| I've had almost a week now to recover, so I'm going to attempt to share with you some of the horrid details of my Thanksgiving "vacation." It bit, in case you haven't already deciphered that. Ok, hmmm, how should I start?... Long ago, 6 of us decided to go to Utila for Thanksgiving, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. We had such an amazing time in Roatan last year that we decided we would try another island and have a repeat of that trip, drinking smoothies on the beach and getting tan enough to last until Christmas. BUT NO! That did not happen. But I'm already getting ahead of myself... Sarah and I decided to fly on Thursday morning to La Ceiba, meet our friends who took the bus the previous day, and take the boat to Utila. When we got to La Ceiba, we had to wait for hours with all our belongings because our plane got in at 8:00 a.m. and our friends were white water rafting until noon. But they didn't call at noon. So we waited. Finally, we decided to go to the dock in case they were somehow there and hadn't been able to get ahold of us. Or who knows why we decided to leave for the dock at 1:30, but we did, and when we got there, the boat was getting ready to leave. It was supposed to leave at 4:00, but the weather was getting worse, and they decided to leave early (it hadn't gone at all for a few days). Needless to say, our friends were not there, and we didn't know if they would be able to get to Utila, but we didn't have time to think--we just got on the boat. Sarah left the others a voicemail to say we were on the way. As we were aboard the Utila Princess, the other girls were trying to hitch a ride from any supply boat they could find, but no luck there. They then tried the airport. No planes were flying, but they got a man's number, called him, had to weigh their backpacks and THEMSELVES on the airport baggage scales, crammed the four of them + the pilot into a 3 passenger plane and got themselves to Utila. I can see that if I try to explain everything, this will be the World's Longest Blog Entry, so I'm going to make a list of crappy things that happened: 1. The hour and a half boat ride--I didn't hurl, but some people did, and I felt a little sick for the rest of the day.
2. Jessica got her toenail ripped clean off while white water rafting.
3. Sarah and I couldn't find the person we were supposed to meet when we got off the dock.
4. The weather was NOT OK.
5. My shoe broke.
6. Jessica had to wait several hours on Friday morning to see the pot smoking, barefoot doctor and the male nurse with short shorts at the only medical facility on the island so they could repair her toe.
7. I had no turkey on Thanksgiving--I ate some pasta with flavored tomato paste. That's all. No--I had an apple too.
8. Nobody got tan, but Erin got burned. Not by the sun--ha! By the gas oven! It practically exploded when she tried to light it. Flames shot out several feet (not exaggerating) and she's lucky she has good reflexes and that she was wearing glasses and a hat, because a little of her hair was singed, which was the only part of the story that was good, because she got to see an example of what her hair would look like if she was black.
9. At one point, we gave the house key to Jessica and Tiffany, who were driving the golf cart, since they would get back to the house first, then they turned around and drove off in the opposite direction. We walked the 20 minutes back to the house and got there before they did. Elizabeth had to climb a ladder that was conveniently placed on the porch up to the balcony and get in the door there, which Erin had conveniently left unlocked. Yes, those were the types of conveniencies we had on the trip. Praise the Lord for little blessings, oh my goodness.
10. The house we stayed at was beautiful, but highly defective. It was either voodooed or struck by lightning at some point, either of which would not surprise me. Problems with the house include, but are not limited to, the following:
a. The satelite was not working for the TV, which means we couldn't watch the Chiefs beat Denver.
b. The microwave ran but did not heat up anything.
c. The grill didn't work.
d. The hot water didn't work.
e. Some of the lamps didn't work.
f. The toilets didn't refill, so we got to do that every time we wanted to flush.
g. The power surged a lot. That was just annoying.
h. We checked the DVD player to make sure it worked, and it appeared to, so we rented DVDs, which could be a whole story all by itself. Naturally, when we tried to watch a movie, we discovered that the DVD player did in fact NOT work.
i. The beds were hard.
j. The floor made our socks dirty.
k. The radio station played dumb music.
11. We had to catch the boat at 6:20 on Sunday morning. It couldn't have come soon enough. This boat ride was better, but it took us to La Ceiba 2 hours before the mall opened, and our flight wasn't until 4:50.
12. When the mall finally opened, we went to a salon because we thought we should do something fun on our vacation. Sarah got highlights, which took forever, and they didn't have the colors she chose, which they told her after they had already bleached the strands they were going to highlight.
13. I got my hair cut by a transvestite.
14. In La Ceiba, too, the weather was NOT OK, and our flight was delayed. We were actually not sure we would get back to Tegucigalpa that night and were starting to figure out what to do if we couldn't. But we finally got on the 36-seater (I counted) and I prayed the whole way back home. Despite the nightmare that was our Thanksgiving vacation, we laughed a lot and kept each other positive. When I got back, I turned on my computer. Google's quote of the day was, "No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one." --Elbert Hubbard
AMEN TO THAT.
Leave eprops now. |
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