Hitchhiking Done Right

At the end of our service in Honduras all volunteers fill out a “COS Survey”. COS is a Peace Corps acronym for Close of Service (aka you made it, time to go home). The survey is just for fun and includes questions such as “the thing you missed most from the states”, “the most useless thing you brought to Honduras” and “the best hitchhiking experience you ever had”. A few weeks ago I had my best hitchhiking experience to date. I had planned to go to Tegucigalpa, the capital city, for medical check-ups and had planned several meetings with PC staff and other NGOs to talk about collaborating with the PC. I packed my bags and walked to the bus station but as I approached the bus stop there was no bus in sight and once I got there I saw a sign on the door which said there would be no service due to the national transportation strike. Transportation strikes are a common occurrence in Honduras. Gas prices are constantly going up and so it seems are prices for everything else. The bus ride from Santa Barbara to Tegucigalpa has gone up 40% within less than a year and a half. Usually Peace Corps knows about the strikes and warns us in advance but this time I was the one to inform Peace Corps.

There is only one bus service to Tegucigalpa which meant I had no other way to get there, which was a huge inconvenience because I would have to reschedule all my appointments. As I walked home from the bus stop I contemplated all my options: hitchhike or find somebody I knew who happened to be going to the capital. As I approached my apartment a random guy said hi to me in English and I rudely did not answer him. Then he asked me if I spoke English, so I said I did and we started talking. Turns out he is an engineer from Israel and is here in working with one of the cell phone companies. I mentioned that I needed to go to Teguc and said that his driver just happened to be going to Teguc and he could take me. Sweet! So, I got picked up at my door an hour later and was dropped of at my hotel in Teguc about 3 hours later, free of charge and with AC. I don’t think this actually qualifies as hitchhiking since I wasn’t waiting on the side of the road with my thumb out but who cares…