You can’t go far without meeting cool people.  We hung out all week playing volleyball going to bars/restaurants.  For everyone’s last day we went to Neptune’s Beach.

 

 

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Staph Infection Progression.  (Gross)

 

Yes, when you travel, you will get banged up from time to time.  But the more injuries I recover from, the more realize how durable the human body is.  Staying safe at home creates the illusion that we are fragile.

 

This week I also got a stomach bug.  Some people thought it was Dengue Fever because of the constant spine ache.  Yack, run to the baño, lie down, repeat.  I don’t know what it was, but I could only consume water and pineapple juice for the first 3 days.  Then I got some fruit down and eventually half a chicken sandwich on the 5th day.  Looking for that beach body?  Come to Honduras and get in SICK shape!!!

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Picking Up Trash

I stayed at the house of chef/owner of a hippie restaurant.  She cooks for a weekly beach cleanup started 8 weeks ago at Pumpkin Hill.  Typically not my style.  My first impression: This is pointless, self-righteous humanitarian futility.  Next week will just wash up more trash.  It turns out only half of the trash comes from the ocean.  It became obvious when a week later we were finding 3-liter bottles along the trail far from the water.

The biggest question I had is: Who is it affecting?  Obviously, Germanic, Scandinavian, Japanese, and other meticulous westernized cultures loathe seeing garbage outside of its designated bin.  Central Americans are not as troubled by plastic and polystyrene laying on the ground.  I can’t say I’ve ever seen an animal stress over the discovery of an empty soda bottle either.  Many bleeding hearts will google a picture of a turtle stuck in a 6-pack holder to show me how wrong I am.  Here’s what I think about animal intelligence:

I’ve seen a cat get its head stuck in a small tree branch and take off in a panic, running into walls and bushes.

Many of bottles I grabbed crumpled in my hand.  They break down after being in the sun for a couple of years.  It makes sense to me that they would keep breaking down until they are at a molecular level.  Many individuals believe that plastic lasts “forever”, which of course is an empty, child-like statement.  While the plastic is really small it is consumed by birds and filter feeders.  This is arguably bad, but is heavily debated in the scientific community.

What bothers me is the inefficiency of single use products like plastic forks and bottles.  I never thought about how many of those products I’ve used until the beach cleanup.  I must have used several hundred throw-away cutlery sets and several thousand cups and bottles in my life.  It would be nice to have one cup, one spork, one knife that I could just wash.  I never thought these words would come from me, but all that crap has to eventually end up somewhere and it looks like Caribbean beaches are magnets for garbage.

 

 

 

I have to admit it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling when I looked at the finished product.  Motives aside, it went from being a gross beach to a pristine paradise.