@ San Pedro Sula, Honduras

After mom dropped us off at O'Hare this morning, I told Josh I felt like this was the first time I'd ever been on vacation. Yea, pretty much, he agreed. It's just totally different traveling sans parents. The new passport I got only yesterday now has its first stamp! Hooray!

I did a double take as our cab drove past a gas station that read 64.09, surely a sign of the end times... The official exchange rate is about 16 although the locals will give you about 19. There are lots of Wendy's here.

Everything is en Espanol and I'm realizing that ¿Donde estan mis pantalones? really is only useful when I've lost my pants. Good thing Uncle Tim can converse in his Spanish/Portuguese jumble. I'm all confused -- what time is it? Miami was CST + 1 hour and here is Miami -2 hours? Not sure. International flights are like time travel.

After a long day of airports and airplanes our first meal of choice was McDonald's, which in Honduras has menu items such as Pollo McCrispy (Fried Chicken... better than Harlem. Word.), McNifica (something between a Quarter Pounder and a Big Mac. Almost Whopper-like), and of course Cajita Feliz (Happy Meals). The Coca-Cola here tastes different, it's flavored with cane sugar instead of obesity I mean HFCS. Like the yellow-cap kosher Coke bottles they sell in NY certain times of the year. The sandwich bread was different (better) as you can see in the picture, unfortunately the fries were stubby and sub-par.



Instead of a drive-thru this McD's had a walk through, just in case you were walking by and wanted to order from outside instead of the nicely air conditioned insides. I don't quite get it. I'm looking forward to the 80/90 degree weather here though the air is already starting to feel heavy.


Ronald McDonald is as creepy as ever. I hate clowns.

Homeless people everywhere, and mobs of men loiter on the streets... I thought I left Harlem last week.

The frazzle still is following me from last week's NY-Baltimore-NY-Philly-Naperville and then spending all of Tuesday at the Chicago Passport Agency... Last minute packing, drugstore & bank runs on the way to the airport this morning... Got home 1am Sunday and my stuff did on Monday at noon with my brother & his Budget truck, so we spent the day unloading. I've barely even unpacked yet, so packing was a bit difficult.

Man am I looking forward to a good week of (hopefully) unwinding. That's if I don't die of malaria, stingray, dysentery, or exploding lungs. Or melanoma. Police around our hotel have carbines strapped to their legs (real comforting). I'm all ready and armed with SPF70 and DEET. Haha that means tomorrow I will smell like brain damage.