Third World Country

I have so much that I've been wanting to write about but just failed to make writing a priority. Knee is coming along good but still very slowly. 9-12 month recovery is no joke and though it's week 12 now, I can only jog for like 30 seconds at a time so as not to stress the ACL (or the ligament that is now in the place of ACL) too much too soon.

Well, few weeks ago, I went to Roatan Islands off the coast of Honduras with 9 of my friends from Richmond. Going into the trip, I had mixed feelings about this. The deal was that we were all staying in a house... of course, the house is like super nice. I mean this is the view from our deck...



Literally, we go down the steps and there's the beach... and the pier... which we went on the boat rides 2 of the 7 days that we were there... well, sort of.

And this is the island we were on...



So here's the deal. Generally, beautiful views and gorgeous scenery really doesn't do much for me. And on top of that, this is Honduras... a country where I imagine poor people walking around with AK-47's, trafficking children to be sold for sex slaves, and obviously, dealing drugs. Yes, I'm narrow minded and very judgmental. But, I was definitely stoked to see my friends. I mean two of my very close friends were gonna be there so naturally, I was just glad to see them. See, the thing is, as much as I love Tampa and all, I really miss my friends... like terribly. If it weren't for the great career opportunity, I would move back in a heartbeat. Fuck Tampa, friends are so much more important. But that's why I try to take the opportunities I can to join them and so, this trip to Roatan.

Interestingly enough, by Saturday (the trip was Sat-Sat), I was excited. I get to the Tampa airport, ready to party it up when I see that the flight is delayed... due to "crew rest." I mean are you for fuckin real!? In talking to the gate agent, she tells me that there's no way I will make my connection to Roatan... But I'm supposed to meet all my friends in Atlanta where we will hop on the plane there! No dice. She told me that I can call the reservation desk and they can try to get me on another plane but of course, the one that I'm supposed to get on is the last flight to Roatan. And Delta doesn't fly to Roatan on Sundays. And Monday is booked up. So the earliest they can get me to Roatan is Tuesday. Naturally, I said "fuck that" and I canceled the trip... got a full refund since it was their fault, called my friends who were already in ATL and told them the story. Then everyone (my friends in ATL) and I get online (me at TPA, at a bar, watching World Cup) to look for flights on Sunday... and sure enough Continental flies there and the tickets are essentially the same price. So, I rebook and I arrive there a day late. This will actually be very key for the return trip but I will hit on that later.

So I get there and sure enough, my friends are there to pick me up. Despite a night of partying, they looked alright... obviously, because I wasn't there to ruin them completely... since that is what I do. But in the truck that they drove to pick me up, they brought me a bottle of southern comfort (my staple, even though Al clearly has that title in the bloggerdom but I was into Soco way before I even knew blogs existed) and so we all took a swig. Of course, since I wasn't driving, I took a pretty big swig. And once we got there, well... all hell breaks loose. Games of beer pong starts, and we go nuts with the shots. I mean that is what I do. At one point, we somehow decided that a shot of tequila would need to be done in the crawl space. So that is what we did here.



Tequila always hurts so good (I'm stealing a quote from a friend who probably got it from some movie or show).

Despite all the drinking and the memory loss (that is slowly being pieced back together via Facebook photos), the following day was more of the same. Our boat captain came to get us and we went to different bars on the boat. And as you can imagine, more of the same.



Btw, I'm not doing these shots alone... I've cropped out my friends who are in the photo for privacy purposes FWIW. And unfortunately, no Soco in honduras so we ended up doing more tequila shots.

After a while, we noticed that there were t-shirts on the ceiling with people signing stuff so I volunteered my shirt and all of us on the trip signed the shirt to leave our mark in Roatan!





Of course, after all that drinking and partying, I was passed out on the boat... and boy did that feel really good with the breeze and everything (but I paid the price forgetting to put sun screen on my face).



Wow, I thought I can finish this trip summary in one post but I obv can't. It's already long enough so I guess I'll break it up into two parts (and this is really a very summarized version... I believe there are like 800+ pics on Facebook of this trip).