Tourist.

We spent Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning in Tela which was beautiful and small-town-esque. And even though I later discovered it exists only because of United Fruit and subsequently the Tela Railroad Company and that our hotel Telamar was actually where American United Fruit Co. executives were housed back in the day, I still loved it. Is that bad? I mean in a way it's kind of the quintessential American/Honduran experience...

I am fascinated by the abandoned shell of the Tela Railroad Company and the gringos who came here in 1841. What was there? And then I think about all of Honduras' northern coast and what Columbus must have seen and then what happened. Did they (those 1841 gringos) imagine in that 150 years later the railroad pier--the what is now the burned and rotting muelle---would continue to be one of Tela's foremost landmarks? But I loved it, just like I loved all of Tela, and I loved the people who fished off the muelle and rode their bikes over missing boards, and the fishing men who were civil to the silly tourist gringas who asked questions and took pictures.

On Friday morning we were picked up by Hno. M (father of Hno. M) in his paila from our fancy smancy villa-hotel. We rode in the back of the truck midst the broken bicycle parts and our haphazardly loaded luggage and we were red, tan-lined, (I was make-up-less) and oh so tired. Sun ain't good for us white girls. So we stood outside our hotel shaking our heads at every single taxi that honked hopefully as it passed. And I kind of like, smiled, to have witnesses witness us load up our luggage into the oh-so-normal and oh-so-not-touristy pick-up and then ride into the sun (and bright and ultra-violet it was).

I love the crabs and sapos that come out in Tela night and the parrots people keep in their pulperias and the garifuna babies that yell "cangreos" or "sapo" or "loro" accordingly.

We bike-rode through Tela in all its heat, neatly gridded self, midst the teenage boys signing and yelling "I LOOOVE JUUU!" at the beach front at dusk. And then it was almost as good returning to the hotel eating fine fish and tajadas, drinking (virgin) pina coladas, eating the accompanying maraschino cherries and withdrawing from the humidity and dark of the real Tela.

Today (in La Ceiba, we've since moved on to more eastern, northern Honduras coast) I talked to a super tourist who was an American, a San Franciscan, who spends months upon months of many years in Honduras, who lived in Tela for three months. Who decried the tourists who come to Honduras to beach, zipline, and see the islands without meeting the people, you know? He was black, (African American?) and since at that moment we were in the garifuna village he fit right in and then he gestured to his wife-beater, basketball shorts, and said "No one knows I'm a tourist, so I see the real Honduras" and then told us about the people who get shot in Tela every single night. Those nights that we retreated to our safe, ritzy villas, abiding by the signs that warn "Do not roam the beach at night."

Sometimes, it's hard for me to reconcile my place here in Honduras. I am tourist. I am visiting humanitarian. I am United Fruit Company legacy. I am rich. I am hiding from realities. I am being cautious. I am being safe. I am riding in the back of pick-ups. I am getting room service. I am in Honduras, but not living of Honduras.

Sometimes, I am very clearly a tourist. And very clearly American. And very clearly an American in Honduras. But I still love Honduras. And is that OK?