February 27, 2010
This is the tale of two gringo’s who leave the comforts of our safe haven in Boulder, CO to start a new adventure in a third world country after meeting some stranger on the internet.
My boyfriend and I have just moved to La Ceiba, Honduras to help open and manage the Iguana Bar at the Coco Pando Resort. To put it nicely, this place needs a shit ton of work done and livin’ ain’t easy in Honduras.
Day 1: We arrive at Miami Airport at 8:00 a.m., go to get our tickets and discover that it turns out you can’t buy a one-way ticket out of the United States. 
Hmmm…..not the brightest thing on our behalf, but you would have thought that Orbitz would warn you of this before you purchase a one-way ticket. So, we buy a return ticket for some random day in August.
We have an hour layover in Grand Cayman- where we have to go through immigration to exit the country, only to turn right back around and go through immigration to enter the country and board a plane again. Flying to La Ceiba, we can’t land due to heavy rains, so we hover for over an hour (until we basically run out of gas) and then land on Roatan. We re-fuel and sit on the plane for over an hour, and then pilot tells us that we’ll attempt to land in La Ceiba one more time and if we fail, we’re going back to Grand Cayman. Luckily we land.
Even more lucky for us is the fact that Neal (the owner of the bar) actually waited at the airport for us for 3.5 hours – we were pretty excited to see his face when we got off the plane. A little less exciting was the fact that after traveling for almost 12 hours, we had to go buy a stove from some guy immediately. Our first Honduras purchasing experience just showed how differently things are done in this country – we buy a used stove and deep fryer from some guy who just owns a storage room full of junk, who loads it in the bed of his pickup truck and delivers it to our bar. (After 2 days, we’re finding it works less than perfect and we’ve got to track this random guy down again). Hey – this is a good find for the bar though, and we’re excited to get some equipment hopefully up and running shortly.
Next task for the day – w
e move a mattress from a room nearby into our room. Grateful to have a bed to sleep on tonight.
Impressions first day: The city of La Ceiba is less than attractive. Honestly, it sucks. It’s dirty, it’s loud and it’s full of traffic and shitty stores. The hotel is a diamond in the rough, though. The ocean in front of us and the mountains behind us – a sight for sore eyes for sure. The bar needs to be cleaned, but is in otherwise great shape. The apartment needs scrubbing, the shower doesn’t drain, the lights aren’t working, etc….but these are projects that will get done in due time.
Day 2 and 3:
Even though the guys thought that we’d be serving food by today (swear to god – a bit disillusioned), we were lucky to get the beer in a cooler and the cooler up and working. The last two days have been spent scrubbing the heck out of the apartment, and running around buying things for the apartment and bar. Nothing is as simple as going to a Walmart around here. If you need 3 things, you need to go to probably 6 different stores. Prices vary so much at every place. In one store, a coffee pot could cost $20, in another store it costs $5. So, it’s worth driving around, but it’s time consuming to save some money. By the end of today, we’ve gotten a little further along. Our bedroom has a bed (with pillows!) and a dresser. Our kitchen has a large jug of water (still shopping for a dispenser), a coffee maker and enough dishes to get by on for now. We’ve fixed most locks and door knobs (and I literally have at least 10 keys to just get in and out of this damn place) The bar has one working deep-cooler (apparently we’re pretty lucky to even have one of those), and we’ve got 14 cases of beer ready to be sold (or drank at least)
The restaurant has a deep fryer and a oven/flat top – both aren’t working (yet), but they are upstairs in the kitchen at least. Most things get delivered: beer/soda, water/ice, fruit/vegetables, seafood, propane. Still have to figure out things like oil, spices, breads, tortillas, etc.
We’re starting from a little below ground zero – not exactly the shape I thought this place would be in when we first arrived. But we’re slowly but surely getting things done in a country where nothing gets done quickly. Good news is – the gringos that live here are more than excited to see this place up and running, the help that we do have is impressive and the beach is right out our front door.