Before writing of our travels in Nicaragua, I must add this story. It's one of my favorite memories from Honduras. Hopefully, it's not one of those you-had-to-be-there to get it kind of stories.
At around 10AM cycling out of Villa San Francisco, we came across a watermelon plantation. There was a huge shelter packed with watermelons, thousands of them. It was already hot and we decided that it was time for a watermelon break. I walked across the road and bought the smallest watermelon for $0.50, it was still pretty big, but just enough for the three of us to fill our bellies with it's juicy goodness. We looked for a place to sit and Isai asked the classic question, "Which pile of trash looks best to sit next to?" We decided the one near the cow pasture had our name on it. Just as we were about to crack open the watermelon we noticed a woman walking toward us with a watermelon about twice as big as ours, maybe 20 lbs. We all looked at each other with an, "Is she bringing that for us?" look, kind of hoping that she wasn't, as we knew it was just too big and we could never eat it all. She came up to us from where she and about 15 other people were sorting and loading watermelons onto a truck and we all said hello. She returned the greeting adding, "Comen (you guys eat this)." We graciously thanked her, sat down, and tried to configure in our brains how we would strap a 20 lb. watermelon to one of our bikes. Since I had the only bike upon which the watermelon could be strapped, I pushed for eating the big one and saving the small one (and my legs in the upcoming hills). Leah attempted to cut the big watermelon and it cracked right down the middle after only the tip of the knife punctured the rind. Our eyes widened and we immediately thought, "this is going to be gooooood." We gorged ourselves on the watermelon and after only half of it was gone we were already feeling full. "Uh oh," we thought, "how in the world are we going to get rid of the rest of this watermelon?" We couldn't simply toss the watermelon away because the watermelon workers frequently looked over at us and we of course thought they were looking at us to monitor our progress with eating the watermelon. However, they could very well have been staring at us for the same reason as everyone else does and simply wondering, "What are these people doing here and why?" While we were concerned about not wasting the watermelon and offending them if we did, they were tossing watermelons they deemed unfit for sale on the ground where they burst into pieces spilling sweet juice and flesh all over the place and a nearby cow munched contentedly. So, as you can deduce, our concerns were pretty much unnecessary. Nevertheless, we continued to eat, but at a much slower pace and gusto and by the time 2/3 of the watermelon was gone, we were absolutely stuffed and almost in pain. We began "accidentally" dropping pieces in the dirt so they would be inedible and also began throwing the rinds to the cows with more and more pink flesh on them. After we had almost completely finished eating and "sharing" our watermelon, a young boy came walking towards us with two large watermelons upon his shoulders. We looked at each other with the same wide-eyed expression and thought, "please don't be coming over here to give those to us." We all started to laugh at the thought of strapping these watermelons onto our bikes or devising another plan to "share" these watermelons. This of course added to the discomfort of our bursting bellies. As he got closer to us, we tried to straighten our faces and wipe the drool from our lips, however our thoughts and actions were in vain as he walked past us and on into the nearest house where we imagined the kids saying, "Ah man, watermelon again?" We finally finished the watermelon with a little help from the cows. With distended bellies, we mounted our bikes and barely made it 5 km before I had to pee. The assumption was that we would eat the second watermelon for lunch, but come lunchtime, not surprisingly no one felt like eating watermelon, so we continued to climb the hills with that damn watermelon strapped to my rack until we ate it the next morning. I was just glad it was the small one.
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