After having thrown up and downed some Dramamine and Imodium, I slept in a drug-induced state the five hours to Tela. I could barely wake myself to get off the bus once we arrived.

Our taxi driver told us that the hotel we wanted to go to was closed, but we didn’t believe her since that was a common scam by taxi drivers who want to take people to hotels where they can get a commission. We made her take us to the hotel anyway where we discovered it was indeed closed for renovations. Per her recommendation, we checked into another hotel that was clean and had a real treat — cable TV.

We quickly dropped off our luggage and headed out, eager to find the beach and some food. There was supposed to be a boardwalk all the way down the beach, lined with hotels and restaurants.

We found the boardwalk and started walking down it. But three or four restaurants later, the boardwalk ended. We thought it might continue around a large, seemingly abandoned hotel that was jutting out, but as we walked around the hotel, we realized there wasn’t very much — and no boardwalk — on the other side. There was a “river” flowing into the ocean — a river that was dark and filled with trash. We’d later realize that it was sewage from the town.

So we went back the direction we came from and picked a restaurant. The prices were a sticker shock, so we settled on getting just a snack — beers and fries.

The view of the small beach was nice, but we noticed right away that there were almost no people swimming in the water. The sewage river was enough to convince us we wouldn’t be swimming here either. To top it all, we saw an oil barge collecting oil not 500 yards off the coast.

We called it an early night, and the next morning, after unsuccessfully scouring for a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet, we ended up at the same restaurant for breakfast. They had banana pancakes — a welcome break from rice and beans.

It was scorching hot as we walked around exploring the town. After errand running most of the morning, we went to check out a hotel that our guidebook said had the “best view in all of Honduras,” the Maya Vista Hotel. It was at the other end of town, and by the time we reached it, the three or four flights of steep stairs we had to climb to get up to the restaurant seemed almost impossible.

But we made it, and we were glad we did. From that height, there was a steady (and sometimes fierce) breeze. The view was great as well — nothing but ocean and trees. The hot, hectic city below was hidden away.

We ordered some pasta and sodas and sat down to read and blog. We noticed they had a book exchange and Lauren went to check it out. She quickly came back with a exciting find — a Lonely Planet Mexico book, which we had been searching for for weeks.

Granted, it was six years old — two editions before the current one — and missing the last hundred or so pages. But most of what we needed was in there — maps, bus routes, highlight destinations. She started plotting out our route and timetable for Mexico while I went to task figuring out exactly how we were going to get across the border — either to Guatemala or Belize. The ferry to Belize was an obscene $50, but the route to the town we wanted to go to in Guatemala, Flores, would take at least five grueling bus rides.

We decided to go to Omoa, a halfway point to the border. We had seen a sign in our hotel advertising a “friendly hostel with everything you could want,” and the Lonely Planet said that the hotel owner Roli was friendly and knew everything you needed to know about crossing the border. It was three buses away from Tela, but that would cut out at least two buses on the way to Guatemala, and we could still easily backtrack to the Belize ferry if we want to.

That evening we went jogging and stumbled upon a humongous resort, complete with several pools, a water slide and many restaurants. We realized that it was a resort for wealthy Hondurans, who sat by the pool with coolers of drinks. Lauren and I were wistful for the pool — even at night it was steaming hot.

The next day, we went back to the Mira Vista to trade one of our books for the Mexico book, and Lauren diligently read for three or four hours to finish a second book that we wanted to trade as well.

Even though it was a Saturday night, we tried to go to bed early, exhausted from the heat, my continued illness, and the mad dash we had made through Central America over the last few weeks.

We when got back to the hotel, we noticed pink balloons decorating the entrance and quickly realized that a party was being set up in the lot out back — directly outside our window. We hoped it would end early.

The party ended up being the hotel owner’s daughter or niece’s 15th birthday, and around 8pm, the music started up. Very, very loud music. Despite shutting our windows and being at least a story higher than the speakers, Lauren and I could barely hear each other speak. We decided to go out to dinner, hoping 15 year olds had early curfews.

When we returned, the music was still blaring. We finally spotted the girl — dressed up in a pink prom dress — and realized all of her relatives were dressed to the nines as well. And there was a very large bar set up and the drinks were flowing. This was definitely not going to end anytime soon.

We turned on the TV, but we couldn’t hear anything. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was on (again) so we watched it with the sound on mute. It was in Spanish anyway, so we just settled on lip-reading while the thumping music continued outside.

Sometime just before midnight, the party ended. Lauren and I struggled to sleep, preparing to leave the next morning.

We had been told that the bus we needed left every hour, so we walked to the station only to discover that on Sundays the schedule was different. We had just missed the last morning bus by five minutes and the next one wasn’t for two and a half hours. We had read about a train that was a more direct route to where we were going, but after walking around for blocks with our heavy bags with us, we finally discovered the train hadn’t run for two years.

So Lauren and I finally found a cheap restaurant and sat down to lunch.

We trudged back to the bus station, and after three very uncomfortable bus rides, we made it to Omoa.

We eagerly went to the hostel, ready for the “best hostel in all of Honduras” experience. When we arrived, we checked into a cute room and the Honduran woman who was running the office gave us a quick tour, pointing out a wall with a dozen posted signs that she said had border crossing information on it.

We went to the board and quickly discovered that Roli, the “friendly hotel owner,” must have not been terribly happy about the Lonely Planet recommendation regarding his “friendly knowledge.” The board was full of not-so-subtle warnings that the owner did not want to be bothered. First was an entire page explaining that he did want to be asked questions and that we should direct all questions to the woman we met who was running the hotel:

“I don’t want to be rude but I am tired to [sic] answer every day the same questions: Are you Roli? can I ask you something? When does the bus to blah blah leave…”

Another separate posting read:

“!!Roli knows nothing about buses !! He is driving his old piece of sh… where ever [sic] he goes!!”

At first, we thought it was funny and felt sorry for the guy. Then we started noticing other signs, including one that said, “No more socializing after 10:30.” Granted, we’re not late night people ourselves and don’t want parties in the hotel late either, but no socializing at all?

And then, the kicker. There was a sign about how there had been armed robberies (the arms of choice were machetes, fun!) at a nearby waterfall. The sign said that no tourist should go there and that if we did and we got robbed, “you will be on your own. Roli’s Place will not give any assistance to victims of assaults that happen” there. That, we thought, was taking it too far. Surely people shouldn’t go, but to say that despite being “locals” and probably knowing the local doctors, police and probably the fastest way to get to embassies, you wouldn’t help people, is just obscene.

The last sign we ready was also sad, but for a different reason. It turned out that the nearby beautiful beach had lost dozens of feet of beachfront. An oil company had built some jetties to protect their gas tanks but the jetties had changed the water currents and now the beach was quickly washing away.

Lauren and I went down to the beach to see for ourselves. It was quickly obvious that a significant part of the beach was missing. Restaurants were a little too “water-front” — the beach was washing away from almost underneath them. We saw light poles immersed in two feet of ocean water. And while people still played in the water and were jumping off a pier, we were horrified to see little kids using rusted abandoned pipes as platforms to jump off of. We guessed the pipes were left over from the jetties construction and the oil company had just left the waste on the beach.

We walked down the beach and ate (very close) by the water. A huge rainstorm came in, so obeying Roli’s wishes, we headed home before 10:30pm and stopped socializing. The next day was going to be a long, hectic border crossing.