taco's & toucan's travels ~ 2019

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DAY 57

Week 9

ROATÁN (Islas de la Bahía, HND) to LA FORTUNA (Alajuela, CRI)

Friday May 10^th, 2019

TODAYS MILEAGE – 745 miles / 1,199 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 21,463 miles / 34,541 kilometres

With today being our last day in Honduras, I headed out of the hotel to walk the West Bay beach just to see what was out there. A quick coffee and bite to eat at Bean Crazy, before collecting my gear and heading to the airport at 9:30 AM.

Avianca flight AV483 departed Roatán on time at 12:10 PM and took just on a hour and a half to reach the San Salvador International Airport in El Salvador. A relative short transit time of an hour and we were back in the air on the hour long Avianca flight AV630 to San José, Costa Rica.

Once we got our vehicle sorted at the Juan Santamaria International Airport, we headed out into San José peak out traffic - smack bang into Costa Rica's national Highway 1 having turned into the worlds longest carpark.

After a quick "splash & dash" at the La Choza De Doña Emilce roadside restaurant, we pulled up at Desafio Adventure Company to pay for the coming days optional activities. With our arrival at Hotel Las Colinas in La Fortuna, marked the culmination of our 3½ hour night time drive through the mountains.

It took me a couple of goes to get my room sorted due to either no air conditioning or running water, but we all ended up over at the Lava Lounge for a rowdy feed and while the “Avocados” headed home for the evening, I meandered up the road to check out La Fortuna Pub, which was a hell of a lot of fun.

With no activities of note to speak of today, this might be the opportune time to relay to you one of the negatives with travelling over extended periods and that is the feeling of being alone, even though you’re travelling in a group. In my particular case, it manifests itself by me withdrawing into myself, putting the shutters up so to speak, seemingly somewhat irritable or negative at times.

How did someone as outgoing and fun loving as me, get into this position, as travel is meant to be all about fun, exploring the world, meeting new people and taking it easy??? In my particular case, I believe that I ran into a perfect storm of several distinctly different elements culminating in to how I’m currently feeling.

The trip started out with a different itinerary that what I paid for, so even though there was nothing I could do about it, it was lingering in the back of my mind when having to fork out for stuff all the time and contained activities that I have no interest in at all.

I am the only male in a group of 6 and the age demographics mean that we have virtually nothing in common other than travelling together.

I’m the only native English speaker in the group. Spanish, German and French are the first languages, which makes it really hard to drop in and out of general conversations as English not always English.

Similarly, when decisions on activities planning, language, age, sex and interests have played a part in me having to do a considerable amount of my own research on the road to get the most out of this segment.

It’d be fair to say that I’ve done a fair bit of soul searching the past week or so, in trying to break through the funk I’m in. I’ve asked myself if it is me? Is it a control thing? Is it a social interaction problem? Sonia and I even spent an hour or so tonight discussing the situation and I’m grateful to see a different perspective.

At the end of the day it is me and for me alone to resolve, but I’m struggling with working out the how – hence withdrawing into myself. Not sure if it’s an individual “Avocados” fault per se that the dice have been rolled and came up snake eyes.

It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed most of this leg of the trip - far from it, it’s been an amazing and at times eye opening walkabout through tropical Central America. I’ve had a great time for the most part.

I’ll get it sorted, I have no doubt about that, as there’s always sunshine on a rainy day – you just have to look for it.