The King Quality Nine

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - I got here around 1 a.m. last night after a calamitous bus ride from Granada.

I rode with King Quality, which on a sign in Spanish says it provides "the royal elegance of the ground plane." Whatever. It was an hour late picking me up. Nine of us were supposed to meet a connecting bus once we crossed the border into Honduras that would take us to Tegucigalpa, but said bus wasn't at the rendezvous point when we arrived. After half an hour of chewing out the fine King Quality staff, who wanted to leave us there to find and pay for some other means of getting to Tegucigalpa at 10 pm, they did just that. Nine of us stuck in the middle of nowhere, about two hours from Tegucigalpa, stuck in the parking lot of the Hotel Oassis. Guess who the only gringo was?

We were there for an hour and a half, maybe two, until finally some of the guys talked this man with a big truck into hauling all of us up through the mountains. Two other guys decided they'd just rent a car. I threw the most into the pot for us to get out of there, so they insisted I take a seat inside, where there was room for three passengers. The other four, all of whom fortunately had jackets, huddled down in our luggage in the back and then we were off.

I got to my hotel around 1 am, but woke up in a pretty good mood this morning. Traveling around always puts me in a good mood, especially since the climate is much more temperate in Tegucigalpa compared to Granada's inferno.

If anything has ever taught me that time is money, it's been working freelance. With that said, look at the time, adios.