Day 101 - Thursday 29th December 2005

After a night of disturbed sleep due to the poor location of the dormitory, it was a slow start to the day and everyone was tired. The one redeeming feature of the hostel was the excellent hot shower which was definately one of the better showers in Guatemala.

Situated right on the lake, the location of the hotel was another redeeming feature. The boats whizzed by right outside and from the restuarant the view out over the lake was decent enough. Although Rio Dulce is in Guatemala there was a definate air of wealth about the town, but even the poorest locals were mixing with the richest foreigners out on the water, as the vessels on the lake ranged from one man fishing for his supper with a tiny net to large yachts churning up the water as they cruised by.

The air of wealth did not stop with the boats, as despite the poor dormitories and apparent disregard for its guests, our hostel seemed as though it catered for some upmarket clientele, especially considering the price of some of the items on the menu. Overall the lake reminded me somewhat of the Norfolk Broads, except with palm tress!

As we were all sitting around the table finishing up breakfast we were tryinbg to decide what to do over the next few days and where to be to celebrate the coming of 2006, but we were not really getting anywhere. Tom summed it up by saying that wew were just waiting for something to happen rather than making it happen.

I felt like had been in Guatemala for too long and with my 6th February flight from Panama City on the back of my mind I wanted to get out of Guatemala to convince myself that I was actually moving towards Panama. After a some more discussion we decided to try and make it across the border to Honduras that day.

The guidebook said that it would be “unwise” to leave for the border after 8am as you would probably not be able to make all the connections in the same day, and would likely end up stranded somewhere. We left our hostel at 1pm. After a really crammed colectivo ride, some border crossing formalities (the border entry point for Honduras was literally a garden shed), some bartering with moneychangers and a chicken bus ride, we arrived at our destination at 6pm. So much for leaving at 8am!

Our destination was the town of Omoa on the caribbean coast, and on arrival we checked into “the coolest hostel in Honduras” (more guidebook speak). To give the book its dues, the hostel turned out to be pretty cool. The guy who runs it spent 6 years travelling the world in his pickup truck, on the way visiting 42 countries, 6 continents and clocking up 240,000km. During that time I think he must have stayed in a fair few hostels as he seems to have made available everything that a backpacker would want from a hostel.

The evening was interesting. We set out to look for a restuarant in which to have dinner, and as we were walking along the street a lady approached us and asked if we were looking for food. The lady happened to be a German, and we had been told about a decent enough place that was run by a German lady. A decnt co-incidence we followed her to her restuarant. AS we arrived it became apparent that something was not quite right and she went through the story of how she was being hunted by a man in the village and that he wanted to kill her.

Just as she was telling us this a guy slipped out of the kitchen and into the street. Apparently he had beaten her up earlier in the eveing and he said he would kill her later on. She had called the police but they hadn´t arrived yet, so we said we´d stick around until they did come.

In the meantime she also said she needed the money and she would like to be able to cook for us. Still hungry we agreed and ordered food. Two minutes later she returned and told us that whilst he was in the kitchen the guy had sabotaged the gas and she couldn´t cook anything. That left us with nothing to do but await the arrival of the police, which took about another 15 minutes.

The police in Honduras apparently don´t mess around, as they came armed with machine guns at the ready. They went out into the bushes surrounding the restuarant to look for the guy, but came back a short while later empty handed. They advised/ordered the woman to shut up her restuarant for the evening and to go stay in a hotel, as they didnt want to have to return that evening as they would be forced to shoot the guy if they had to come back.

It all turned out that the guy was the drunk husband of the German woman and we had stumbeled into an episode of their soap opera. As the police had arrived and she had shut up the restuarant for the evening there wasn´t much for us to do there, so we left to go find the original mission of the evening, food.