I woke up in a sweat. The rain poured outside of my window like a waterfall. It didn’t stop for several hours. There was a break in the rain early in the morning when I should have gotten coffee, but it was so comfortable lying in my single bed with nothing to do but sleep that I just decided to forgo coffee and lay in the tiny cell that I was appropriated the previous night.
I was supposed to get up today, but I just didn’t want to.
A few hours later, I woke up and climbed the 16 rickety stairs that brought me up to the restaurant of the hostel. I wanted coffee, but I was over an hour late and the kitchen was closed. I poured the last little bit of lukewarm coffee out of the thermos. The gal behind the counter heated it up in the microwave and I finally had a hot cup of stale coffee to begin my day exploring the island of Roatan.
Soon thereafter, a fellow American, JT, and I set off onto the local bus that circles the island. It was 18 Limps, or Lempira as the government calls them ($0.75 US), to get to the scummy tourist side of the island. We walked a bit and then stopped around a local going the same direction.
“Headed to West End?” he asked
“Yessir,” I said, as we leaned against the chicken wire fence that surrounded one of the local dive shops.
A few minutes later a dilapidated bus came tumbling around the corner. We flagged it down, jumped on, and took our ride to the unknown tourist side of the island.
It was amazing as we landed. A slew of dive shops, businesses and people awaited us as we hopped off the bus onto the streets of West End. It was island tourism at its finest.
We walked a few blocks and stumbled upon a bar called the Booty Bar. It was packed up with people and we decided to sit down for a few and grab a drink. I later found out that this was a hangout for prostitutes and was approached multiple times by beautiful island women looking to make a buck.
The biggest group in the bar was a group of black girls from Ft. Worth, Tx. They were on a cruise and had stopped in Roatan for a few hours. During these few hours these girls pounded 6-10 shots of tequila, for $1 a piece. They were lucid and ridiculous while they twerked and danced before they went back to the safe haven of their cruise ship, leaving the rest of us to fight through the streets of Roatan.
A while later, JT and I walked to Frank’s cigar bar. It was a hole-in-the-wall bar with three seats and a wall of cigars. We met a young girl from Tennessee named Alexis and got a couple drinks and a Honduran cigar. Alexis told us everything she knew about the island and where we needed to go. I learned a lot about Roatan from this encounter.
I grabbed some groceries for the next few days and we both split out of there to come home and have a great evening. I made paella and fell asleep in a hammock as the rain poured down. And while I rocked to sleep, I thought about my family and Boss. I miss my friend and partner in crime.