Back to La Ceiba -- for Carnaval!

5/21
First thing in the morning, I called Hedman to make sure they still had tickets for the 10:30 bus to La Ceiba – otherwise I’d need to go try to catch one of the other companies down at the main bus terminal. Took another shower – had to take advantage of the hot water!! Got dressed and walked down to the highway and along that a little to the Hedman station to get my ticket. Walked back up to ViaVia for breakfast. Antonio, the chef I met last week, saw me and said hello and asked me to write something about the food (the Chicken Luxe that I had last week). I said that the Chicken Luxe was amazing – the chicken was moist and perfectly done and the potatoes and bruschetta were delicious as well, that it’s definitely my favorite place to eat in Copán, and that I will be recommending it to my friends that visit. Antonio asked if I tried the Luna Jaguar (one of the dinners yesterday which I thought about trying but decided to go with the tipicopaneco which I know I love). I wish I’d tried it – he said it’s steamed fish in a plantain leaf with yucca, and really good. I wish I were here another night so I could try it! He asked why I live in Ceiba – it’s much more dangerous and expensive than here. Here you can eat all three meals out for less than $20 and can get a completely furnished apartment for $120/month in the mountains, where you can hear the river and see lots of birds, etc (which is sad, since I’m paying than that for our house which doesn’t have warm water and is infested with bugs!). It’s very quiet and safe here. I commented that I here I can walk alone at night and feel fine about it, but would never do that in Ceiba or even Porvenir. He said yes, people here are very humble and don’t think about ways to hurt others.
I went and sat in the parque central for a while, and a random guy came up to me and started chatting, and offered to let me stay at his house….no, thanks!
I went back to the hostel for a few, got my stuff, and walked to the Hedman station. Waited there a while and talked with a Honduran man who is from Tegucigalpa but who now lives in Copán and was headed to San Pedro Sula for some work. He’s an artist, and did a couple magic tricks for me. He said he was in the US for a while, and listed off a bunch of places in the US that he has family. The bus to SPS was so nice – it was like being on a flight instead of a bus!
At the terminal in SPS, I got some lunch and a new pair of flip flops. When we got to the terminal in La Ceiba, I got a taxi to Porvenir and back to Ceiba so I could meet up with the other volunteers at Carnaval in Ceiba. I met them by the parque central – there was live music in the street…Prince Royce, of course!! There were tons of people – they’d blocked off the streets to cars and put up bleachers, and the street and park were full of people. We wanted to walk to the beach, so had to walk through the huge crowd in front of the stage, and when we got to the other side, Heide realized that her bag had been slashed and her money and Belgian ID taken (luckily just her ID, not passport!). She wanted to see if maybe whoever took them just took the money and dropped the ID, so we walked back through to look for it, and that time, someone slashed the whole side of my bag, and all of Koldo’s money got stolen. It’s crazy, cause I was holding my bag tight to my front, and Koldo had a small fanny-pack style bag with his hand over it, and still they managed to unzip the front part and take all his money. Luckily, my bag has 2 layers, and they only got through one, so I didn’t lose anything (except that now my favorite bag is all cut up :(). Out of the 8 of us, 5 either got something stolen or attempted – Thibaud caught someone with a hand in his front pocket, and Eddie also got money stolen from his front pocket (though he was smart and only put a little there and the rest in his sock, so didn’t lose it all). The one good thing is that all anyone lost was cash – no cards, cameras, passports, etc. Heide and Koldo took a taxi to the police station to report her missing ID so she can get it replaced, and they told them that they’ve found 1200 empty in the streets so far this week. We went to this little outdoor bar place by the beach where they had a jukebox (so Amy got to choose some corny English songs for us ;)) and a projector screen with some really hokey videos of people dancing – funny since it didn’t match the music at all.

PHOTOS: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100414083809628.2820398.10735354&l=1d110c12fa