Probably my most eventful trip, at least in terms of producing the best stories and having the greatest succession of unfortunate events, was the short trip-gone-wrong to Honduras.

I’m not actually sure how I managed to get myself into so many ridiculous situations (fortunately without major consequences, excepting minor loss of pride/dignity), especially in such a short amount of time.

Though I generally structure my travel around public-health related projects, this trip was purely for fun and relaxation. I planned it with my friend during the winter months in exam period, to make up for the harsh weather and prospect of a spring break we knew would be occupied with the annual crew Florida training trip.

Our original plan was to go to Belize for a typical college-bumming experience. About a week before leaving (maybe two days after buying our tickets for this well-planned trip), we discussed hotel and travel plans with our parents, producing a full itinerary of destination spots and location descriptions, in order to alleviate any residual concerns they might have regarding our safety or competence to travel.

They were for the most part satisfied, making only a couple of corrections to improve the quality of our hotel choices and nixing our plans to leave the country. Dissatisfied that our plans involved too few hostels and not enough room for random adventures, we chose to disregard our parents’ advice and venture out of Belize with the intent of traveling to Honduras to visit the friends I had made while staying there the previous year working in a hospital.

Our choice mode of transportation out of the country was what I can only describe as an immigrant fisherman’s ship, boarded after traveling about an hour on a rickety school bus that we flagged down while standing in the torrential downpour on the side of the road at 5:00 am, hoping we hadn’t been mislead by the random townies who had suggested this procedure the previous night.

For brevity I will omit a description of the unstable, water-logged, and overcrowded boat, because one should always expect interesting experiences when utilizing public transportation in foreign, particularly less-developed, countries. It shall suffice to say that we did, against many odds, arrive in Puerto Cortes, Honduras.

Approximately 15 minutes after getting off the boat and attempting to regain our bearings, we were surprised to discover that my friend’s money belt, containing every crucial document one does not want to lose, (credit cards, cash, passport, photocopies of passports…) had been stolen out of her bag. Now this put us in an interesting situation.

At this point, we were stranded in Honduras, with the seven American dollars (in one-dollar bills) that I had in my money belt, a couple of canceled credit cards (I had forgotten to advise the bank of my travel plans, so they were naturally suspicious of the country-hopping), some iodine tablets, a cookies n’ cream power bar, and a tin of “I Love Seattle” mints from the airport. It is difficult to pinpoint the absolute lowest point of the trip.

There are several that I can highlight though, including: our stay in a prostitute’s hotel (we weren’t let into Jose’s room until he vacated at 9, leaving behind a pile of, er, ‘protection’); ‘borrowing’(euphemism for begging) money from a tourist family for bus fare; filing a police report in an incredibly sketchy office above a jail regarding our being held up at gunpoint; being held up at gunpoint; getting into an argument with the immigration officer about letting us sneak back to Belize through Guatemala; or, finally, our steadily deteriorating appearance, involving dirty clothes, muddy sneakers, and almost-dreadlocked hair braided into many little braids by a crazy lady we met in Belize (despite all this, we did not fail to receive catcalls and jeers from every male we walked past).

By the end of this trip, the two of us were longing for the stereotypical American teenager-gone-wild vacation, promising to buy ourselves “proud to be American” T-shirts upon returning (if we ever procured a passport) to the Great U.S.A., and never leaving the country again.*Needless to say, I never met up with my Honduran friends from the Hospital..