Last Day in Tela

I wrote this last night....today we are back in San Pedro Sula.

Yesterday evening, things got really interesting here in Tela. It ended up being a really great interaction with a bunch of really interesting expats. Last night, we went back to the same restaurant that we had enjoyed the night before...the Bungalow...its a little wooden building in town run by a Louisiana guy, Norman. The other night, we enjoyed having the place to ourselves. The food was great and we ended up hanging out pretty late with Norman. We were the only ones there but last night it ended up being a packed house...both tables were filled. We had brought along Jen, a nice girl from our hotel and the next table was full of some expats who all live in Tela. We have seen very few other gringos here and sometimes its nice to know that we arent the only ones here. It seems strange that there are so few travelers here because during the week, its like having our own private beach...ok, there was some trash on the beach, left over from the thousands that come on the weekends but for us, it was easily overlooked as our eyes were drawn to the palm trees and the waves.

We were enjoying ourselves with great conversations and kind of listening in to the other group. We started discussing our next destinations and the people at the next table overheard and turned around to help us. It turns out that over at that table was Liz, a Nova Scotian, who quickly joined us at our table. She was really great! She helped out with a ton of information about Utila for Jen and before we knew it, we were deep in conversation entranced by her amazing stories about Tela, Honduras and her other worldly travels. She offered up some extremely handy information for Rob and I about our future travels...I'll just say that we will not need to go back to Belize after Semana Santa. We got some great perspectives on expat life here which is pretty interesting since its such a small community and there are very few women. I think its very different for these folks in Tela than it is in a place like Roatan which has a lot more expats and travelers. Then she invited us to hang out the next day since she has an apartment right on the beach.

We woke up this morning to a clear blue sky and just knew that it would be a great day. We walked down the beach and found liz's apartment and then spent all afternoon playing in the waves and enjoying the sunshine...probably a bit too much since Jess and I ended up a little sunburnt but it was worth it. The waves were big and fun and we laughed a lot as we fought the undertow to get out far enough to body surf. Then we went back to Liz's for a shower and spent some time on her huge deck overlooking the palm trees and the Caribbean. It was great to really connect with someone so interesting, nice and helpful. We all went to dinner (Jen ended up re-connecting with us) at the little restaurant around the corner from Liz's apartment for a delicious fish dinner and more wonderful conversation. It ended up being the perfect end to our stay in Tela.