Guest entry by my mom about her visit, part 3 of 14

[Post #3 in my mom's account of her and my brother's July visit]

DAY 2 (Antigua > Copán Ruinas in Honduras):

In the morning we indulge in the familiar with breakfast at The Bagel Barn. Like many local eateries, this one gives Peace Corps volunteers 20% off its already low prices. (Restaurant meals rarely cost us more than $5 apiece.) The peppers and cilantro in the bagels and spreads confirm that we're not in New York any more.

While exploring the city, we stumble on the Colonial Art Museum, which admits Elizabeth for free. This Peace Corps thing is coming in handy. I feel honored by association. The museum houses mostly dreary helmeted men on horseback and gruesome tortured saints. Mercifully, the collection is small. My favorite part of the museum is the courtyard, which will turn out to be a common feature of all kinds of buildings in Antigua.

When we return to the Bagel Barn for strawberry-cilantro smoothies at lunch time, the place is closed because the staff are overwhelmed with the making of hundreds of bagels to feed the US Marines landing on the coast (none of us knows why) the next day. The woman who explains this to us in very broken English through a barely open door, and who eventually slips us in for smoothies after all, seems excited at this invitation to feed American troops.

Her enthusiasm relaxes something in me. Only fifty years ago, my country's CIA instigated the overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected president (more here), setting off a 30-year civil war that stole family members from everyone we meet (more here). Only last October, President Obama apologized for the recently disclosed experiments conducted by the U.S. government in the 1940s, infecting 1,600 Guatemalans with STDs (more here). Time has passed, sure. But this Bagel Barn employee's eagerness to support the U.S. military surprises me. Guatemalans could be forgiven for wanting to keep their bagels to themselves.

At 1:30, we board a tourist van headed for the town of Copán Ruinas, Honduras, home of some of the most extensive Mayan ruins in Central Amercia. Elizabeth has been there before and doesn't want us to miss it. (The more famous ruins at Tikal, her first choice, are off limits to Peace Corps volunteers because of the murders there this May.)

Over the course of the ride, the radio leaps from one era, genre, and language to another. Cat Stevens croons "Morning Has Broken," a song that takes me back to junior high. Rappers belt out who-knows-what in staccato Spanish. We hear marimbas, drums, trumpets. Some songs have an African feel. A man in the front seat occasionally bursts into a singalong. Elizabeth and Brian play Angry Birds or flip through pictures on my iPod or sleep. I read or knit or study the nearly vertical corn fields and the changes in the weather. Halfway to our destination, we stop to stretch and buy food at a truck stop. (Tip: Never get empanadas at a truck stop. Do get the plantain chips.) At the end of the sweltering seven-hour trip, the AC suddenly kicks in. Welcome to Honduras.

We drop our bags at our whimsically colorful hostel, Iguana Azul. The floors here, as at the Burkhard, are rug-free tile, pretty and cold. The place is refreshingly clean.

We wander back to the main street and walk into the first restaurant we see, Via Via. Elizabeth recommends baleadas: large flour tortillas folded in half, filled with whatever you ask for and served with the picante sauces that we would come to crave. Our table overlooks the sidewalk, where an emaciated dog (just look at his ribs!) with a grotesquely drooping lower lip (look at his poor mouth!) gazes up at us. We discuss the cons of tossing scraps to our unfortunate neighbor, including the probability that the restaurant owners wouldn't want to encourage vagrancy. The pros prevail. We (and Rover) finish the meal just in time to join, or in Brian's case watch, the salsa-dancing crowd of gringos who are here for the same reason we are: to see the Mayan ruins the next day.

For now, though, the dance is the thing. The salsa teacher — the very man who belted out songs with the radio a few hours earlier — grabs Elizabeth and demonstrates the steps with her through one hootinous, trumpet-blaring, syncopated song after another. All eyes are on the two of them.

Right, together, left, together, spin!

Furl, unfurl, furl.

Right, together, left, together, spin!

Despite my own nine-year-old partner's confusion over which foot to move when, I'm whisked into dance time, a heady suspension of time, a feeling that we could keep on dancing forever, that maybe we have already been dancing forever. Brian must feel like he's been sitting there forever by the time Elizabeth and I finally do stop, slick with sweat and thirsty enough to pay whatever the bartender might want for bottled water.

Suspended time. Vacations give us that. They let us stop the world and get off. That timelessness is a feeling you don't want to let go of, even to go to sleep.

Part of the seven-hour ride to Copán Ruinas goes by quickly thanks to
childhood photos on my iPod.

Other parts of the trip drag.

Half of a baleada with rice, sour cream, guacamole, and pico de gallo

Elizabeth salsa dancing at Via Via.

At our hostel, Iguana Azul, not yet ready for sleep.