No, the other Fidel.

I've made generalizations about boys from Barcelona, so now I'm going to make a generalization about Victors from Guatemala.

I like them, they're good people.

Meet Victor Fidel. He has an advanced degree in economics and works in a sugar factory.

Victor floated onto the scene on our second day at the docks, waiting to get to Utila. We sent Jesus, our little posse's only remaining native Spanish speaker, on a mission (ha!) to track down an alternate form of transport to the island. He didn't have any luck with that, but he did bring us Victor. A happy guy with a penchant for good rum and very cheap cigars, we quickly befriended him and he became a constant companion on the island.

When it came time to leave, we took Victor up on his generous offer to drive us back to Guatemala, so we hopped back on the ferry from hell (well in this case, it was going to hell) and upon landing in La Ceiba, embarked on a road trip to the Copan ruins with Vanessa along for the ride.

Several roadblocks and one very determined corrupt cop later, we made it to Copan and managed to enjoy the peace and quiet of the ruins and the quaint historic town before begrudgingly making our way back to Guatemala City and - for me and Victor - back to work.

He graced us with his presence once again in Antigua for the last hurrah, the final group of 6, and a reunion of el grupo ruedo - there we were, 4 silly kids in that group of 6, taking infinite pleasure in our ridiculous system of sharing around the circle.

Sometimes it's the simple things in life, like a cheap cigar, eh Fidel?

A breath of fresh air

Every adventure needs a catalyst, and Vanessa was ours.

A fiery pixie of a girl who spoke a tossed salad of 3 languages and laughed easily at the sometimes confusing results, she was traveling solo in Honduras on vacation from her 6-month stint as a volunteer physical therapist at an orphanage in Guatemala, which I suppose was something of a break from her life as a physical therapist in her hometown in Germany.

I don't know where she came from, but after spending an entire day waiting on that dock in La Ceiba, she was a gust of wind looking for some hapless leaves to carry along on a journey to discover whether La Ceiba didn't have something worthwhile in it, and she found us. We quickly formed what would be the second group of 6 for me on this trip, and off we went in our taxis to... some place. Though not the original intention, we did find a nice swimming spot in a lagoon with waterfalls, a run-down motel on the beach, and a decent restaurant for a warm meal and ridiculously loud music to dance the rum off with.

Just as you would expect from the wind, Vanessa's path was unpredictable. She was there and then she wasn't. She went with us to Utila, then disappeared, only to reappear on the same return ferry. And so she came along for the next adventure - the Copan ruins near the Guatemala border - before setting off again in her own direction.

But once again, she breezed her way into my life - our lives - and joined the final group of 6 in Antigua for her last weekend before returning to Germany. Generous, vibrant, easy grace. A technicolor traveler. Sin viento, no hay aventura.

Did I accept Jesus as my personal savior?

A friend of mine likes to say that you haven't really been traveling until you get sick at least once. That's a nice mantra, but mine is a little different: I haven't been traveling until I get drunk, make a bad decision, and fall in love. Not necessarily in that order, and rarely are the all three occurrences connected (though the 1st and 2nd occurrences are quite obviously intertwined with frequency).

Jesús was another one of the fantastic people I met upon disembarking from the bus in La Ceiba, Honduras. Actually, I met him in a restaurant later that day, where he was eating with Daniel. Another Spaniard, but from Madrid, so no mullet. In addition to different hairstyles, our 2 Spaniards were also entirely different characters: while Daniel is the type who imprints himself on your memory from moment one, Jesús is more the type who sneaks up on you and leaves a deeper impression. Or at least he snuck up on me.

Unhappy with the life he woke up to every day in Madrid, he sold his business and left - almost - everything behind to travel Latin America, the US, and Japan for 6 months to clear his head. It was 3 months and many countries into this journey of discovery that I found myself laughing at his unapologetically politically incorrect jokes about China and sharing the sentiment that swimming at midnight in the ocean under a full moon isn't really as romantic as one would hope.

He was determined to dive as much as possible and spend as little money as possible doing it, and I aimlessly followed him off the boat and up the street to Paradise Divers, which became our home for the next 5 days.

Perhaps it was the scenery, the hot weather, the early mornings on the dive boat, the lazy afternoons in hammocks, the meandering down Utila's main street in search of food. Or maybe it was the kind eyes, the thoughtful gestures, the unfaltering patience with my slow Spanish, the quick humor, the fact that even when I couldn't understand every word of his Madrid lingo I could still understand him... It was all of this, and just enough je ne sais quoi added to make me bemused, but not surprised, that after one day in his company a Honduran woman in a restaurant assumed we were married.

It also made me wish it were true a little bit. But Jesús, emotionally unavailable and dead-set against the institution of marriage, could offer me no more than eternal friendship. An offer I couldn't refuse, even if for those 5 days, and many 5 days after, he was my 3rd occurrence.

1 in 6

Caryl materialized, seemingly out of thin air. Admittedly she actually just got off the same bus that we had spent the last 14 hours on, but she didn't enter our consciousness until we were standing in a parking lot on the outskirts of La Ceiba, Honduras. As the sky was making up its mind whether or not to ramp up the spittle into full-on rain, Susan and I tried to figure out where we were going to spend the night and how we were going to get there. As we stood there discussing our options with a fellow passenger from Guatemala, I realized that, as if by design, there was already a solution, literally right in front of us. 3 boys, 3 girls, and 2 taxis. The boys all bonded over being Spanish and hopped in one taxi, the girls - Susan, Caryl, and I - decided we might as well stick together since we all spoke English. Good a reason as any.

This trip was yet another case in point that nothing succeeds as planned, but everything works out in the end. Especially when traveling in developing countries. The 2 taxis were supposed to go to the same hostel where the 6 of us would all stay together, but they got separated. Nevermind, us girls found our way to a hostel, a supermarket and a deserted cafeteria-style restaurant in the urban dump that is La Ceiba, and we also managed to negotiate for a ride to the docks the next morning since we all had the same destination - the island of Utila.

The next day involved previously-mentioned hijinks with the new band of 6 and copious amounts of both free time and rum.

Caryl was along for the whole ride. She was quite happy to be adopted as she had no definite plans beyond a scheduled open water diving course on Utila and the desire to make it up to Mexico and back before she had to return to her native UK. She was scouting opportunities for future doctorate research, related to biological anthropology. Turns out she had spent some time working in the development field too. Three years ago I couldn't tell you the first thing about development, and now I seem to trip over amazing and fascinating people from that field everywhere I go. And Caryl definitely belongs to that group of people.

Much more than a single serving, to my delight, Caryl ended up meeting up with me and 4 other friends in Antigua a couple of weeks later and then she made the journey to Lake Atitlán with me where we studied at the same language school for a week. We finally parted ways when she came back through Pana on her way to less-traveled regions of the country.

Caryl is the best kind of traveler. Patient and easy-going, just as ready to laugh as to change her plans, interested in the communities she sets foot in and what their real lives are like, daring and independent enough to go to a new region on her own without speaking the language, but smart enough to know where not to go. I wish there were more people in the world like her.

Starting with me.

Rum on the beach...

I don't know what it is about Barcelona, but based on my limited experience in Honduras, it has a tendency to produce cheeky boys with full-on mullets.

Daniel landed on the radar when we boarded a bus in San Pedro Sula bound for La Ceiba, Honduras. He noticed Susan and I sitting in the nice comfy seats near the front and came to inquire how one goes about getting such a seat. We told him that you have to pay extra for one of those seats, but he was certainly welcome to try sitting in one and seeing what would happen. And that's exactly what he did.

If this were Japan, he would have gotten the big ol' X sign from the conductor, but it's Central America and that's just not how things are done. So Daniel was not evicted from his posh seat, but he didn't get any of the perks (i.e. food) that come with that extra service charge.

When we all got off in La Ceiba, the planets aligned momentarily to form a band of 6 travelers in that mysterious backpacker way (see 1 in 6 for more details), but our taxis separated and soon we were dispersed throughout La Ceiba. As is also the way with backpackers in small towns however, a few hours later we ran into Daniel in a restaurant, and then the following morning on the dock to catch a ferry for Utila Island. Alas, the boat trip was not to succeed as planned, and we spent a good chunk of our day playing some strange Spanish version of Rummy with only 40 cards.

A new group of 6 formed on the dock that day, including Daniel, Jesus, Caryl, Vanessa, Susan, and me. We set off on an adventure instigated by Vanessa and made infinitely more amusing by Daniel's procurement of two bottles of rum and his willingness to learn some new dance moves.

Sadly, Daniel lost patience with the waiting game and abandoned our sextet to catch a boat the next morning to Roatan Island, where he undoubtedly got up to more hijinks.

The tree of life

July 1 was a very busy day for me in SSF land. I suppose that's because I took a loooong bus ride from Guatemala City at the ungodly hour of 4:30am all the way to the wish-I-could-say-lovely town of La Ceiba in Honduras. It was a surprisingly pleasant journey however, thanks in part to the very comfortable seats (we paid extra) and the very interesting fellow travelers.

Meet Rick in profile. He's from the southern U.S. but has set himself up in Honduras after spending a number of years doing various church-related projects in Central America. Now he's all about the moringa tree, which from all accounts is nothing short of a miracle tree.

During one of the rest stops, Rick busted out his laptop and introduced Susan and I to a little powerpoint presentation about the wonders of moringa. And there are many. It grows quickly and is resilient to drought. It's high in energy and protein and all kinds of vitamins and minerals. It helps underweight and malnourished kids gain weight. Its seeds can be used to filter water, its juice can be used to fertilize crops. You can make biofuel out of it. (I felt a little like I was listening to Bubba list his shrimp recipes for a second.)

Now, I'm a big fan of optimism, but I have to wonder, if this tree is so awesome, why don't more people know about it? I could go on a whole side commentary about the implications and unintended consequences this little tree of life could have for development, but in the meantime, I kind of want to try some moringa leaves. It's only a matter of time before Whole Foods starts selling it.