Bus to La Ceiba, or “No need to stand in line at Disneyland”

June 23rd, 2019 by Bryce Loder

A few days back I ended my blog entry with a teaser about my bus trip to La Ceiba. Unfortunately I don’t have many photos about the “bus” part of it.

After a short pre-dawn nap without an ER call or hospital call for over two hours, I discovered that my radio was at the wrong frequency. No wonder I had been allowed to sleep for two hours. New lazy foreign doctor turns radio to wrong frequency and gets to sleep. Good trick. I showered and hurried to hospital, but they hadn’t called me, and my guilt and shame was relieved.

 

Quick 6:00 a.m. hospital rounds, checked out and turned my patients over to Maria, who would be on call for ER and inpatient, plus OB (she’s tougher). Put on some really fancy clothes – long pants and a polo shirt, and headed down to the road to catch the “special bus” to La Ceiba to run some urgent errands and to buy a few food items. I wasn’t sure why two of my colleagues weren’t there waiting along with me — we had planned this all week — but the guard said the bus had already gone. I waited along the road, and soon another bus came along and I was on board. I had been concerned about no knee room on the bus to La Ceiba – about a two hour ride – and I had imagined the discomfort. No worry here about knee room anymore. Seats were taken and the aisles were packed. I actually clawed my way through the crowd and got a place to stand in the aisle. My knees were just fine standing there, so my concern about tight seating was unnecessary. I steadied myself as we went along the dirt road dodging potholes and rocks, and I grabbed the parcel racks that were attached to the bus roof with strap iron. At the location where I was hanging on (tightly), the strap iron holding the racks was actually attached to the roof on both sides of the bus. Farther back, it was less stable; in other words the bolts were missing or loose. I just kept looking at each rack, wishing that I had a 1/2” wrench for one side and a 9/16” wrench for the other. Tightening those bolts would have made me feel more secure while standing there unable to see out the windows (they were at about waist level). After a little more than an hour of feeling sorry

 

for, and admiring the imagined stamina of, my missing colleagues who obviously had taken an earlier bus instead of waiting for me, my big turn came. Half the people got off of the bus in the town of Jutiapa, and I had a seat. I finally got to experience the previously imagined problem about a place to put my knees and the legs attached to them. The vendors came aboard in Jutiapa, and with the aisle free of standing passengers, the vendors with animals, drinks, food, and clothing passed through the aisles loudly proclaiming the benefits of buying their product or contributing to their charity. Sitting was so much better than standing on that old U.S. school bus given a second life in Honduras. It was a rough ride, but I thought that I had to be at least as sturdy as my companions, and if they took this bus to La Ceiba and bragged about it, I could do it, too.

Getting off the bus in La Ceiba, I ran into a Honduran hospital lab worker who recognized me and asked me why I didn’t take the “nice bus” from the hospital. I told him that I had tried, but that the guards “insisted” I get on the bus that stopped in front of the hospital gate. He told me to go to La Colonia grocery store at about 2:00 p.m., and I’d find my coworkers and the “nice bus” home. Errands were accomplished in about one hour, and then I had several hours to wait.

Coffee in the mall, chats with multiple pharmacists in their pharmacies, cruising hardware stores and a search for a good lunch filled my free hours. As I was eating some lunch and talking to my dad on the phone at a stand next to La Colonia grocery store, here came Decca and Carolina, fairly surprised to see me. They told me how they had made the bus driver at the hospital wait while they went to my room to try to wake me because they knew I intended to be on the bus. They had gone above and beyond the call of duty in trying to find me to get on the “nice bus”, and yes it was a “nice bus”. We agreed to meet at 3:00 p.m. for the trip home, and I had enough time to buy groceries and a high-priced frozen coffee drink. Oh….and that one can of beer that I had to take outside behind the shopping center and drink while hiding in the shade of the trashy motorcycle employee parking area. My fellow workers, who came here to work with Samaritan’s Purse and other evangelical organizations, didn’t need to see me trying that beer which is prohibited on any property owned by the foundation running the hospital. I don’t break their rules.

Riding back to Balfate and the hospital on the nicer bus was a dream, relatively speaking, and we laughed about them feeling sorry for me missing the trip and about my unnecessary admiration of them and my being in awe of their toughness in riding the “local” bus to La Ceiba—which they had never done. Turned out that I was the only one who had been foolish enough to do that. The hospital bus was free, and I’d paid 40 Lempiras (about US $1.60) for my ride, believing that my suffering was being rewarded with a cheap bus ride!

 

I’d still prefer my amusement-park-worthy ride to any Disneyland ride. I’d rather bounce on that bus than stand in line at Disneyland ever again.