Road Remedies

SWAMP ROCK GOES SOUTH
COPAN, Honduras –  I'm in the western highlands of Honduras in the steaming, screaming tropical jungle that gropes towards Tierra del Fuego. Quite a shift from the no-worries-mamma mentality of the Bay Islands.

I've seen a machete-fight scar. I've learned that a tortilla is the measure of the cook's palm. I'm fat on beans and rice and fried bananas.

Rain hisses down almost every afternoon, here in Copan. Today it continues long past dusk, slicking the cobbled streets into streambeds.

Drops arpeggio on the restaurant's tin roof. The chef sweeps water away from the cherry-red wooden table and chair, where I sit. Pan flute music – curse of the Americas – filters from next door, blending with Creedence Clearwater Revival on our sound system.

Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm.
I know, and it's been comin' for some time.
When it's over, so they say, it'll rain a sunny day.
I know, shinin' down like water.

Against the Peruvian noodling, John Fogerty howls: "I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?"

Not like this, no.

And I love it.