Honduras

I just got back the other night from a little over two weeks of traveling. I spent the first few days in Florida, then met up with my friend Abby and we flew to Honduras with our bikes.

We had done a weekend bike trip together up on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia late last year, and although the weather didn't quite live up to the name, we had fun. After that, we had been talking about doing a longer trip in Mexico or Central America in January, but Abby wasn't able to get away from work then. So I ended up doing a 10-day solo bike trip in Mexico in mid January to celebrate my birthday, flying into Puerto Vallarta, and biking south along the coast from there, hitting a bunch of beaches and fishing villages, doing some snorkeling, meeting interesting people, getting lost a couple of times, and camping out. (Maybe eventually I get around to writing up a more detailed post about that trip).

Anyway, after I got back from that trip, we started tossing around a bunch of ideas, and finally settled on going to Honduras with our bikes for about 10 days towards the end of February. I decided to extend my trip a few days by hanging out in Florida, since we would be changing planes in Miami anyway.

In the end, we didn't end up doing all that much biking, but still did enough to justify bringing the bikes (I took the Pugsley, she had a mountain bike). We also got in some diving and snorkeling, visited the Mayan ruins of Copan, made a run to the border and spent a few minutes in Guatemala. We also got plenty of Spanish practice talking to various interesting locals pretty much everywhere we went.

Anyhow, here is a fairly brief day-by-day summary of the trip:

Feb 23: I fly to Miami, ride my bike to South Beach from the airport, spend the night in a hostel there.

 

Feb 24: Ride bike to Everglades National Park, mostly following paths that parallel Hwy 1. Mostly suburban sprawl, not that interesting, until I leave the hwy near Homer. Stop at big fruit stand for fresh fruit milkshake and some fruit. Camp just inside the park at Long Pine Key.

Feb 25: Ride to Flamingo, exploring various trails and pull-outs along the way, camp. Talk to family (husband, wife, 15 y/o son) who biked from the Yukon.

Feb 26: Spend the day exploring near Flamingo by bike, foot, and pack-raft.

Feb 27: Head back to Miami, end up taking commuter rail last 20 miles or so, then ride over to South Beach to hostel.

Feb 28: Ride to airport, meet Abby at the airport (she took a red-eye flight from Seattle), fly together to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Take taxi to Tamarindo Hostel, put bikes together, explore area close to hostel a bit by foot, have dinner at Estelina's, a few blocks from the hostel.

Feb 29: Ride to bus station, take bus to Tela. A clown gets on at one of the stops and tells jokes and does some simple magic tricks. We try to find a woman in Tela that helped a friend of Abby's several years ago. We find some of the woman's relatives and talk to them, but she died of cancer a few years ago. We bike out to Miami, a small Garifuna village on the coast, meet some of the locals, eat dinner in a comedor in a small hut which contains a kitchen, one table and several extra chairs, which are filled with chatting relatives of the woman doing the cooking. We camp on the sand under a palapa.

 

Mar 1: Bike back to Tela. Stop for some supplies at a grocery, help a kid repair his front bike basket with a zip tie after it falls off and spills some of cooking oil he had just bought. Then I notice my front tire is flat (due to valve stem that got broken while putting bikes together in SPS), so I replace the tube with a spare while Abby helps patch the tube I didn't get around to fixing after my flat in Florida, and then she talks with some drunk guy who stumbles over and seems pretty incomprehensible from what little I overhear while finishing up.

 

We ride along highway towards La Ceiba. Heavy downpour just outside of Tela, we stop to put on rain jackets, and are invited into a small, very poor house to take shelter for a few minutes, waiting out the worst of the rain. Continue riding once rain lets up a little.

Make a stop along the way for agua de coco at a roadside stand and a late lunch a bit further down the road at a roadside restaurant. Pretty nice ride along the highway, fairly scenic, not too much traffic, decent shoulders. We're not really sure where we'll end up for the night, but trust we'll figure something out. We end up arriving in San Juan Pueblo, which isn't on our map even though it is the larger than any other town we've passed through, just as it is getting dark. Eventually we find a cheap hotel. Have dinner, walk around a bit looking for licuados (fresh fruit milkshakes, but without the ice cream).

 

Mar 2: Continue along highway to Ceiba, briefly investigate steaming hot spring running into nearby river, stop for lunch at road side BBQ in El Pino, use internet. Bike past La Ceiba (not seeing much except "fast food row" along the highway) to ferry dock for boats to the Bay Islands. Vacillate over whether we want to go to Utila or Roatan, finally decide on Utila. Sit in the front of the boat, get soaked by splashing waves (fun, but there was a covered section, too). Find hotel at far end of town, sign up for SCUBA refresher course for the next morning at the only dive place we can find that is still open, have a fish dinner on the beach.

Mar 3: Utila. Do a "SCUBA Tune-up" refresher course (Abby didn't really need it, but I was glad to do it after not having been diving for ~15 years). It goes well, and the instructor tells us it was probably the smoothest and quickest one he's ever done. Have lunch at "Dump Town" (as Abby affectionately dubs it), a small, hole-in-the-wall basement place with comida tipica, ceilings so low I can't stand up straight. Go on a dive in the afternoon. Boat has trouble starting initially, they start it by using a screw driver to short across the starter. Abby and I go snorkeling during the first dive, since they are doing an advanced dive to a wreck at 100' feet, and we aren't certified to that depth. Snorkeling is good, but not as many fish as I saw in Belize, or Abby saw in Thailand. We eventually swim out to the moored boat, which they can't get started. So after much confusion, we get a tow back to the dock, switch boats, head out again for the second dive. First dive I've ever done in tropical waters, and it is great! We've been considering doing the Advanced Open Water course, but decide against it. But do decide to go diving with a different company the next day, and go get that arranged. Dinner and beers at place with Israeli food, which is pretty good.

Mar 4: Utila. We go out for the morning with Bay Islands College of Diving, doing another dive, on the north side of the island this time, again a lot of fun, and BICD seems much more professional than the other place we were at. I decide to go snorkeling at the second dive site, but Abby does the dive. We go out for lunch, the food takes forever to arrive, and when it does it is crappy. Then I head back to the hotel for a siesta while Abby goes to a handicrafts shop and ends up talking with the owner for a long time.
I head out for a bike ride, and we make plans to meet up at a beach later to do some snorkeling. We run into each other along one of the roads, and it is starting to get dark, so we head to a beach near a housing development. It doesn't really have good access for snorkeling, so we wade a bit, watch the sunset and waves, take some photos, ride back into town. Dinner at a touristy place, with fairly generic menu and live but mediocre music. My stomach has been bothering me a bit throughout the afternoon, and I don't have much of an appetite, only eat about half of my order, and a few bites of the "flaming brownie" with ice cream we order. We talk about leaving early the next morning, but decide that I will sleep in a bit, and Abby will go snorkeling in the morning with the dive boat, then we'll take the afternoon ferry back to Ceiba.

Mar 5: Abby gets up early to go snorkeling. I do end up sleeping in a bit, but only until about 8:15, but better than having to get up to catch the 6:20 boat! I then go for a bike ride, first out to the beach we were at last night, to look for Abby's sunglasses, which are sitting on a rock near where we where hanging out.

After a licuado, I head out to the airport, following a nicely paved road with absolutely no traffic, which ends at the runway. Then I follow a gravel road to the shore, and follow a rough, sandy, rocky 4x4 track along the shore for a while, before it more or less dead ends in the jungle. There are a few short, very rough roads made up of big chunks of coral, but they only lead a short distance into the jungle before stopping. I explore a few of them (glad for the Pugsley!), then head back, riding down a narrow paved strip along the runway, then back to town to stop at the bakery for some bread and juice, hanging out on the porch for a while to wait out a downpour.

 

We head to lunch again at "Dump Town", which Abby has learned is owned by the guy that was captaining the BICD dive boat, and his wife is one of the women working there. I still don't have much of an appetite, so just get something to drink while Abby eats. We catch the 2 pm boat to La Ceiba, ride into town and around a bit, find a hotel. Then we head out on the bikes to explore a bit, then lock them up and walk around, so Abby can search for a new swimsuit. We stop at a bakery as it is getting dark, then cross the street to sit in the park, and end up talking to some local guys. One, a grandpa, has a 25 year old Raleigh "chopper" bicycle, and I mostly talk with him, while Abby chats with the two younger fellows. They recommend we do a "train" tour (although it runs on the roads), and one of them takes us to talk to the "engineer", who is also a musician, and we chat with him for a while, but decide not to do it, since our bikes aren't in a particular safe area. So we agree to meet with the guys in the park the next evening at 6, and then do the train tour later. After collecting the bikes, we have dinner at a pupusaria, and my appetite has returned. Then we look for a pharmacy for some treatments for various skin issues (sunburn, itching bug bites, cycling induced chafing), then back to the hotel. The mosquitoes are pretty annoying, and I don't sleep very well, although much better once I get up to slather on some bug repellent.

Mar 6: We get a fairly early start, heading out for a day ride along the Rio Cangrejal. A bit out of town, we stop to get some water, and end up talking with a local guy, a doctor, who is building a hotel nearby. He takes us over to show us the construction site, explaining how it will look when completed, and we sit on cinder blocks in the shade of a tree and talk with him and his daughter for a while. The hotel will be called the Guacamaya (Scarlet Macaw), and will have a restaurant with an open courtyard with a big tree, and a live Macaw in the tree, with some sort of netting overhead to keep it from flying away. The daughter is an architecture student, and helped with the design. She has studied English at school, and her dad tries to get her to practice with us, but she is reluctant. But we hear quite a bit about their family. We continue on our way on the gravel road along the river, stopping again for a break and sodas at visitors' center, with a suspension bridge over the river. It is hot, and we've been climbing. We climb a bit further to nice restaurant/lodge, and stop for lunch and a longer break. The food is fairly expensive and mediocre, but they do have great licuados and excellent ice cream (and apple pie!), and the setting and atmosphere is very nice. Once we set out again, there is a bit of a breeze which makes it a bit cooler. We continue climbing along the river, and then do a big climb up away from the river. We pause for a while to rest and chat with a woman and her young son, then continue climbing up the steep grade to the summit, and decide to turn around there. The bike book (Cycle Central America) described this valley as "the most scenic in Central America", and although it is very pretty, we are a bit doubtful it is the most beautiful. Still, it is amazing clean for Latin America, with much less litter and trash than you generally expect to see along the road and river, maybe partially due to signs urging people to keep it clean?

 

 

A short ways down from the summit, we take some photos at a place with good views, then enjoy the bumpy descent, stopping at a small store for a drink when things level out a bit, and end up talking for quite a while with the various people hanging around the store. Then we continue on down, stopping at the big bridge over the river, and go swimming. We splash around for a while, jump into a deep spot off the rocks and let the current wash us down stream a ways, stand mid-stream on a gravel bar with the current sweeping past, and then just soak, snacking on peanuts and drinking a warm beer, admiring the views. A bunch of ants get into Abby's clothes, and it takes a while to clean them off. As we are leaving, 3 young soldiers come by and talk to us for a while, pose for pictures with their rifles. We don't end up leaving the bridge until about 5:50, and it is getting dark. We end up riding much of the way back in the dark, but luckily have lights, and there isn't much traffic. We don't make it back into town and the plaza until about 7, but the old guy with the "chopper" bike is there, and we talk to him for a while. The other two guys were apparently there earlier, but left before we arrived, and it seems the train tour fellow decided to take the night off, too. The old guy suggests a carnitas restaurant, and we go there. I get the carnitas, which is served in a basket over cabbage, onions, and fried plantain chips, then covered with sauce, which makes everything kind of look like a slop bucket. I don't think the food is all that bad (not that I think it is all that great, either), but Abby thinks it is awful, and her stomach doesn't like it either. Back at the hotel, I end up setting up the tent on the bed for mosquito protection. It is a bit hot at first, but I end up sleeping much better than the previous night.

 

Over all, this was probably my favorite day of the trip: biking in a nice place with good scenery and little traffic, a nice afternoon swim at a beautiful section of the river, interesting locals to talk to along the way. Having better food would have made it nearly perfect.

Mar 7: We had discussed riding from Ceiba to Trujillo along a (probably) rough road (based on the map) along the coast, but decided to bus to Copan instead to see the Mayan ruins there. So we rode out to the bus station, riding by the market, the old, rotting dock (used to ship out bananas in the past), and the Standard Fruit Company along the way. We arrived at the bus station about 9, just as a bus was starting to pull out for San Pedro Sula, and hurriedly loaded our bikes.

At a 15 minute food stop, we got some delicious but dirty baleadas (flour tortillas with a bit of refried black beans and cheese, Abby also found a hair and a piece of plastic in hers) and talk with a couple from New Zealand/Australia, the woman is wearing a "Bike the world's most dangerous road" t-shirt.

Arriving in San Pedro Sula, there aren't any buses to Copan from the small station our bus goes to, and we have to ride out to the larger bus terminal/shopping mall. We pass the NZ/Aus couple again as we are wheeling our bikes through the mall section to get to the bus terminal section. Abby and I take turns watching the bikes and bags, while the other gets food, runs errands. When I return to relieve Abby, she is chatting with a young boy, and I talk with him a bit, too. He asks me if the US is near Spain, and I draw him a rough map. He is there selling cookies to bus passengers, and tells me that he does it every afternoon after school, even though it is against the rules to sell stuff at the bus terminal like he does. As we are talking, a guy from the bus company comes over to tell me we should load the bikes, and the boy scampers off to find Abby while we get the bikes loaded. After waiting on and around the hot bus for a while, we finally get under way.

At La Entrada, a town along the way, the NZ/Aus couple gets on the bus. The rest of the way to Copan Ruinas is up into the mountains, the road and views reminiscent of the highlands of Guatemala. We arrive in town as it is getting dark, put the bikes back together, look at the guide books and chat with a hotel tout. Usually I strictly avoid all hotel touts, since I find them annoying and don't want to encourage them, but we end up following him to take a look at the place. The tout seems pretty slimy, but the owner of the hotel seems nice, and it is a very nice place, and inexpensive, about $10/night since it is the low season and not many people in town. Turns out the NZ/Aus couple also end up staying there, and we chat with them a bit more.

We have dinner in a nice restaurant, and the waiter patiently answers all of our questions about the menu and dishes. The food is quite good, if a little pricey, but still very cheap by US standards, and there is a lot of it. After finishing dinner, we walk out to the fair, which apparently lasts a few weeks, and is pretty similar to a small town carnival in the US. There aren't many people, only a few of the rides are actually running. We end up spending a few minutes at one of the shooting games. Abby goes first, apparently she's never shot a gun (or even an air rifle, which these are) before, but manages to hit a couple of the plastic soldiers with her first two shots. When my turn comes, I carefully aim, and squeeze the trigger and miss about 5 times in a row. I've shot quite a bit, and this should be a fairly easy shot to make, assuming the sights are correctly aligned and the gun is reasonably consistent from pellet to pellet. But those probably aren't valid assumptions, and I give up, ignore the sights, and just do some quick point shooting, managing to hit a couple of the soldiers. We collect our prizes (a small stuffed bear, a plastic snake, and a cheesy framed card with that says something like "te quiero mucho", and chat with the woman running the booth for a few minutes, getting a photo of her posing with one of the rifles. We wander around a bit more, then head back into town.

I end up watching most of The Incredibles (in Spanish) on the TV in our room before turning in.


Mar 8: Copan Ruinas. Abby is feeling rather fatigued today, but we decide to go out for a ride, end up pedaling unpaved roads and trails of varying quality to La Boca del Monte, a small village up in the hills. Along the way, we chat with a local guy on a bike as we ride along, about what is in the area, bikes, etc., then pause under a large tree for a rest when we part ways at a fork in the road. After a few mintues, we climb up to the village of Chilar, then down along a path to Boca del Monte. Abby is pretty tired, so We ride back into town for lunch of pupusas at a small comedor, and she decides to hang out in town. I decide to head out for another ride, we agree to meet back in the park around 6.

 

I end up climbing back up into the hills on a different road, spending a lot of time grinding uphill in my lowest gear, passing a group of horseback riding tourists. It is slow going, but it is a cool day, and there are good views down into the valley. I pass through some small clusters of simple houses (more like huts really), greeting people along the way. After a couple of hours, I am trying to decided whether I should turn around and head back the way I came, or see if I can find some other way to get back into town. I stop to talk to a family sitting outside their house, asking them where the road goes, if there is some sort of loop I can make. They tell me I can follow the road down into Cabanas, then another road from there to Santa Rita, where I can hop on the highway back to town. I ask about the distance, and figure I should be able to make it back by about 6 based on their estimates, so continue on my way down the backside of the hills into another river valley and down into Cabanas, a fairly sizeable town.

I stop for a soda and a quick break, admiring the central plaza overflowing with tropical plants and a minature church, ask a local guy hanging around on the street for directions, and he doesn't know exactly how far back into town it is kilometer-wise, but estimates it will take an hour and a half by bike. Another bystander, chimes in, agreeing, and since it is nearly 5, I decide to ride faster than I have been. The road into Santa Rita is gravel, but very good quality, and I fly along it, admiring views of the river and surrounding hills. I reach Santa Rita after about 15 minutes, then hop onto the pavement. There isn't much traffic, and I feel like I am going incredibly fast, after bouncy along on unpaved, sometimes very rough roads and tracks for the last couple of hours. I roll into town about 5:30, drop the bike off at the hotel, and meander over towards the park, exploring a bit along the way.

Abby shows up, and we decide to have street food for dinner, then get some information about possible coffee tours and end up with some drinks at a touristy bar, then head to a dance and the "Queen of the Fair" beauty pageant, which has been advertised to start at 8. We buy tickets, go inside, but it is completely empty, and we are told things won't really start until at least 10. So we head back to the fair again, and it is much busier than the previous night. We hang around, just people watching for quite a while, then after some discussion, decide to ride the Ferris wheel. This is similar to the one I rode in Guatemala, meaning it runs MUCH faster than Ferris wheels in the US, and is actually pretty scary at first. Abby seems to be absolutely hating it at at the beginning, but eventually relaxes, and jokes with the young girls in front of us. We survive, wander around looking unsuccesfully for a bathroom, then head back into town to the dance.



The "beauty pageant" is pretty silly, with 5 contestants. Due to the horrendously loud volume and awful acoustics, it is hard to understand what the announcer is saying. One of the contestants, the youngest, seems to be absolutely hating it. We can't decide if she is just horribly nervous, or has been forced to do it against her will. She slouches around on the stage with a sullen expression. Most of the others are ridiculously, artificially chipper, more like one would expect. There are 3 or 4 "events" separated by pauses for the contestants to change outfits and such, then the results are announced, and the dancing begins. The music is painfully loud, but we hang around inside for a while watching, and Abby dances a little bit as a I retreat outside in pain. I offer to go get my earplugs at the hotel so that I can tolerate going back in to maybe dance a bit, but we end up just goiong back to the hotel.

Mar 9: Copan Ruinas. We ride out to the Mayan ruins, arriving a bit before 8, and have the place almost entirely to ourselves for an hour or so, before heading back to the entrance to join a tour given by a guide we happened to meet in Ceiba, and who Abby ran into again by chance in Copan at an internet cafe. The tour is in Spanish, and besides us, there are a couple of middle-aged Spanish women, and a Honduran couple. The guide is enthusiastic and informative. As we are passing through the ticket control point and the guide is telling us about a visit of the Queen of Spain to the ruins, the ticket collector smiles, shakes his head, and conspirationally whispers to the Honduran couple: "He lies quite a bit, doesn't he?" The tour lasts a couple of hours. The site is different from the other Mayan ruins I've been too, with somewhat less impressive structures as far as number and size goes, but with more impressive scuptural details.

 

After the tour, we contemplate whether to try riding to La Entrada, but decide to stick around and take the bus from Copan to San Pedro Sula in the morning.

We have lunch at a place near the ruins which has pretty good food. Abby has been considering doing a coffee tour, but decides it probably isn't worth the price, so we head out for a ride to the Guatemalan border along the highway. There is a pretty big hill, with a long climb and a fast descent on the other side down to the border. We ask if we can briefly cross and are told there is a small village about 1 km away, so we ride through it and back to the border to hang out for a bit in front of store, snacking. I get a soda, then decide to get a Gallo (a Guatemalan beer) for old times sake.

 

We head back through the border area, and stop to use the bathrooms. While I am lounging around waiting for Abby, a Guatemalan money changer strikes up a conversation, and we end up talking with him for quite a while. Like many of the other people we have talked to, he lived in the US for a few years, working. In his case at a pizza place in Pennsylvania. After a while, we realize we are running out of daylight and decide to head back, giving him the bear and snake, the prizes from the carnival, for his kids. We've been meaning to get rid of them the past couple of days, but keep forgetting.

We climb back up the hill as the sun gets low in the sky. Of course the wind has shifted, so we have had a head wind both ways, but it isn't too bad. Abby pauses to take a photo of the landscape, but there are a couple of women crossing the road at the same place, and they are very excited to get their photos taken, although they pose with very stern expressions. It takes quite a bit of discussion to try to figure out how to get the photos to them, since they apparently don't have an address and don't ever receive mail. That was also a problem the previous night at the carnival, when Abby was trying to figure out how to get photos to the girls from the ferris wheel.

We head back into town, have dinner at a place the hotel manager recommends, Tejitas, and it has pretty good comida tipica at reasonable prices.

Mar 10: We get up to catch the 7 am bus back to San Pedro Sula, and then ride back to the hostel, stopping for a snack at Estelina's along the way. We are happy to discover that Abby's bike box has survived. We'd left it under a sketchy looking roof in a storage area behind the hostel, and beside vehement assurances that it would be OK even if it rained by the hostel's maid, we had been skeptical. Luckily, it apparently hadn't rained in San Pedro Sula at all. We leave the bikes, and wander around the city much of the afternoon in the heat. Visit a couple of markets and the central park, look for crazy colored spoke reflectors (we'd been seeing purple and green) at a couple of bike stores (no luck), stop at the post office to mail some postcards, make a couple of snack and drink stops along the way, visit a book store so I can look for some reading material for the plane, etc. I leave Abby at the handicraft market near the hostel, and return for a brief siesta.

About 5:30, before it gets dark, we pack up the bikes, and eventually go out to dinner at Estelina's, although when we realize they don't have beer, we ask the manager if we can bring in our own. He is pretty cool with it, just says we should buy empty paper cups from them and drink it from that so that he doesn't get into trouble. We head back to a small grocery, get some snacks for the plane, and in place of beer end up buying a small bottle of rum to spike the tropical fruit licuados. I get a banana licuado with my baleadas, and a couple shots of rum makes it even better.

Back at the hotel, the maid reserves a taxi for us for the following morning, and we turn in pretty early since we need to be up early for the flight.


Mar 11: Around 4 am the maid comes in and tells me our taxi is here, even though we had requested it arrive around 4:45. I groggily go out to talk to the driver, and discover that the taxi is a normal sized car, even though we had specifically requested a larger van or something so we could fit in the bikes in it. I discuss things with the driver and maid, he calls on the radio to try to get a bigger taxi, but is told there aren't any available. We try to see if Abby's box will fit in the trunk, decide we can probably lash it to the roof if we find some rope. I head back up to tell Abby what is going on, and we get dressed, grab our bags and head out to help load the bikes. We end up with Abby's bike somewhat precariously lashed to the roof, and mine hanging out the trunk, our bags in the back seat. The driver promises to drive slowly, and both he and I keep a hand on the box on the roof to make sure it doesn't get blown or shaken off. We make it to the airport without incident, wait around a bit for the counter to open, get checked in, pay our exit tax, get through security, and wait for our flight. I was kind of hoping to pick up a bottle of Zacapa Rum, which is impossible to find in Washington State, but the duty free shop is closed for inventory.

We mostly try to sleep on the flight to Miami (although I don't have much success), and luckily it isn't too full, so can spread out a bit.

In Miami, we decide to leave the airport for lunch, since we have a multi-hour layover. Unfortunately, United won't let me check in my bike until four hours before my flight, so I have to pay to store it at the left luggage office in the airport.
(For reasons dealing with using airline miles from different airlines, Abby and I had booked different flights on different airlines from Miami to Seattle. Since she was flying on the same airline on a single ticket all the way, she was able to recheck her bike without problems; I was actually traveling on two separate tickets, booked with two different airlines.)

After dealing with the bike, we hop on a bus that gets us fairly close to little Havana and then walk several blocks hauling our luggage. We end up at Versailles, which several people tell us has the best Cuban food in the area, even though we would have preferred a smaller place. Ironically, they also happen to have several locations in the airport itself, although all of the ones I saw there were more bakery and coffee places, and didn't seem to serve meails. Still the food is pretty tasty, and I also get a very tasty and reasonably priced (for Miami) mojito, and a decent slice of key lime pie for desert. The waitress that takes our order apparently doesn't speak English, and we end up ordering in Spanish, which is fine, since we still haven't completely adjusted to the fact that we can address strangers in English now, and keep starting to talk to them in Spanish anyway.

Then it is back to the airport, with a brief stop at a liqour store so Abby can pick up a couple of gifts, and I consider buying a bottle of Zacapa Rum since they have it, but decide it will be a pain to pack, and if I don't get it, I will have yet another reason to go to San Fransisco again sometime soon.

Abby and I part ways when we get back to the airport, since we'll be flying out of different terminals. I collect the bike, get checked in, wait a couple of hours for my flight to Denver, which is uneventful. By the time I get off the plane and grab a carryout sandwich at a place across from my boarding gate, my plane has already started to load, and I walk directly onto the plane into my first class seat, and am almost immediately given a class of wine.

Arriving in Seattle, I see that Abby's flight was apparently delayed a few minutes, and we have arrived within a couple minutes of each other. I collect my bike, and walk down to the her baggage carousel, start putting the bike together, see her in a couple of minutes. She goes to look for her friend, we load the bikes and bags into her car, and get a ride home. I'm pretty out of it at this point, not having slept more than a few minutes on any of the flights, and pretty much just collapse into bed.

Mar 12: I was planning to go into work, but upon awakening, remember that I am actually only supposed to be working half time this week, so only have to put in 20 hours, and don't really have to go in to work at all. So I fall back asleep, then laze around most of the day. I go out for a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and my fortune is "A new adventure awaits you this weekend". I'd been planning to not do much of all, but this makes me feel obligated to plan SOMETHING interesting to do.

In other bike news, I also stopped by R+E, since they have left a message for me about my Phil Wood hub from my Rodriguez bike that I'd dropped off before I left town. It's the hub that stopped working in Costa Rica last year, and I'd had to get a new rear wheel built up there. Turns out I somehow managed to destroy pretty much every internal part of the hub, although they really aren't sure exactly how that happened. The only thing that was still intact was the hub body. But Phil came through with the warranty and supplied a brand new replacement hub, only charging me a $30 service fee (not too shabby on a hub that costs $385 new).