So the story of how I came to end up bribing a Honduran customs agent with a pair of lime green polyester pants really begins in February. I was living in a trailer (yes I can actually claim that, can you?) at Valerie´s Budget Youth Hostel on Roatan when quite possibly the most annoying person I have ever met also stayed there for a few days. His name was Brian and not surprisingly he was Canadian. Brian, as he rather incessantly tells everyone, sells clothes throughout Central America. Crappy used clothes actually, but he does seem to sell them. It is amazing what people will wear here. The other day in the public market there was a very small Mayan Indian senior citizen who looked like he was born sometime in the 19th Century wearing a t-shirt with “Remember my name, you’ll be screaming it later” emblazoned across the front. Later the same day I saw a middle aged woman sporting a sweatshirt festooned with pictures of soccer and basketballs that said, “I can’t stop touching my balls!” But I digress. Flash forwards to about six weeks ago. I am at San Pedro La Laguna, on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala walking around with no particular destination when a wizened old gringo shouts out, “You! I know you!” I replied a bit shaken, “No you don’t.” He then shouted out, “Yeah I do! You’re a bartender from California who used to live on Roatan!” Recognition flashed in my brain and inwardly I groaned. It was him, the incredibly annoying clothes salesman. He asked where I was living and I told him I had moved to Antigua. “Oh Antigua! When I go there I like to stay at the Hotel A Place to Stay! You know it?” A little more background. So eventually Brian showed up in Antigua and set about buying tons and tons of clothes. Actually I think it was about one ton of clothes, maybe more. No matter how you look at it though, there’s lots and lots clothes. They’re everywhere. He put them into about 30 75-pound bags, so using a calculator, uh…yeah… that’s more than a ton. Unfortunately Brian was soon deported for unclear reasons. Apparently he went into Guatemala City to get his passport restamped and was put in the back of a pickup truck with four Salvadoran hookers and driven to the border. This being Guatemala though he was somehow able to slip pass the border guards, which put him back into the border with no entrance stamp. Then he was deported again, but this time was allowed to bring some of his bags of clothes with him to Honduras. Every ninety days foreigners have to leave Guatemala for twenty-four hours. The reasoning behind this is unclear to me, but whatever, gotta do what you gotta do. So on Tuesday I set off for Copán Ruinas, Honduras which is just across the border. I decide to be a nice guy and bring Brian a bag of his clothes to sell. So at the border I have already held up the bus by somehow not receiving the proper Guatemalan exit stamp. I return back to the Guatemalan side of the border whereupon I am told that I have overstayed my visa by nine HOURS and must pay a rather substantial fine…in Guatemala City. I enquire if it is possible for me to pay the fine directly to the official, but I am only willing to pay him three dollars. Back and forth a few minutes and we settle out that since I am such a good friend of his and since he is such a nice guy that we can forget this whole returning to Guatemala City business for the paltry sum of $6.25 and my Gallo Cerveza pen that he liked so much. Off to the Honduras side where I receive my proper passport stamp (have I think eight or ten Honduran stamps and I think five Guatemalan ones in my passport) and attempt to board the bus. I am stopped by the Honduran customs official who wants to look in Brian’s big bag of clothes to see what is inside. I open it up and he asks me whose clothes they are. Suddenly I remember that if you are importing clothes you have to pay a customs duty. “Son mios” I reply, “They’re mine.” Equally suddenly I realize that I have just grabbed a random bag of clothes and for all I know they are baby clothes or women’s underwear. In the middle of all this weirdness my mind flashed on the scene from “Blow” where Johnny Depp is smuggling coke in his luggage concealed by women’s underwear. Then I feverishly started hoping that a) this was a bag of men’s clothes and Brian had not concealed kilos of cocaine underneath the top layer of clothes. Moment of truth arises and the official opens the bag and….pulls out the aforementioned lime green polyester slacks. “These are yours?” He then puts the leg against his leg and says, “I think they are my size!” This man is about five foot four. At this point I realize that he now knows that these are either not my clothes or I have rapidly grown eleven inches since buying the pants. “My friend, I really like these pants” he says. I mumble some nonsense about how he is obviously a very nice man and I would be honored if he would accept the lime green polyester slacks as a personal gift from me to him and he slaps me on the back and says, “my friend, I know you are bringing these clothes to sell…(pause)…but I don’t care! Get on the bus, no problems!” I am so happy that this whole bizarre episode is over that I turn into Jake the Unstoppable Handshaking Machine. I shake hands with the new owner of the pants, the other border officials watching (and looking rather enviously at the pants I think), the bus driver, his little helper guy, some little kid selling tortillas with mashed beans and really weird cheese, back to pants guy again whereupon the driver says “¡Oyé gringo! ¡Vamanos!” Arrive in Copán Ruinas, bring the clothes to Brian’s hotel that not surprisingly is covered in used clothes. Brian thanks me effusively and then thanks me for bringing him a bag of ladies’ clothes. Huh? “Yeah, I stuck a couple pairs of guys’ pants on top but the rest is all blouses and skirts.” So yesterday, I am walking up to the border station after disembarking from a packed van where I had spent a rather disconcerting fifteen minutes sitting next to a very very small prepubescent boy with a large live turkey sitting on his lap whom seemed quite interested in attempting to eat my arm hairs. Then I spot them, bright green pants. Handshakes all around again with disappointment expressed that I did not bring any more pants with me. Rest of the trip home was thankfully free of ravenous turkeys but there was a close call with a blob of spittle on the bus from Chiquimula (pronounced Cheeky-Mullah which allowed me to spend some time on the bus trying to think up jokes about Mullah Muhammad Omar of Taliban fame being cheeky or something. I failed.) to Guatemala City.