And some strangers will buy you mangoes!

Sometimes I find myself wondering, how did I get in the back of this police truck?

No really, how did this happen?

Not the paddywagon, mind you. The metal bench in the back of the Policía car that saved us from thumbing all the way down the 5-South. We didn’t feel particularly lucky after being dropped off in front of a corner store, pulpería, and stood up as if on a bad date. Most people are wonderful, and trustworthy, and sometimes, people forget that they were driving you to Zambrano and leave you at a hot, dusty corner listening to a borracho singing mariachi music.

For all the bad I’ve heard of the Honduran police – they are corrupt, they are corrupt, and hey, they are corrupt – at least they have a soft spot for pathetic looking gringos.

The cement truck.

But this was the end, the journey worth just as much as the destination (the lake that we never saw, because we were more interested in finding fried fish and relaxing and taking showers in the hot water at the hostel. I maxed out at three showers in two days.) Definitely more interesting was roaming around Peña Blanca getting cat-called and eating ice cream out of an old man’s push cart, and admiring giant banyan trees, and spitting semi-confident Spanish at some caballeros around the fire pit.

The fish.

The memory that is worth shelving is standing in the truck bed, watching the mountains pass, the sugar cane pass, cutting open a mango with a pocketknife and having sticky mango fingers for hours. Drinking real beer from the only known Honduran microbrewery, hammock hanging, foot after foot of miles in my shoes that finally gave me blisters. And smiles are passed around like water bottles: the Honduran road is an unsuspecting ally.

Six hours there, eight hours back – we hauled ourselves in at 3:30 yesterday covered in dust and sweat.

We went to Peña Blanca this weekend, and it was amazing.