She sits upright, pulls off her damp t-shirt and slips into a clean cotton sweater.  She walks through the villa out on to the terrace basked in sun, the terracotta tiles cold on her bare feet.

I imagine the cotton sweater, crisp with cleanliness, so starchy it's rough to touch and as dry as a grain of rice.  I have to imagine it because the girl is fictitious, as is the villa and the sun, I'm cooped up in the tent, reading again while the rain pounds the tent like falling gravel.  Damp after a week of rain, how I imagine that sweater.

I'd heard a few bad things of Honduras before I entered; crooked cops, unfriendly people, a difficult border, poverty, danger, drug gangs and too, of travellers who passed through in a single day to get through and even one who took a boat to Nicaragua from Guatemala to avoid it entirely!  But no one said anything about rain!

The little cuddly howler monkey....They might look cute.....

(Corresponding Photos for this blog are HERE)
 
After several passes of curiosity, the boy comes over to my corner of shade outside the "tienda."
"Where are you from?" he asks shyly.
"England." I reply, taking a thirst quenching sip from my cola.
"Is that far?"
"Ohhh, yes!  Very far!"  I tell him.
"Is it close to Germany?" he asks.
"Mmmm, more or less, yeah."
"How long does it take with your motorcycle?" he says leaning closer now on his bicycle.
"Ohh, you can't go by motorcycle."
"What about a bus?"
"Nooo, there's no road!"
"No road!?"
"No.  There's a big ocean, so you need a plane!  It's about 6000km or so."
"A plane!"
"Yeah, it's about 16 hours...."  I say to him, but he looks confused and add, "or maybe a month on a boat!"
"Farther than the city?" he asks after a moment.
"Oh yes!  Much further!"
"Further than USA?"
"Oh yes," I say staring at my empty coke bottle contemplating, "Yup....." It is very far, and seems impossibly so now, when only days ago I was there saying goodbye to my family....

"The Moment of Truth, Take Four" was complete and hot off the...umm, developing table, but it didn't take long for another problem to crop up and "Take Five" was soon created, leaving me feeling like an overused actor, in a worn out ongoing story line...like in the endless "Saw" movie series; I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. In fact, I wonder if - like the movies - this was my own slow torture, to rid me of my selfish bad ways, taking, taking, taking, never giving, riding around the world, take, take, take, and now to cure me of my demon I must perhaps give up something dear to me....Rudolf?

The moment of truth.....take 4....does Rudolf run....