, daughter of Vilma)
As you may imagine, food takes a large place in the heart of Latin countries. Tonight and the next 12 days meant a lot of home cooking: we literally only ate at a restaurant three times during our entire trip and two of those were at the same place (more on that later). We consumed so…much….food of such delicious quality, that I will leave it up to later chapters to fully discuss.
But at least you can see here the Christmas dinner that awaited us:
If this isn’t a more obvious description of love, my mom woke up early to make me —ME— her potato salad! (you can see it in the far side of the table).
Another interesting note: my Spanish was coming back. Quickly.
I was very nervous I wouldn’t be able to keep up. There were times I struggled as I’ve always felt that I had the Spanish vocabulary of a fifteen year old (the last time I was here). I’d screw up verbs occasionally, but the best feeling in the world is knowing quickly that… I’d be ok.
We ate. We laughed. A lot. This would be a huge theme in days that followed.
Now, tomorrow wasn’t going to be much as we made a very smart decision at the end of this day: we would be going to Trujillo two days earlier than planned.
Ottito gave us his room, which had A/C. I should mention that: not much A/C in this country, except in restaurants. Also: no hot water. Just about anywhere. Surprisingly though, it wasn’t particularly hot outside anyway.
As we laid down exhausted, I had this mixture of emotions that was neither retrospective nor nostalgic. It was brimming with forward movement in this day of good starts:
What would happen next?
Next: Chapter 2: San Pedro during the day, the 2nd most disappointing part of the trip, and the 4 hour drive to Trujillo
