Acostumbrarme a una aventura nueva

Do you ever get that "Oh shit!" feeling when you've committed to do something that you were sure about but when the day arrives to actually do it you start to wonder what the heck you were thinking? There was a moment of panic as my plane circled in the air over the sprawling mess of Tegucigalpa below. Why did I just get on a flight to another country without any guidebooks and without any plans whatsoever? All I had was a printout of some vague directions to navigate from the airport at Tegus to meet my one contact in all of Central America, and the idea of somehow becoming fluent in Spanish. In an instant my decision to come seemed downright foolish, and the mass of houses below started to seem completely unmanageable.

Tegus is a sharp contrast from Miami, where I had departed from only two hours ago. I'm sure I must have visited Miami as a kid, but I don't remember looking out the plane window to such a puzzling sight below. For a moment it almost seemed as if I was looking at residential areas constructed out of Legos; the impeccably engineered developments had the same right-angle effect as the children's building blocks. Along the shore, not only did the rows of houses extend out in perfect rectangles, but there were rectangular inlets of water between each row. The manicured sea scape looked like it had been produced in the sterile chambers of a bright white factory and then gently plopped over the existing landscape, bolted down like plates of sheet metal to cover the earth beneath. It was too perfect, too artificial to believe that wild, virgin land ever existed in the place now occupied by a dramatic feat of engineering. I marveled at man's complete mastery over the earth, then turned back to my book - this was not my destination, nor was I really interested in stopping there. I dozed off, and awoke a few hours later to a very different image.

I've been to Nicaragua before, so seeing a developing country isn't shocking to me, but putting Tegus side by side with Miami makes you wonder if you've landed in another planet with completely different laws of physics and of the environment. Where in Miami it's clear that man is the master of the earth, in Tegus the land dominates everything man-made. Roads are haphazardly strewn throughout the terrain, conforming to the curves of changes in elevation rather than carving out the hills to fit a grid like in many U.S. cities. Unrepaired cracks snake across concrete streets and the tiled blocks of the narrow sidewalks jut out at obtuse angles as encroaching tree roots creep below. Even newly painted walls soon develop cracks due to shifting forces underneath the foundation. It's as if nature is mocking man's attempt to master her.

* * *

I'm nervous as I step off the plane, but now I'm just thinking about the logistics of getting to my destination. I have to take a cab to a bus station, and then a bus from Tegus to Juticalpa. Sounds simple enough, but my tongue feels sluggish in my mouth, the once familiar words now sounding like mush, and I'm embarrassed to speak. I feel like an idiot...an impostor. My first attempt to ask for a location where I can catch a taxi is an utter failure, so I retreat to Aunt Annie's pretzel stand to console myself with a few bottles of cold water and regroup. The cashier at Aunt Annie's seems nice enough, so I ask him for directions. I can't understand a word he's saying. This is not going well!

The first floor of the airport seems devoid of taxi signs, so I decide to try upstairs. The Aunt Annie's cashier seems puzzles as he watches me ascend the escalator, and I see why immediately - the only thing at the top of the stairs is a McDonald's and a huge window looking out toward the runway. Clearly not the right place. I pretend to browse for something so I don't look entirely out of place, then I go back downstairs after a few minutes.

I finally decide to just walk outside and try to find a cab on my own. As soon as I cross the threshold, a man in a yellow golf shirt approaches me and asks if I want a taxi. How the heck could I have possibly made such an easy thing so difficult? After haggling for a minute over the price (he charged me 4 dollars more than Meg said he should), I hop in and I'm on my way.

My Spanish is still choppy, but I can understand nearly everything the driver is saying. Suddenly I'm in my element. As we navigate the chaotic streets of Tegus, the crowded, noisy chaos of a city teetering on the edge is now energizing. The driver and I crack jokes at all the taxis from a competing company that we see broken down on the side of the road. His laughter quickly transmutes into a snarl as he lays on the horn to convey his frustration to the slow moving motorbike in front of us. Not yet satisfied that they got the message, he slams on the gas to accelerate until we're neck and neck with the motorbike, and then starts veering toward the biker as if to drive him off the road. To my relief, he turns the wheel back to the right only inches from colliding with the motorbike.

I look around and realize my cabbie's behavior is far from out of the ordinary. It soon becomes clear that the primary rule of the road is that whoever drives most aggressively gets to make the rules. Stop signs only apply to those who don't have the guts to power through them. Fortunately, it seems there is a protective halo around my taxi, because we make it to the bus station in one piece. My fear and doubt having strangely subsided somewhere along the taxi ride, I bound toward the bus terminal eager to start my new adventure in Juticalpa.