bought the ticket to Honduras the day the divorce became final. "Non-transferable and non-refundable," it says. "Changes subject to additional fees." It's a concept I've come to understand.

These days the ancient jungle is long gone. Corn clings to steep hillsides webbed with footpaths, and wiry burros and sharp-horned cattle graze in the ditches. Roadside vendors peddle fresh oranges and hard disks of brown cane sugar. Rivers and creeks run yellow with mud.

I've arranged to fish with a guide who captains a hulking launch that sheds flaking khaki paint. He arrives on time in a red pickup. A barefoot girl in a short skirt and camisole slides over and steps out to kiss him goodbye, running her hands up under his shirt, then takes his keys and drives off.

Grinning like a goat, he greets me in Spanish, but I can't understand. We gesture to exchange fishing information while other passengers straggle aboard. By the time the sun is up we're out on the water, slicing across the glass at full throttle.

Translucent finger-sized needlefish skip across the surface, darting ahead of the bow like dolphins. Floating pens hold hand-fed carp for the local market. A wiry, gray-haired fisherman slips by in a hand-hewn skiff, gaining two boat-lengths for each pull of his oars. The lake is broad, several miles across in every direction, but dwarfed by the massive forested mountain that rises like a wall a mile above the south shore.

The guide pulls up to an island that reveals the way the land must have looked centuries ago. Beards of gray moss hang from ancient hardwoods with thick trunks shrouded in climbing vines. This Central American rain forest swallowed entire Mayan cities, concealing them for centuries after their inhabitants mysteriously vanished.

I wonder about the Maya. Did they mingle with neighbors, sip fermented brews, debate handball and human sacrifice, negotiate furtive trysts in shadowy groves?

The guide indulges us for a while, but no one's having any luck. A man with a cell phone who speaks English tells me, "They never bite for long after daylight."

By now it's at least noon, and monsoon clouds loom over the mountains encircling the lake. The captain jokes that it's time to grab a Salva Vida — Spanish for life jacket and also the name of the local brew that's iced down in his cooler. The boat cuts through sheets of rain, and we huddle under the canopy, laughing and taking photographs.

Back at the dock, a scowling woman greets the launch. She's got thick peasant hips, a child in her arms and two more in tow. A swollen bruise purples her cheek. She pleads quietly with the captain, but he replies sharply and points to the palm-thatched marina. As she turns and slinks up the gangway, he grins at me and pops his fist into his open hand.

It's tough to smile back, but what the hell? It's his country. I don't even speak the language.

Copyright © 2000 Steve Frederick