perpetually oblivious; 'huh?' is my motto: My Life In Ruins: Honduras, part one

***Imagine a cute postcard with a cartoon of Honduras that will be here when I can find the damn thing***

I was only in Honduras for a month but this is gonna be split into a couple of posts because I'm long winded like that.

The year long holiday started off in Honduras.

One of the professors I had worked for would be overseeing an archaeological field school for a month there. I honestly didn’t know what to expect – I vaguely knew where it was but I’m ashamed to say, it meant that apart from knowing it was ..urm…south of where I was, I knew jack. Google came to the rescue and gave me the low down. The main thing that stayed with me was that it was a third world country. Awesome. I felt that I would be right at home.

At the pre-departure briefing, I found out through inference that Honduras in general is dangerous and that I would probably contract AIDS if I slept around due to the very high rates of AIDS they have there. Uh...????? On top of that, the main city we would be staying in for a week or so, San Pedro Sula, was one of the most dangerous cities in the world and I could possibly get mugged or kidnapped (not for ransom though, for organ harvesting [cos that's much more reassuring right?]) if I went about on my own or got into vehicles with strange people I did not know (strangely enough, I thought this was common sense but one of my field school mates actually almost got into a car with a stranger while we were there!! wth??!). Also, drinking the tap water or even using it to rinse fruit or for brushing teeth would (for sure) introduce some lovely parasites to my body. Jeeze. I mean, I know they’re trying to stress the dangers since it’s a university sponsored trip but all that is heading towards paranoia. I found it funny but some of my (sheltered) classmates were having little spazzy panic attacks from the get go because of these warnings.

Can I please just say that yes, the warnings are somewhat valid but really, dealing with perpetually paranoid classmates in close quarters for weeks on end is tiring and very, very trying. It’s like having ADD kids that you can’t foist off on someone else at the end of the day.

There was a long list of what to bring and needless to say, I was running around like a headless chicken trying to get everything together last minute. In the end though, I think I barely got half of what was needed and I was just fine. The kid at the check out stand in the hardware store totally gave me a funny look and asked what I was gonna do with the various odds and ends I had assembled. Haha. Seriously, an archaeologist's kit is random. The flight was fine and a grad student was there to meet us as we trickled in on various flights before escorting us to the compound.

Yes, the compound.

The Compound aka Hotel Apartment Villa Nuria. Doesn't look like much at first.

On paper, it is supposed to be a resort-like service apartment but in reality, it was a highly secured compound and I’m sure it would have been the ideal holiday prison for convicts everywhere. Man, I thought they were kidding about it being dangerous but there were guards armed with rifles and high, thick walls topped off with metal spikes and heavy duty barbed wire. The word overkill may have come to mind several times .... but what do I know? Due to the high security and luxurious settings (from pool bar to restaurant to internet café) it meant the price was luxurious too. As a poor starving student, I wasn’t too happy about that bit. Accommodation was definitely my biggest issue because the university sanctioned accommodation was very, very expensive for a third world backpacker's paradise like Honduras. And the Apartment Hotel Villa Nuria was one of the more expensive places (in my opinion) to stay in San Pedro Sula - I suppose it was a "lucky" coincidence they took visa/mastercard, eh?

Of course, it looks much better with palm trees lining the walk way.

Hanging out by the pool bar, because damnit, we've paid for the privilege! Also, great time for team bonding :)

The pool bar; the one stop place for all your late night alcoholic and dietary needs.

The Restaurant. It had the best fries! Heck, Honduras as a country has amazing pommes fritas!

As good as it was, breakfast on the other hand, was interesting.

Group pic just outside the compound. It's faint but if you squint, you can see the jagged pieces of glass and the barbed wire on the wall.

Of course, Villa Nuria was convenient for more than our comfort and leisure. Located on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula (thus insuring that we are well away from the "danger" of the city), it's actually about 5-10 mins from the airport and coincidentally located between the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History and our site at Ticamaya.

The Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History where we store samples and basic gear.

Curreste, another site the school was working on. We stopped by one day on the way to Ticamaya to take a look. Visually, it wasn't much, just a bunch of vegetation covered mounds and a couple of goats but I worked there a couple of days after the field school and the amount of artifacts it turned up was astounding.

We were also very close to the football stadium (Hondurans take their footie very seriously) and some of the others managed to get tickets to a game. I didn’t bother since I’m not a big football/soccer fan. I do have to say that I’m pretty disappointed that I didn’t arrive earlier than I did since the visiting teams were staying in the same compound and I apparently missed the Puerto Rican team doing their daily exercises in the pool. But I bring you pictures because the lucky early birds totally got pics and autographs :D There was another team that came in after the Puerto Rican team while we were there but they looked all of twelve or something so we didn't bother with them (at the risk of feeling like pedophiles. lol).

The Puerto Rican team working out in the pool.

Yes, the early birds got pics and autographs. lol.

We spent the first week doing survey work and let me tell you, that idyllic scene where we would only be putting in a token effort while enjoying pina coladas with the sun, sand and sea (and Juan the scantily clad cabana boy) in the background that many people enviously imagined would be the sum of my Honduran experience? Pfft!! I knew enough to scoff at the paradise my friends painted but even I didn’t realize how miserable it would be that first week. I’ve learnt now that it was atypical but boy, did that week suck.

Where the heck are we?!?!

Welcome to Ticamaya at 7 am.

A look down the road. Yup, in the middle of nowhere.

Best of all, according to "reputable sources" this stretch of road is know for the body dumps that occur every now and then. WTF?!? But we saw no bodies......slow week??

The farm someone decided to build on top of our site. Yay progress.

L: Two modes of transportation. R: Friendly locals. Check out the wheels and seating. Love it!

Lucky us, we were bussed to our first site, Ticamaya, which was where the newly minted prof-in-charge had done her dissertation work at only to find that some enterprising chap had plonked a farm on top of it. A COW farm. He was super nice and graciously let us work there anyway (but privately, he probably thought we were stark raving mad) and in hindsight, I wish he wasn’t such a nice (mango providing) guy because we would have had to go somewhere else (oh, woe us) instead.

A cow. It's actually pretty cute....I think it must be the ears.

Anyway, to our utter dismay, this cutie pie produces.......

....THIS! In copious amounts. Cow patties are not fun. But, in the interest of the circle of life, a cow pattie produces....

....this! Apparently, cow poodoo is good for growing mushrooms.

Unsurprisingly, none of us were remotely tempted to forage it for dinner.

It actually wasn’t all that bad if you ignored the fact that we had to tromp around and kneel and triangulate in cow patty studded fields and climb over and under and around somewhat rusty barbed wire fences. Man, I have never been so glad for the fact that all my vaccinations are up to date (tetanus/diphtheria/hepWHAT??) Oh yeah, and if you discounted the fact that a swarm of mosquitoes decided to follow me, and only me, around since I am and always will be insect buffet central.

All the fences and gates were made of barbed wire and wood. Meh.

Triangulating!! We make pretty triangles :)

In the face of such hardship and of course, there being several delicate flowers in our group, there was some loud squealing, grumbling and talk of mutiny; and with most of us being from the city, there was some confusion as well.

Case in point:

Initially triangulating (wherein several tape measures are used along with the precise application of the Pythagoras theorem in order to obtain a grid for taking coordinates AKA we made lovely triangles in fields because stupid fences and trees got in the way of straight lines) in a manure filled field, where a great, big, heaping, slightly steaming pile of cow poop was in the way of putting down a stake for place keeping, our little sub-group was stumped. What should we do?? The only thing city slickers who didn’t want to deal with poop could do – hollering, we posed the dilemma to the big cheese…

Sub-group rep: Hey Kira! Urm…..we can’t put down a stake. There’s a big turd in the way! Whadda we do??!?

Prof K, field school leader extraordinaire: *Iz annoyed* Flip it!

Us: Huh?? What??

Kira: It’s a cow patty, you just flip it (like a regular burger patty). Use a branch or something!

Us: …

*everyone pretends not to notice everyone else looking for a volunteer to do the honours*

Eventually, after wasting some time pretending to look for branches and only finding twigs, someone steps up and does the dirty deed……only to find out that fresh, wet cow patties do NOT just turn over – they BREAK UP and FLY all over the place when someone enthusiastically tries to flip them over.

Ahhh, *smiles fondly* the memories….. Fresh cow patties DO NOT flip. I obviously stayed far enough away to avoid the flying pieces of turd and thought it was terribly hilarious :D Of course, that pile of turd just had to be in the exact spot we needed to stake. Thanks for taking one for the team Julie!

Can you believe we PAID good MONEY to do hard labour and (literally) toss shit around during summer break??!?!?!?

Looks idyllic doesn't it?? Yeah, we thought so too.

Until you look closer and see the turd hiding in the grass, lying in wait for unsuspecting students.

The first few days we tried to be real careful about avoiding the landmines and flipping them whenever we could and for a while it was funny - people made the effort to find the perfect pattie flipping stick (or at least I did) and trying to scratch an itch without the use of our hands was giggle worthy. I recommend rubbing the affected body part against a tree - it totally works and it's entertaining to watch based on the body part :) After a while though, it got old and we came to the executive decision that turds hold stakes fairly steadily so we just stuck the stakes in them. By the end of it, we were so sick of all the crap (haha) that we just didn’t care anymore. There was no way to avoid it since we had to step in it and the measuring tapes were totally covered in it.

Can we say EWWWW???

Also, the grad student who owned said measuring tapes was not happy when we informed him of the sacrifice he had (unknowingly) made for the greater good and gave them back to him in less than pristine condition. lol.

We later found out that one of our classmates who is Hare Krishna (I had absolutely no idea what the heck that was until I met her) and all new age-y and such was possessed of the notion that manure is good for one’s skin. She was literally and physically up to her elbows in crap. Yeah, well, she should have spoken up sooner and saved us the trouble.

In the field, doing our thing. All is well in this poopless field....

...until one of the herders decides to let the cows out into the same field!! Do you know how hard it is to do survey work around stationary cows?!? Do you know how hard it is to run away from a curious cow while doing survey work?!?!

So, yeah. Week one went mighty slow for some of us (the rest of them got to run the magnetometer or the transit station, lucky buggers). I do have to say though, that a shared adversity does bring a group of people closer. That and the local wildlife.

Aww, look at us. So eager to learn how to set up and use a transit station.

This is very expensive equipment so lets use it on the sloping bank of a pond because someone thought it would be a great idea to put the datum there. Luckily, no one and no expensive equipment fell in although, there was a close call.

From datum to farm, this is how you get coordinates.

The other half of a transit station, the prism. Me in my bling church lady hat and Hazel in her Indiana Jones hat.

The lucky Honduran students who never set foot in the poo fields.

Looking for buried treasure with the magnetometer.

Working hard - the one where we no longer get distracted by the local wildlife passing through.

"Hey Frances, move like 2 feet to the right!"

*Frances holds the prism out to the right and doesn't move*

"No, move to the right!"

"I can't there's a tarantula!!"

*Everyone takes an unscheduled 15 min break to look, prod and take pictures of this hairy little fella*

As much as the local wildlife distracted us, we distracted the locals too :)

The littlest cow herder pauses to look at us while bringing the cows home.

We also got a tour of the museum in San Pedro Sula since the head prof in charge, Rosemary, was also the person who had a hand in setting it up. I thought it was a pretty nice museum. the artifacts are nicely displayed and are in very good condition but they could have used some English signs.