The Plot Thickens

Tonite I’m going to dinner with the Italian couple who’s staying next door to me. Her name is Ilaria and his is Gerardo....we’ve been “talking” to each other on our back decks. She speaks some English, he speaks none. So using a combination of Italian, English, Spanish and French, we somehow agreed to meet at 7 p.m. They want to go for Italian food at a place called “Pinnochio’s”. In Honduras! Hilarious!

By the way, they run a place called 007 Beach in Italy but neither one of them swims, and they haven’t been in the water yet, despite the fact that our rooms are 30 feet from the crystal blue ocean that is the temperature of bath water.


Meanwhile, I met a Palestinian woman last night who was sitting at the table next to mine at the Argentinian grill where I had dinner. She invited herself to join me and shared her dessert with me. She was born in Peru and grew up Columbia. When I introduced myself, she said “John Langford...that’s a nice name”. I guess it sounds pretty exotic to someone named Danitza Amashta. So she’s joining us for dinner as well. And she speaks Italian, so we’re covered.

To make things interesting, a buddy of mine from from Austin knows a guy here in Roatan named Sean Garrity and told me to look up him up while I’m in town, but I don’t have his phone number, and he hasn’t responded to e-mails, so I’ve decided to make a game out of finding him. I’ve asked around and have met three people so far who know him, including one drunk British guy who told me that Sean hangs out in a bar called "Rick's", and later that night I bumped into three guys I’ve been diving with and asked them if they knew where “Rick’s” was. 

Apparently "Rick’s" is no more, but the dive masters (who were pretty tanked despite the fact that they were leading a dive at 6:30 this morning...I decided to skip that one!) directed me to a bar called “Sueno del Mar” which translates to “Dreams of the Sea”. Appropriate, because this was starting to feel like a dream.

Per their directions, I walk down this dirt path where there are no street lights, then ssee this hotel disguised as a construction site, turn down an alleyway, and then I’m in a bar on the beach, where five obvious regulars are the only customers there. You can almost hear the needle scratching across the record as their conversation stops abruptly and everyone turns to look at me.

I did my best Humphrey Bogart impersonation and sauntered up to the bar and announced “I'm looking for Sean Garrity”. The guy next to me at the bar, who I halfway expected to put a gun to my head, said “You just missed him”.

I’ll let you know how things unfold.