Bananular Nonsense (From my Travel Blog)

Two questions were asked when we announced that we were headed to Honduras: “Where?” and “Why Honduras?” The answers are simple: “Central America” to the former, and to the latter “pirates and mud-people”(which should be the answer to more things in life). Honduras actually spans the isthmus of Central America and has coastal territory on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. We’ve had enough of grey winter so it’s about time for some Caribbean sunshine. (Saturday’s forecast for Roatan is 27 degrees and sunny)

So what exactly is in Honduras? Why choose there? Well, an obvious answer is bananas. Everyone loves bananas. If bananas were idols of pop-culture, they would be on the cover of ‘Fruit Weekly’. Anyway, I hear they grow there. Upside down!! What crazy fruits. I know why they’re crazy: because all their banana-blood rushes to their heads. Or maybe we just eat them upside down… ever think about that?
Quick: Think of all the songs that have lyrics about Bananas!
Hollaback Girl- Gwen Stefani
Banana phone- Raffi
I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas - Possibly also by Raffi.
Banana Pancakes - Jack Johnson
Day-oh! - By some poor guy who tallies bananas and wants to go home.

Clearly, many people like bananas, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has created such an extensive banana-filled compilation such as this. I would come up with a name for the album (“A-peeling tunes” or …) but, no, lets not be ridiculous. Carrying right along, then…

Around 900AD, the Mayans abandoned their complex civilizations, including some structures in Honduras. These eerie ruins still stand today, despite being defaced over the centuries. We can visit them and see the graffiti that has been etched throughout modern times, another reason to visit Honduras.

Over half a millennia after the Mayans, after Columbus had landed and named the land after the depths off the coast, and after the Spanish had colonized the land and enraged the native peoples, gold and silver was discovered and PIRATES (real ones!) would terrorize cargo ships on the Caribbean coast. Arrrrrrr!!

(I lost my train of thought because Robyn suggested that I ‘get into character’ and put on my diving fins. I’m not sure the character I was going for was ‘Awkward, the Awkwarder…est’ . It’s a little more Steve Zissou than I had hoped.)

Speaking of diving, Robyn is concerned about these Whale sharks. It will be whale shark season while we’re down there, you see. “Hey do you think we’ll see whale sharks?” I asked, and she got all flustered: “Whales or sharks, I thought whales were nice and sharks were mean and how did they end up as one creature and what is with those SPOTS? Are they trying to camouflage on my polka-dotted boots or something I just don’t get it what are these things?” I hear there are turtles there too, but shh… we don’t want her to get too excited.

Oh I definitely forgot to explain the previously mentioned ‘mud people’. Robyn was flipping through the Lonely Planet guide and got excited about the section on ruins. She explained to me these ancient peoples’ story of creationism: The gods wanted to be appreciated, so first they created animals, but all the animals could do was grunt at them. So the gods made people out of mud and they were no good at appreciating the gods either because they just dried out, and crumbled into dirt. So then they made people out of wood, but they were no good either. They just wooded around and hid from beavers. Finally they made people from flesh. And here we are, the flesh people! At least we aren’t called the ‘meat people’.

Details: We drive down to Seattle on Friday and fly to Atlanta. Our stopover is from 6am to 10am and then we fly directly to Roatan, landing at 1pm on Saturday afternoon, just in time for a snoozesta. My first task on this adventure is to master the local Atlantan dialect (which is what they speak in the state of Georgia, of course.) The useful phrase I'm trying to master is "howdy y'all. I want me some fries with that there cheeeeeeseburger." We will be in Atlanta over breakfast, after all, and I hear cheeseburgers are the only crop that flourishes in America.