Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Americans in Honduras Won't Shut Up

I just returned from a holiday in Honduras. We encountered many ex pats there, all very nice and all very eager to talk the ears off of visiting Americans. The LTR and I have been studying Spanish for the last four months and we found that with our limited abilities we were much farther ahead than the Americans who live there. So I guess they were just eager for people to talk to.

But it started before we even set foot in Spanish-speaking Central America. Boarding our flight at Dulles, I had the aisle and the LTR took the center seat next to an elderly white-haired gentleman with the window seat.

The wheels hadn't left the runway before he started telling us about himself. It was charming at first, an Episcopal Priest, he. Traveled to Central America a lot. Drove there from here, in fact. His son is in the foreign service in Honduras. But after about an hour it became tedious. I began to feel like the unfortunate woman sitting next to Ted Stryker and wished I had packed a rope in my carry-on.

But the kicker was about two hours in when he elbowed the LTR out of a dead sleep to say we were over the Gulf of Mexico (we weren't). And then he pronounced we were flying over New Orleans (it wasn't). There's Cuba (nope). La Ceiba (our destination in Honduras) is on a flat coastal plain (it's mountainous). His error-filled travelogue prompted us to give him a nickname: Father Geography.

We think he was a bit touched, as they used to say. He was the first of several interesting characters and places we would encounter on our journey. I hope to have time to write more about it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

even with the frustration, it makes me thankful for my sanity and constitution. never know when you;ll make the difference in someone's life that will make them feel valuable.

Glad you guys were there for this chap!