First of all, the car ride there was a barrel of fun, spawning mountains of inside jokes including "round eye, round fruit" and "quieres la buburin?" which I won't take the time to explain here. I will only tell you that there was a lot of laughing going on in the car. It was about a 6 hour ride from Santa Lucía to San Pedro, with yours truly behind the wheel following a carload of our Honduran co-workers. It was to be my first time driving in the city and I was a little nervous but despite a few close calls, everything was fine. (That sentence could have been used to describe pretty much any car ride I've ever participated in while in Latin America). We made it to our hotel and rested for a bit before heading out into the madness. Our honduran friends decided on Burger King for lunch. Not my first choice for a "cultural experience" but it's not like the place was empty...plenty of Hondurans were having it their way before the soccer game, so I didn't feel like such a foreigner. We hopped back in the pick-up (we all squeezed into one truck to help with parking) and before we knew it, it was pouring down rain. The tropical afternoon rainstorm had struck again. They tossed us a blue tarp from the cab so we stayed relatively dry and the rain only lasted about a half hour. We found a parking spot and started walking towards the stadium.
This was approximately 2pm. The game was scheduled to start at 8pm. Our Honduran friends had told us we had to get there very early in order to ensure that we got into the game. "But we have tickets, why will it be a problem?" we responded. Marvin (our main tour guide for the day) shook his head a smiled with a "silly gringos" look on his face. He informed us that black-market tickets were a huge deal here and that there were probably 15-20 THOUSAND bogus tickets floating around. So in order to get in, we needed to be there early and get in "line." I put that in quotes because the lines were really just huge twisted masses of people all sort-of aiming for the entrance. The stadium only held about 30,000 people and I marveled at how at an Ohio State game we still managed some kind of order with over 100,000 people trying to get in. There were no gates or ropes differentiating one line from another, just a few police officers sitting around "keeping order." We stood there for 3 hours advancing about 60 feet and I was ready to pull my hair out. My patience went out the window and I was ready to just leave, especially when it looked like we were not going to make it in. At one point a large group of gringos walked through the crowd completely obnoxiously decked out in American garb...soccer scarves, big uncle sam hats, american flag capes...the whole nine yards. They came traipsing through this crowd of thousands of angry Hondurans and were just getting harassed. Not in an unsafe kind of way, but in a sporting-event kind of way. My first thought was "those HAVE to be Peace Corps volunteers." I could just see James, Bryan, Andy, Joe and Yamasaki leading a group of us Bolivian volunteers through this madness and soaking up every minute of it. My friends and I had kept a low profile, at least trying to where neutral colors. These people were unabashedly being obnoxious Americans. And while usually I'm not a huge fan of that kind of behavior, a large part of me wanted to throw my lot in with them. The only thing that prevented me from doing that was the fact that I knew they had arrived to late to get into the game, the crowds and lines were now far too large for any hope to remain for them.
Once we started moving at a decent rate and we realized we were going to make it in, the frustrations lifted and we started getting pumped up. We got into the game at about 5:30 or so and found some seats down in the second row...which sounds good, but there was a huge roll of razor wire obscuring our view. Personally I didn't really care, I don't really like watching soccer. The place was a madhouse. No one was unfriendly, they could all tell we were there to have a good time. I am 100% confident there is more scorn for Michigan fans at your standard OSU game than we felt as Americans in a foreign land. The speakers were booming, the announcer was firing people up and people were screaming. We all thought the same thing..."they can't keep this up for 2.5 hours," but we were wrong. They even had some army paratroopers jump out of a circling helicopter and land on the field...it was a pretty amazing sight.
By the time the game actually started, I had already felt like I had been partying like college again for hours. I've never really liked watching soccer, but it was a pretty unique experience to be there in the thick of all of it. The first half was scoreless, but when the second half started, the U.S jumped out to a 3-0 lead fairly quickly. I actually missed a couple of the goals because they were on the other end of the field and no one seemed to make a big deal out of it. This, however, was not the case when Honduras finally scored. The entire stadium erupted into pandemonium, noise makers blaring, people screaming and throwing beers, hugging, crying, high-fiving...it was pretty amazing.
Celebrating with Juan
Hanging with my buds
The game ended anti-climatically, with the U.S hanging on to win 3-2. Hondurans would have to wait until the following Wednesday to finally determine their World Cup fate.
The ride back to Santa Lucía the next day was just as fun as the ride in, only with the added benefit of having picked up Jody in the city, who is another one of the gringos that works in Santa Lucía. She had been visiting friends and also went to the game, but it had been a few weeks since we'd seen her. We laughed even more on the way back than we had on the way in, only stopping for a delicious fish lunch near at the pretty lake Yojoa.
It was a very good trip, although pretty quick. Here is a shot of the great sunset on the ride back..
Epilogue: The following Wednesday a Honduran victory over neighboring El Salvador coupled with a US tie with Costa Rica opened up a berth for Honduras in the World Cup for the first time since 1982. They fought like Hondurans, and won their freedom.
And then a national holiday was declared for the following day.
thats awesome ben. sounds very interesting.
ReplyDeleteNice Braveheart reference.
ReplyDelete- Coleman