Love, Jimmie

For those of you that think My Girls and I just lolled around sunbathing and being entertained on a boat for a week, I’ll have you know that we did more than that. We also sunbathed and were entertained outside of the boat, although you wouldn’t be able to tell it by looking at my skin. The last day of our vacation, Nurse Bananahammock said, “Why are you still so white? We’ve been in the sun for seven days.” Sigh. This is my lot in life, I suppose.

Our superfun TROPICAL vacation included four port stops, and that was the part I was so fuzzy on before leaving. I knew we were going to Central America/Mexico but where in CA/Mexico I could not have told you. Every day at port, I’d be all surprised and excited having discovered that “today we are in Honduras!” Oh, it was like Christmas. Even more so because I got a lot of loot at every stop, mostly in the form of earrings.

Belize

Our first stop was Honduras, the island of Roatan. It was my favorite port, and I have a story to tell about that. We also stopped in Costa Maya, Belize and Cozumel. The four of us did separate excursions in Cozumel, Woney and I opting for the lazy one which included a beach front, lounge chairs, umbrellas, a buffet and drinks brought to us by a waiter every five minutes, and Squash and Nurse Bananahammock opting for the more active excursion which began with snorkeling. Later they got to lie on the same beach in the same lounge chairs with the same umbrellas but I personally feel like I got the better deal there because Woney and I left the beach first and got to go take a nap. I’m telling you, I was a limp noodle by the end of that vacation. I haven’t napped that much since college.

Honduras

While I am a total beach girl and it would make sense that Cozumel was my favorite, the visit in Roatan won my heart because there we got to see real Roatan life, not just the tourist shops and beaches. The four of us wandered around for a bit looking at earrings and crappy t-shirts and then were approached no less than five times by “tour guides” wanting to show us around the island. It sounded like a good, safe idea, no way would we get scammed or robbed, so we opted for salesman Junior in kiosk five and handed over a hundred bucks for a:

–Personal driver
–Personal tour guide
–Private car
–Four hour tour

Junior and Jimmie

Junior introduced us to Kevin, the driver, and George, the tour guide, and then we walked out to our private car, which y’all? No. Our private car was less of a car and more of a van but a van with a shattered windshield and a collapsing headliner. Nurse Bananahammock and I wiggled our way into the back of the van and prepared to view Roatan through the back tinted windows as the dangling headliner caressed our foreheads at every pothole in the road, of which there were many. Someone at some point had made an attempt to reattach the headliner with thumbtacks that were dotted every six inches or so but that was mostly ineffective. The shattered windshield obviously had some sort of hole in it but we could not see it due to the magazine page that was beautifully taped over the hole. It was a pretty magazine page. So we were stylin’. I christened the van Big Pimpin’, and off we drove for our four hour tour.

Please note the headliner

As soon as we pulled out of the gate and onto a real Roatan road, George twisted around in his seat and began a running monologue that went something like this:

“Honduras is made up of three islands, Roatan is the biggest, and we don’t have any crime here, mmm hmmm. We don’t have no drinking age, that’s probably why, mmm hmmm.” Pause. “There are about 116,000 people who live here, mmm hmmm,” pause “and our economy is driven by tourism and fishing, mmm hmmm.” Pause. “The kids, they go to school in shifts, mmm hmmm, and that way if you have to go to work you can still go to school at night. Mmm hmmm.” Pause. “I have a daughter and her name is Hailey and I have her name tattooed right here, see? Mmm hmmm.”

Every time he would “mmm hmmm”, and for the record the “mmm hmmm” was akin to Billy Bob Thornton’s “mmm hmmm” in Slingblade, George would pause and nod his head. He was stuffed full of charisma, though, and I’m afraid we learned more about his personal life than we did about Honduras as a whole.

View from a bar

Our four hour tour included a stop at a local tourist trap souvenir store and a tourist trap beach hangout that served overpriced food and beverages. While the girls and I sat under a palm tree eating burritos, George and Kevin drove off to “purchase gasoline.” I’m assuming that was a euphemism for something but I wasn’t very keen to find out. I mean, we had already stopped for fuel once on our four-hour tour, and only 30 minutes of that tour included the drive in Big Pimpin’, so why they needed to go off again in search of it we could not fathom. However, George left his phone with us as collateral to reassure us that he would come back for us.

Let’s recap here. Squash, Nurse Bananahammock, Woney and I paid strangers, only one of which spoke English, $100 to drive us around a foreign island in a van that probably came out of a scrap yard only to be left on a beach with an ineffective waiter and no way of contacting anyone, especially George because he left his phone with us. We then tipped these strangers for not killing us, either in a vehicular manslaughter type accident or with a machete made out of a palm tree and a conch shell. The consensus was that we totally got ripped off, but again, this was my favorite stop. It was fantastic!

Kevin, Jimmie, George

Truthfully, my favorite part of any venture into a new place is the people I meet. We met a lot of interesting people in Honduras. What a friendly bunch they were. I think the thing that most impressed me about every port, Honduras, Costa Maya, Belize and Cozumel, was the pride the citizens took in their home. We didn’t meet a single person who wasn’t ecstatic about where they lived. And the care that they took with each other – anything they could do to benefit another business or another person, they did it. Perhaps it was because we were so festive ourselves, or perhaps they just saw us as walking dollar signs, but there wasn’t a single person I met that wasn’t super jazzed about sharing their lives with us.

My favorite photo

As for the prize for yesterday’s competition, we didn’t have nary a winner. Madre guessed it but she gets lunch with me all the time, plus she already got two pair of the earrings I brought back with me. I’ll have you know that the rest of the audience all picked the same answer you did, (B), but a lobcock is a dull or boring person. Next up:

What does tittup mean?
A. The prancing of a horse
B. The practice of serving cocktails before dinner
C. A tropical bird, native to Caribbean climates

Same rules apply: no cheating, and please leave your answer in the comments section.

Don’t worry . . . . about a thing . . . . every little thing . . . . is gonna be alright . . . .