Day 11: San Pedro Sula

Today we walked around the city and checked out the markets which sell everything from fresh fruit & vegetables to new clothing to construction & building supplies.

We found it pretty overwhelming to be here. It’s not a tourist draw so we felt a lot of lingering stares for most of the day as we walked around. Nearly every little shop, large department store, ice creamery, shoe store, etc has at least one (heavily) armed guard because the crime rate is so high (kinda why we didn’t take any pictures). When we were visiting with our friends’ family yesterday, we learned that all the houses and businesses are gated and locked up for the same reason. We didn’t have any trouble while we were out and about but we were advised not to go out after dark.

We had planned yesterday to get together with our friends before we all left on Tuesday to our respective destinations but we weren’t able to reach them. We were really bummed because we hadn’t properly said thank you and goodbye yesterday since we all thought we would be seeing each other today.

Today is Lin’s birthday (22!). We didn’t do anything special today because we had planned to go out tonight with our friends for a drink. But since it didn’t work out, we just headed back to the hotel to do some journal catching-up and watch a little TV. Lin was a little bummed that she didn’t get to have a celebratory drink or anything and Saben, feeling badly about it and being the awesome guy that he is, braved the mean streets in search of a birthday surprise. Without saying where he was going or what he was doing or for how long, he left our room instructing Lin to “Stay here. I’ll be back. Probably…” About an hour later, she heard 3 knocks at the door. He’s still alive! And there he was, holding a flaming birthday cake!

Lin's Rockin' Birthday Cake!

It took three bakeries and two mini-supermarkets to come up with a cake (with “Happy Birthday Lindsey” written on it), candles, and champagne (ginger ale) but he was able to spanglish his way through it. San Pedro Sula really is quite dangerous at night (in fact we were advised by our local friends not to be out after dark) and Saben had a hard time looking tough and mean walking around the dark alleys with a pink and yellow cake!

Cheers!

Best birthday ever, for sure!