4/17/14
En route, CA-4, Honduras
With all of our activities for the day completed and only a long and
arduous ride to the hotel remaining, now seems a perfect time to begin my
entry. I often say that I never lie in
this Travelogue, but that does not mean I cannot make a mistake. Last night, in effort to pigeon-hole a
certain philosophical statement on racism, I overlooked the beauty of many of
the locals here, and there have been plenty.
To say that I was not attracted to them would be inaccurate. What I meant was that I could never see
myself with any of them. Just as I could
never be with an idiot, but I could still admit that she was attractive as long
as she kept her mouth shut, so, too do I find many of these locals
attractive. The theme of tonight’s entry
will be value, and I will explore it from a more material aspect. I have said with absolute certainty that the
definition of success for this trip will be saying “CA-4 Complete” (and making my
return flight), and I have constantly emphasized the importance of achieving
that goal, what it will mean for me for the next 4 years and for my 17
goals. There is no way to change that
definition of success, no saying 7 out of 8 WHS is enough. However, where there is a little leeway is
how I define visiting the WHS. One might
think that in order to check a WHS off my list, I must set foot within the area
inscribed my UNESCO, but, about 6 months ago, I consciously created an
exception, the Darien Exception. It only
applies to sites not reachable by road, and I am not yet willing to apply it to
U.S. and Canadian WHS, which have their own rules on what is necessary to check
them off. In short, it states that, if I
am unable to do the WHS as a day trip from the nearest major city, and I can
find a way to get close to the WHS and allow myself to get a sense of the WHS,
I can count it. It is an absolute last
resort and one that I am always hesitant to apply, but if I need to do so for
reasons of security or because I am prevented through external forces, I will. It is not a “I hit traffic and arrived too
late” kind of exception. It has to be
been anticipated in advance, and the alternate has to be considered and
evaluated before leaving for the destination.
I want to reapply this precedent so that being unable to set foot on
Midway Atoll does not prevent me from saying “U.S. Complete.” The reason I bring this up will become
apparent later in the entry, but I have gotten off-topic.
I have a master spreadsheet that, among other
things, estimates the cost and value of each trip I intend to take over the
next 4 years. It is easy enough to
estimate the cost of every aspect of each trip.
The complication comes when I want to provide value to the trip. I can ignore the cost/value analysis of
cigars and souvenirs, since I make a rational decision on that with each
purchase. However, it is the other items
that are more complicated. How do I
measure the cost of airfare against the value from seeing a new country, a new
WHS? I have come up with arbitrary
values to assign to each aspect of a trip, but clearly one WHS is not as
valuable as another. Further, the value
of saying “30 Goals Complete” is precisely the entirety of my discretionary
income over the next 3 years and 5 months, less my tobacco budget. Do I reallocate that value into the value of
visiting each of the 100 North American WHS, the 26 Olympic Stadiums sites, the
23 North American countries, etc.?
The
enjoyment value I receive from a typical WHS would not come close to the
allocation from that type of valuation, but the fulfillment value might,
especially when viewed as part of a larger goal, but visiting 99 North American
WHS is not 99% as valuable to me as visiting all 100 of them, it is not even
half as valuable, maybe not even 10% as valuable. Does that mean that I should allocated 90% of
that valuation budget into Hawaii Volcanoes NP?
I think that something to that effect would be advisable, and I have
assigned an inordinate value to the trips that allow me to say “Canada
Complete” and “U.S. Complete.” Before I
get into a detailed internal discourse of the economics of my travel goals,
which are completely irrelevant. If some
magical genie told me that I would not be able to achieve my 30 Goals, I would
completely restructure my travel plans, assigning completely different values
to each potential trip, valuing a week in Mongolia far beyond a week in Nepal
in an attempt to see Everest, 4 days in Paris or Vienna beyond a 4-day trek to
a totem pole that would put me one step closer to Canada Complete.
Each trip has its own enjoyment value and
then a fulfillment value in terms of the larger goals it serves. I suppose that there is an independent
fulfillment value to some trips, especially as was the case with saying “Bosnia
and Herzegovina Complete,” but that is dwarfed by the value provided in serving
one of my 30 Goals. Once I turn 30, I
will have a much less ambitious set of 40 Goals, and I intend to spend at least
half of my vacations on trips of enjoyment, rather than purely chasing after
fulfillment and letting the enjoyment only be a side effect. People often think I’m crazy for spending so
much time and money on what is basically a photo op, but I don’t care. Often times I go somewhere that has an
admission fee, a fee I am gladly willing to pay to check the site off my list,
even if it only means spending 5 minutes inside to take a picture and move
on. As I’m leaving, I might get a
comment or a look that questions why I spent the admission fee on such a short
time at the site. The answer is
twofold. First, I only had that much
time, and subsequent time would not have provided me with further value. Second, I paid the fee because it was
insignificant compared to the fulfillment value of checking the site off my
list. More likely than not, I received
more fulfillment value from the site than the value received by anyone else
there.
I have often thought to myself
that the vast majority of the value of a site comes in the first second you lay
your eyes on, and most of the rest of the rest in the next 59 seconds. It could be that the first second provides
60% of the value, the first minute 90%, and the first hour 99%. Anyone who has ever seen the Grand Canyon or
any famous landmark will know what I mean.
“Wouldn’t you enjoy it more if you spent more time there?” people often
ask. Yes, I would, but the fulfillment
value of the extra site completely dwarfs the extra enjoyment value I would get
from spending more time at one site.
Fernando understands this. He
gets my “Let’s take a picture and move on” mentality. Other than the first two sites on the first
day, I have made sure that the time we spent was the time it took me to smoke
my Cuban. Once the cigar was done, I no
longer had any more interest in staying there.
The timing worked out perfectly, and, other than Tikal, where I decided
I would get more value from writing my entry than from spending another 20
minutes walking around, I have felt that I got to fully see each site we
visited. I have also thoroughly enjoyed
exploring each of the Mayan ruins.
On
that note, I will continue to the more traditional part of the Travelogue, how
we spent our day exploring Mayan ruins.
As I was getting ready to go this morning (or maybe last night), I
realized that my box of Cohibas was not in my cigar bag. Had it fallen out during the bumpy shuttle
ride? I didn’t think so. There was not enough of a gap. As we made our way to the car, getting coffee
in the lobby, which was surprisingly not empty at 5AM, I checked the shuttle
bus, but there was nothing there. When
we got to the car, I immediately checked the floor of the back seat. Ah, there was a box that had to be it. Oh, no, wait, that’s the gallon of
water. In a panic, I felt around, and I
felt it underneath the driver’s seat.
The cigars were getting dry, and I had put a moisture pack in, but I
didn’t know how long it would take to start working. I chose one to smoke at the WHS later. I said that I would drive until we got to the
first WHS, which would be about 5 hours, leaving about 8 hours for Fernando to
do.
Around 7AM, after I finished my
Carillo, I decided that we could stop for breakfast, and we stopped at a small
town. I had seen a restaurant where it
looked like they were butchering a cow in the driveway. I asked Fernando if that was typical, and he
was just as shocked as I was. We tried
in vain to find gas for my lighter before circling back to the restaurant where
we parked. I got some crisp-fried
chicken, along with scrambled eggs and coffee.
It was Nestle instant coffee, but I think it was from Central American
beans, and it was really good, as was the rest of the meal. I commented to Fernando how surprised I was
by how cheap food was here, less than half of what I might pay in New
York. He replied that they were ripping
us off because we were foreigners and that it should have been less than half
of what we were paying. As we were eating,
some police joined us, which made me feel slightly uncomfortable, but Fernando
greeted them and they returned his friendly greeting. We went to take a U, and I saw some chickens
in the back. I asked him one of them was
my breakfast, and he said, “For sure.”
I
lit up a Davidoff, and I soon found myself hungry again, but I could not bring
myself to have lunch or a second breakfast at 8AM. I had some of my pork rinds to tide me over
before lighting my Arturo Fuente Gran Reserva.
Actually, I might be getting this order mixed up. Either way, I found myself absolutely
starving sometime after breakfast and before a reasonable lunch time, and I was
on my third cigar of the day at 8:30 AM.
As were approaching our destination, I saw a very large gas
station. We were down to a quarter tank
of gas, and I had a feeling that they might have gas for my lighter there. I was right. Before long, we were at
Quirigua, our first WHS of the day. I
had a little trouble parking, but there were plenty of souvenir shops right
there. I had a good feeling about it. I will now pause since we are about to switch
roads, which will necessitate a new headers, and I want to check my email.
En route, CA-5, Honduras
By the time we got to Quirigua, Fernando had learned my WHS drill:
picture with the plaque, light a Cuban, find the nomination photo, recreate it,
walk around some more, take some more pictures, get some souvenirs, and get out
of there. Something that has often been
suggested to me by certain tour guides that bothers me to no end is that if I
don’t buy the souvenirs right at the site, it would be much cheaper. Ignoring the fact that the small amount I
might save is not worth the lost time for stopping at somewhere else, they miss
the point of why I want the souvenirs.
Each souvenir I buy represents someone place I went, the adventure that
took my there, all the difficulties along the way, and my enjoyment of the
site. For those very reasons, the closer
that the souvenir is purchased to the site, the more valuable it is. Buying a replica after I saw the original
also makes it more valuable. The cost of
the souvenirs is a tiny proportion of the overall cost of any trip, yet, other
than photos, they are most visible, longest lasting memory of the trip for
me. To me, they are one of the most
valuable parts of the trip, so, if, instead of spending, say, 10% of my budget
on souvenirs, I want to spend 20%, I will because I know that doing the
souvenirs up right makes them more than twice as valuable to me.
The whole point of this value debate is that
valuations don’t have to make sense to anyone else. It just has to make sense to me, and I just
need to rationally act on whatever valuations I set, just as there can be
rational debate on more traditional values, so long as you rationally follow
the values you set for yourself. We took
my picture with the plaque and moved on to the main plaza. The first thing I wanted to find was the
carving from the nomination file, and we quickly did. I lit up my Cohiba and announced, “Guatemala
Complete,” and that it had been quite a rocky road. My original plan had the Completes lined up
in an uneven way. We have since revised
the plan, which will, if everything goes according to plan, allow me to do a
Complete every day. I like it much
better that way. Tomorrow is the biggest
variable in the whole plan, and the whole day will be set out to saying “Honduras
Complete,” which means finding a way that I can consider myself having visited
the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, most likely without actually visiting the
Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve. There is
a National Park that is part of the same biosphere, so our quest will be to go
to that park instead, doing the legislature and souvenirs in the morning, on
the way out. The very success or failure
of the trip will depend upon how we do that.
From that point on, to make my return flight would be to say “CA-4
Complete.”
Having lit up my cigar, we
walked around the site, taking lots of pictures and marveling at the stelae,
giant stone monuments honoring the different Mayan kings. We made our way to the acropolis, Fernando
considering it from an archaeological standpoint, me from an engineering
one. I would like to say how wonderful
it was, but all the Mayan ruins were starting to look the same, and the magic
of seeing these ruins was fading. I was
also exhausted and spent from walking around in the 90F heat wearing my suit. I had trouble finding the perfect souvenirs,
and I found something that I really wanted, but it was much larger than I
wanted (while the t-shirts were too small), so I opted for a smaller version,
which was actually a paper and pen holder, not a true replica. I gave Fernando the keys, and we made our way
to Copan, which would be our first site in Honduras. I fell asleep and woke up with a sign that
said “Bienvenidos a Honduras” in front of me.
We were at the border. We first
needed to exit Guatemala, which was a bit of an issue since I did have a proper
entrance visa. I just had to pay a
nominal fee to sort it out.
We took the
picture at the border and then went to the Honduras entrance station. After waiting for a large tour group to go
through and paying another nominal fee, and trying in vain to find out the
information we needed about Rio Platano, we were on our way. Starving, we decided to stop in the town of
Copan first before proceeding to the ruins, despite being on a bit of a
potential time crunch. I had asked
Fernando last night what the national food and beer was of Honduras. The food was something called baleadas, and
his favorite beer was Port Real. He told
me that there was a great place in Copan to get baleadas, but we found that it
no longer existed. We did, however, find
out where else we could get them. We sat
down and ordered. Knowing that the inside
of a tortilla would not be enough food, I also got some grilled meat to go with
it.
Not having any Honduras money, we
searched out an ATM. My card would not
work at the first one. That was
new. I am used to having my debit card
rejected at stores in a foreign country, but not at an ATM. I really did not want to have to deal with
calling Citibank again. We found an ATM,
one with a familiar name, and I was soon in possession of a pocket full of
lempiras. We made our way back to the
restaurant, and the food soon came. I
had a few bites of the baleadas as is, before opening it up to eat with the
meat. It was really good. We stopped next door for coffee. I absolutely hate café Americano. I think it is the worst beverage ever
invented. Either make proper drip coffee
or just give me the espresso straight.
This particular cup was too hot and burned my tongue. I threw it out.
We then made our way to the ruins of Copan. I stopped at the souvenir shop inside the VC
to get a t-shirt and a Honduran flag pin as a just in case, but I knew that I
would want to get the real souvenirs properly.
The first stop was the museum where they preserved some of the more
sensitive artifacts, including the head that was used in the nomination
photo. Fernando explained that I could
touch the artifact, a priceless Mayan statue, since there were no rules
there. Taking his cue, I took out my Partagas
and put it in the statue’s mouth.
Further testing the rules, I lit up the cigar in the museum, took a few
more puffs, put the lit cigar inside the statue’s mouth. We made our way to the archaeological site,
which was just like all the others. The
attraction here was a Mayan ball court, which was very interesting to see. It was something different from the
others. I will now have to pause as we
gas up.
We hiked up to the top of a pyramid, the highest point in the complex,
which afforded a great view of the site.
Along the way, Fernando found a little piece of pottery. I envied his find and hoped he would offer it
to me. Instead, he just tossed it
aside. I asked him why he didn’t keep
it. He had thrown it into a pile of
leaves, and he scrambled, unsuccessfully to try and find it for me. As we were walking around the top of the
pyramid, we found quite by chance the original site of the carving of the old
guy, which was replaced by a replica, but it was the perfect photo opportunity,
something that gave meaning to the site to me.
Compared to the wishy washy way we will be doing tomorrow’s site, it was
a welcome relief to go 5 for 5 the first three days on getting the nomination
photo. We took some more photos, and I
ditched the cigar on the way back.
It
was time for souvenirs. There was a
little stand staffed by a not unattractive girl with a clear bit of Mayan (or
otherwise indigenous) blood in her. I
picked out two decent-sized replicas, and she quoted me a price that seemed reasonable
enough in dollars. She was asking for it
in lempiras. The exchange rate is
22-to-1. I sensed that this would be a
good place to get souvenirs for people back home. The whole thing, the replicas, plenty of
souvenirs for myself, 4 nice bracelets for the ladies in the office, and 7
cheap keychains for my friends, cost about the same as I would expect to pay
for a t-shirt in London or Vienna. I
stopped to get some more water, and that was that. We made our way back to town, got some coffee
in town, struggled to get out of town, and were on our way to Tegucigalpa,
during which drive I proceeded to write this entry. Since I believe it will best to recount the
entire drive in its whole upon reaching Tegucigalpa, along with a couple of
things I forgot from the morning’s drive, I will now close.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
We arrived at our hotel’s parking lot almost an hour and a half ago,
yet I am only know sitting down to write this entry. It’s funny how things take so much longer
when you’re not rushing. After I closed,
we stopped for dinner at a buffet, where I was able to get, among other things,
chicharones, which has to be the best food in the history of mankind. It’s even better than buttered bacon, which
is saying a lot. It is deep-fried pork skins. How can it get better than that? I suppose I need to start with this
morning. I have never officially added “drive
100 mph” to the definition of a Complete, but it sure is nice when it
happens. The “highway” taking use from
our hotel to Quirigua was a very shitty road.
There were no cops and very few other cars. The only thing stopping me from flooring it
was the road itself, a huge collection of curves, speed bumps, and potholes. Twice, I got to 150 km/h before having to
slow down. Then, there it was, a slight
downgrade along a straightaway. 161
km/h, the magic number. I slowed down,
turned to Fernando, and told him that he was in a car that just went 100 mph, a
first for him. It was during this
process, when I had already slowed down to a manageable speed, that I missed a
speed bump, taking it at well over 40 mph.
The car was not happy. We also
talked more about philosophy, and his knowledge of different philosophers left
me pleasantly surprised, and American TV shows.
He asked if we really had unisex bathrooms here, and I told him that he
watched too much Ally McBeal. That was
how we passed most of the drive to Quirigua.
The drive to Tegucigalpa was almost entirely unadventurous. The first road was bumpy and filled with
potholes, so a nap was impossible. I was
too exhausted to enjoy a cigar, so I instead tried to plan our adventure for tomorrow,
coming up empty, that even my Plan B might not be working. By the time we stopped for dinner, I was
pretty confident in Plan C. Once we got
on CA-4, I proceeded to write my entry, and I had asked him if we were on that
road yet, but he explained that people here do not use highway numbers to give
directions, that it is meaningless to them.
I contrasted that to how everyone in the U.S. uses Interstate numbers to
give directions. I’m not sure which one
of us found the other convention more surprising. After dinner, I had to decide between a cigar
and attempting a nap. The nap won out,
and, when I came to, Fernando pointed out the lights of Tegucigalpa in the
distance.
I had said that we would be
lucky to arrive before midnight. We had
made great time and, even stopping for food and gas, got to the hotel at 11:30
AM. We had to honk to get the security
guard to let us in, and the hotel looked kind of dingy. The guy checked us in, and we went to our
room. I put my key in the door, opened
it up, and was greeted by a friendly, elderly Japanese man. Reader, take a moment and consider what just
happened. I used my room key, and there
was already someone in the room. He had
put us in a room that was already booked, already occupied. I went back down, and we got a new room on
the 4th Floor. We went into
the elevator, which only went up to 3.
There was another elevator. I
commented to Fernando that this supposed to be the best hotel in Tegucigalpa,
and he responded, “Welcome to Teguc.” I
shot back that maybe this was the best hotel in the city, and he didn’t
object. After settling in and uploading
my photos, I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I
can get some sleep before attempting to say “Honduras Complete” tomorrow.
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