Tuk-tuk means vacation. The ubiquitous little rattling buzzing three-seater scooters you dodge on streets from Bombay to Amapala, the latter a volcanic island off the Honduran coast within the Bay of Fonseca twice a day heaving what the tides of the Pacific feeds her. Carrie and I spent a long weekend on this island. After settling into our room in the "best hotel on the island"--yes, tongue firmly lodged in cheek and eyes rolling into head--we were bumping along the rough narrow streets around to the west side of the island, and we both to ourselves unbeknownst to the other felt that giddy relief of "Ah, this is fun, this is freedom", feeling that flinging into adventure and unmapped afternoons that tuk-tuk rides always herald. For westerners on vacation, that is. But the journey began in Tegucigalpa, Friday morning day off from school. Early morning I found thin small wiry weightless strands of black curls resting on my toilet seat. I picked one up and it dissolved: ash. Fires in the mountains. The dry season is upon Central America. And either farmers are burning their fields, or hillsides are burning because idiots want them to burn and choke out any possible clean air that blows into our bowl through the high forests of La Tigra--I've heard both sources and it could be either, or both. But this is clockwork: you will expect the smoky air every season around this time and the devil will not disappoint (if nothing else, devils are punctual). Ash had fallen during the night, lighter than angel feathers, to inverse the metaphor: it was good we were getting out. The drive out of Tegus was winding and ugly, our fresh-from-the-shop car whose expensive repairs Carrie memorialized by giving a finish to her previous name from "Flora" to "Flora, the Expensive Ho" chugging up and around the dry scrub mountains toward the coast. Eighteen wheelers and motorcycles and pickup trucks belching exhaust. Around one turn we come upon cut piles of round leafy branches positioned in the road. Carrie intimates that these are warning signs to slow down. We did, and coming in view we saw an upturned smashed vehicle, beside it huddled were officers and locals, and below them quiet and at peace under ragged blankets lay the dead person. Carrie almost instinctively made the sign of the cross--and I suppose she'd tapped into the deeper meaning of "catholic" with that gathering together on a human prairie the small "c"--but on we drove the two lane road. Towns we passed were functional, nothing endearing. Particular long stretches of highway saw locals, often teens and children, holding up bags of fruit or other easy delicacies, waving them to the traffic; dozens of folks bunched along a stretch hawking the exact same thing...how to choose? Stands of sunny orange mounds of citrus, pale green boulders of melon, rainbows of hammocks.... The right turn off the highway would lead to Coyolito, the town pouring into the pier at the end where the la lancha, or small boat, would from our hotel ferry us to Amapala.
Newly paved perhaps a year ago, already the road was pocked with potholes; we didn't much drive as slalom, veered around young boys on horseback shouldering machetes, the odd cyclist. Zoomed past a checkered landscape of shrimp ponds. The air cooled as we neared Coyolito's ocean breeze and parked under a canopy for 100 lempiras a night (roughly $5). Dutifully, we called the hotel to announce our arrival and request a lancha to retrieve our light baggage and ourselves. Friends suggested we go the hotel lancha route, though more expensive, because the normal taxi lanchas were cheaper but also waited until their boats were filled to set off: we could be sitting there awhile, we were told. The hotel clerk said a lancha would be fifteen minutes. You can, reader, probably see this coming. After twenty-five minutes, clerk assured us: "Five minutes!" After fifteen minutes more: "Five minutes!" We've encountered this problem before: as though we'd rather be told what we'd like to hear rather than the truth. If you don't have a boat coming, proprietors the world over, please just goddamn say so. The afternoon heat rose and settled on our clothes as we wandered from one end of the pier to another. The rising volcanic Amapala was only a half mile away in full view: one side smoldered, gray smoke bubbling sluggishly skyward and drifting west. Another island in the distance retreated into a smoky haze crawling up its own flank. Some of the boat taxi captains, scruffy, sweaty, some oddly misshapen, brown-sugared by the sun, kept inviting us onboard, as clearly we were tourists hopelessly a-waiting. We kept refusing. Finally, no lancha on the horizon, we clamored aboard at a cost of 40 lemps total (two dollars). Across the bay, we first deposited cargo for small stores at the town's pier. Then we dropped of some Honduran tourists at another site. Finally we land at our hotel; I tip the captain 10 lemps. And here's where the eye-rolling commences: when checking in, the adolescent clerk tries to add on a 250 lempira charge for our boat ride over. The word that comes to mind is audacity. We say absolutely not, as we'd waiting for nearly an hour. Sheepishly agreeing, and either seeing our point or refusing to challenge the gringos, she leads us to the building of rooms on the bay facing north. Reader, there is no one else we could see in this hotel. Coming in, we view the rooms right over the bay, two stories with an unfinished third littered with concrete, buckets, re-bar and rubble. Fronting the bay are rooms with balconies, our obvious preference. Clerk girl leads us into a dark open hallway, a lower room--it has no balcony. Why can't we have one of the upper rooms, as there's no one about? The girl goes back to the desk, returns with a key, beckons us upstairs. Dark hallway leads not to one of the balconied rooms, but one off to the side--dark and dingy, with only a curtained window look o'er a rather blighted bay coastline with ragged bushes and a few empty plastic bottles in the briny grasses. And here's the lesson: woe to those who think that common sense is common (Wouldn't the guests enjoy our balcony suites, and as they're unoccupied, invite our gringo guests in?) It is not. Common sense is an app downloaded by our thoughtful parents, new versions updated as we grow and acquire education and even modest critical thinking skills. We convinced the yokel to give us the balcony room with a view, and, ensconced, enjoyed a coldie, a hazy north, and ploshing salty tides flapping and receding below our reclining selves. DAY 2: we're off early in the tuk-tuk, our driver, Alex, a young local, zooms us swerving potholes into the center of town. We slow near the central plaza, then stop. Alex explains he needs to attend the church on the plaza to say a prayer for his mother who is ill. Carrie and I wander the hot air concrete plaza, passing a scraggily old man on a bench who greets us good morning. The church has no windows, just high arching open frames through which the ocean air hums and swirls. Back onto the scrubby road, Alex after three kilometers drops us at Playa Negra, beach of black sand maybe two hundred yards long; he'll return to retrieve our sun-drench selves in three hours. Before he leaves he points to a wooden shack at the south end, a thatch hut shack twenty-five feet square feet or so, breezy open-air restaurant with rickety tables and plastic chairs. Very good food, he intones.
We step up to the shady deck and motion that we'll be eating here, and can we deposit our books and bags at a table. The restaurant is mere feet from the short running waves, into which we wade. Islands in the hazy distance, and between two the endless Pacific. This is ocean, the mineral cool dark emerald churning healer. Along the beach are similar encampments--they seems both house and restaurant, hastily assembled, but pulsing with Honduran cantatas and their wooden plank sides flashing flowery reds and purples and blues and yellows against the grainy dark sand. No one else here but the folks who live in these hovels; we are far away from tourist traps. Looking landward, dogs find shade beneath the logs propping up the restaurant from the oncoming tides and heavier seas. These people are poor. Yet the children playing on the beach laugh easily and often. A toddler wanders onto the sand from somewhere following older but still young children. The toddler follows, and it's a mystery where or to whom he belongs. Suddenly, the older children are scooting along the sand on their knees pushing large pea-pod shells like motorboats, revving engines and banking left and right against the negra sand swells. The day is warming. Carrie and I swim and read and have downed two beers and it's not even noon.
At the cool tables we order ceviche. Carrie actually goes back to the makeshift kitchen to place our order. The wife/cook assures her that the ceviche will be good, that we'll get what they have. Everything is fresh; the seafood comes from no farther than the boat a few yards away bobbing in the languid surf. Everything made by hand. The ceviche is briny and pungent with lime, and we can't discern whether it's shellfish, or squid...but we get the tang of the sea in every mouthful.
Later in the afternoon the boat returns. A slender cat sleeps under my chair. Two teenage boys brown and stern unravel and wrap their nets. A younger brother who's been running around the restaurant sits on the edge of the bow watching his brothers intently. Instinct: he'll be manning the ropes someday. Three visitors arrive, Honduran, and sit beneath the awning. Soon the woman brings them plates of fish grilled, the same fish we saw coming off the boat a half hour before. Workers who'd been digging in back trudge in and sit themselves for a meal. Grimy, one is wearing old tennis shoes, and his big toes are sticking out. A TV blares cartoons. We have woven ourselves into a their family's daily living. Personal and guest is a hazy line, like the horizon we see smoked over for the fires of the season. We feel naturally at home in this shack; never once were we made to feel rushed. Tranquilo...an Honduran phrase. That night I awake hearing the tide ploshing in again. The night is still. I wander out to the balcony under a million stars. How long since I've seen the night sky awash in their sparkle. I wake Carrie to witness. Before we return to bed I point out the big dipper directly north, low against the bay, clear and bright. I wished the water was fresh, and that the dipper could heave down and scoop tons and tons of water and pour it lovingly on these dry mountains, on these islands, over and over. Give me fires in cold stone heaths or in a rocky pit in the Sierras at nightfall.
Newly paved perhaps a year ago, already the road was pocked with potholes; we didn't much drive as slalom, veered around young boys on horseback shouldering machetes, the odd cyclist. Zoomed past a checkered landscape of shrimp ponds. The air cooled as we neared Coyolito's ocean breeze and parked under a canopy for 100 lempiras a night (roughly $5). Dutifully, we called the hotel to announce our arrival and request a lancha to retrieve our light baggage and ourselves. Friends suggested we go the hotel lancha route, though more expensive, because the normal taxi lanchas were cheaper but also waited until their boats were filled to set off: we could be sitting there awhile, we were told. The hotel clerk said a lancha would be fifteen minutes. You can, reader, probably see this coming. After twenty-five minutes, clerk assured us: "Five minutes!" After fifteen minutes more: "Five minutes!" We've encountered this problem before: as though we'd rather be told what we'd like to hear rather than the truth. If you don't have a boat coming, proprietors the world over, please just goddamn say so. The afternoon heat rose and settled on our clothes as we wandered from one end of the pier to another. The rising volcanic Amapala was only a half mile away in full view: one side smoldered, gray smoke bubbling sluggishly skyward and drifting west. Another island in the distance retreated into a smoky haze crawling up its own flank. Some of the boat taxi captains, scruffy, sweaty, some oddly misshapen, brown-sugared by the sun, kept inviting us onboard, as clearly we were tourists hopelessly a-waiting. We kept refusing. Finally, no lancha on the horizon, we clamored aboard at a cost of 40 lemps total (two dollars). Across the bay, we first deposited cargo for small stores at the town's pier. Then we dropped of some Honduran tourists at another site. Finally we land at our hotel; I tip the captain 10 lemps. And here's where the eye-rolling commences: when checking in, the adolescent clerk tries to add on a 250 lempira charge for our boat ride over. The word that comes to mind is audacity. We say absolutely not, as we'd waiting for nearly an hour. Sheepishly agreeing, and either seeing our point or refusing to challenge the gringos, she leads us to the building of rooms on the bay facing north. Reader, there is no one else we could see in this hotel. Coming in, we view the rooms right over the bay, two stories with an unfinished third littered with concrete, buckets, re-bar and rubble. Fronting the bay are rooms with balconies, our obvious preference. Clerk girl leads us into a dark open hallway, a lower room--it has no balcony. Why can't we have one of the upper rooms, as there's no one about? The girl goes back to the desk, returns with a key, beckons us upstairs. Dark hallway leads not to one of the balconied rooms, but one off to the side--dark and dingy, with only a curtained window look o'er a rather blighted bay coastline with ragged bushes and a few empty plastic bottles in the briny grasses. And here's the lesson: woe to those who think that common sense is common (Wouldn't the guests enjoy our balcony suites, and as they're unoccupied, invite our gringo guests in?) It is not. Common sense is an app downloaded by our thoughtful parents, new versions updated as we grow and acquire education and even modest critical thinking skills. We convinced the yokel to give us the balcony room with a view, and, ensconced, enjoyed a coldie, a hazy north, and ploshing salty tides flapping and receding below our reclining selves. DAY 2: we're off early in the tuk-tuk, our driver, Alex, a young local, zooms us swerving potholes into the center of town. We slow near the central plaza, then stop. Alex explains he needs to attend the church on the plaza to say a prayer for his mother who is ill. Carrie and I wander the hot air concrete plaza, passing a scraggily old man on a bench who greets us good morning. The church has no windows, just high arching open frames through which the ocean air hums and swirls. Back onto the scrubby road, Alex after three kilometers drops us at Playa Negra, beach of black sand maybe two hundred yards long; he'll return to retrieve our sun-drench selves in three hours. Before he leaves he points to a wooden shack at the south end, a thatch hut shack twenty-five feet square feet or so, breezy open-air restaurant with rickety tables and plastic chairs. Very good food, he intones. 
We step up to the shady deck and motion that we'll be eating here, and can we deposit our books and bags at a table. The restaurant is mere feet from the short running waves, into which we wade. Islands in the hazy distance, and between two the endless Pacific. This is ocean, the mineral cool dark emerald churning healer. Along the beach are similar encampments--they seems both house and restaurant, hastily assembled, but pulsing with Honduran cantatas and their wooden plank sides flashing flowery reds and purples and blues and yellows against the grainy dark sand. No one else here but the folks who live in these hovels; we are far away from tourist traps. Looking landward, dogs find shade beneath the logs propping up the restaurant from the oncoming tides and heavier seas. These people are poor. Yet the children playing on the beach laugh easily and often. A toddler wanders onto the sand from somewhere following older but still young children. The toddler follows, and it's a mystery where or to whom he belongs. Suddenly, the older children are scooting along the sand on their knees pushing large pea-pod shells like motorboats, revving engines and banking left and right against the negra sand swells. The day is warming. Carrie and I swim and read and have downed two beers and it's not even noon. 
At the cool tables we order ceviche. Carrie actually goes back to the makeshift kitchen to place our order. The wife/cook assures her that the ceviche will be good, that we'll get what they have. Everything is fresh; the seafood comes from no farther than the boat a few yards away bobbing in the languid surf. Everything made by hand. The ceviche is briny and pungent with lime, and we can't discern whether it's shellfish, or squid...but we get the tang of the sea in every mouthful. 
Later in the afternoon the boat returns. A slender cat sleeps under my chair. Two teenage boys brown and stern unravel and wrap their nets. A younger brother who's been running around the restaurant sits on the edge of the bow watching his brothers intently. Instinct: he'll be manning the ropes someday. Three visitors arrive, Honduran, and sit beneath the awning. Soon the woman brings them plates of fish grilled, the same fish we saw coming off the boat a half hour before. Workers who'd been digging in back trudge in and sit themselves for a meal. Grimy, one is wearing old tennis shoes, and his big toes are sticking out. A TV blares cartoons. We have woven ourselves into a their family's daily living. Personal and guest is a hazy line, like the horizon we see smoked over for the fires of the season. We feel naturally at home in this shack; never once were we made to feel rushed. Tranquilo...an Honduran phrase. That night I awake hearing the tide ploshing in again. The night is still. I wander out to the balcony under a million stars. How long since I've seen the night sky awash in their sparkle. I wake Carrie to witness. Before we return to bed I point out the big dipper directly north, low against the bay, clear and bright. I wished the water was fresh, and that the dipper could heave down and scoop tons and tons of water and pour it lovingly on these dry mountains, on these islands, over and over. Give me fires in cold stone heaths or in a rocky pit in the Sierras at nightfall. 
