Rocky Times

I met Francois on the street after dark in La Ceiba (after having a delightful Italian dinner with a group of volunteer teachers). He had just got off the bus and was looking for a hotel...eeek, after dark!?! Most of the hotels were already closed so my mother bear instincts kicked in and I invited him to share my room. It is moments like these that I forget that what seems "normal" in my world is not usually normal in other people's reality (with the exception of Grandma Weinberg!). Poor, gentle Francois: cold and shut out, but trained to not accept invitations from chipper, sneezing women on the street at night. He went back into the rain and eventually found himself a room.

Two days later we met again at the boat dock for the Bay Islands. I must have looked more presentable because he wasn't as timid as our first encounter. Boarding the 'Utila Princess' to he mentioned that the only time he'd been sick during his year~long trip was on a long, windy bus ride...oh, he gets motion sickness.

I wish I had a videotape of that boat ride...the Utila Princess turned out to be the fiery hell of all carnival rides. An hour of stomach churning madness. She rocked and lucrched and dipped, her wide body incapable of figuring out which wave to ride. Due to the rainy weather the captain enclosed the passenger area with a zipped plastic tarp so we wouldn't get wet... I felt like a fish out of water, breathing through my open mouth searching for a drop of oxygen in the stagnant air. I wanted to look around to see if everyone else was escaping conscious existence, but the slightest movement of my head made me unsure of the location of my bean and tortilla breakfast. And dear, gentle Francois. I could feel his tense body next to mine on the bench...he wasn't moving and I could only imagine what his escape route was if "trouble" were to erupt.

We landed on the islands without anyone needing a bag, but everyone was ashen, frowning and crawling toward the dock. What a ride.