My Journey with Ursus Travel: A Tale of Adventure and Discovery

Ursus Travel is the culmination of 18 years of my life—a journey that began back in 2008. After years of juggling university and my massage therapy career in Atlanta, Georgia, I finally graduated from Georgia State University in August 2008 with a degree in Anthropology and Spanish.

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to travel the world.

I graduated in August… and then the stock market crashed in October 2008. I had busted my ass to pay off all my credit card debt—which, as a university student at the time, I had basically been living off of credit every month. Every payday I would pay off the credit card and then have no money for the rest of the month. So I would run up my credit card to survive. When the market crashed, I realized pretty quickly that my future wasn’t in America. So I made a decision: I was getting out of the USA.

Rocky Beginnings

The first few years of my life abroad were filled with chaos—unexpected events, constant changes, and situations that forced me to figure things out on my own and just survive.

Honduras: A Cultural Awakening

I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, and back then I just remember thinking, “Wow… this place is so culturally devoid.” I really wanted to get out of dodge, so I accepted the first path that was open without really thinking it all the way through.

I started with the United States Peace Corps in Honduras. I didn’t actually choose Honduras. I was more or less coerced into it by a recruiter who insisted it was the only program available at the time. (You later learn that’s not exactly true—they just send you where they need you.) I really wanted Ecuador. The recruiter told me no program would be opening there that year, so Honduras was my only option.

Then they flew us to Washington, DC, for the classic “Do you know what you’re about to get yourself into?” orientation. Across the hall from the Honduras orientation… was Ecuador. I remember being absolutely livid, but I kept it to myself because everyone else was so excited, and I didn’t want to be the Debbie Downer.

Once in Honduras, you go through about three months of training before being assigned to your “site,” which is the village where you’ll live and work. My project was HIV/AIDS education and prevention. I lived with a host family near Tegucigalpa for about six weeks, then did another six weeks of field training in a different town with another host family. One of the rules of the Peace Corps is that you follow your host family’s rules—no matter how strict they are.

Now, Honduras is a deeply Catholic country, and we were advised it would be in our best interest to stay in the closet if we were gay. Well… my first host family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Even stricter. I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol—even outside the house with other volunteers. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with friends after school. It felt like being a teenager all over again. They even protested me going to the swearing-in party once I officially became a volunteer (Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate anything).

One night, I was watching Herbie: Fully Loaded—because there was literally nothing else to do since I had to be home by 8 PM—and my host brother walked in and changed the channel. I asked why. He said, “Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian. We don’t watch that kind of filth in this house.” Needless to say, I was very ready to get out of there by the time I swore in.

Life in Ocotepeque, Honduras

After training, I was placed in Ocotepeque, in the far western corner of Honduras. If you went a few miles in one direction, you hit El Salvador. A few miles in another direction, Guatemala. I didn’t really know how to feel about it at first.

Because I was in HIV education and prevention, I ended up spending most of my time at the border crossings, where I befriended sex workers and police officers on both sides. I was given boxes of condoms and pamphlets explaining how to properly use them and how HIV is transmitted, and my job was to distribute them to sex workers and truck drivers. And honestly? I liked it.

Living in a rural rainforest town was an adjustment, but I was handling it… until swine flu hit. Remember H1N1? I went from hanging out with prostitutes and their Johns to wearing a hazmat suit and taking people’s temperatures at the border. I’d log their passport information while sweating to death in tropical humidity.

By that point, I knew everyone—police, border agents—and they let me move freely between Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador without even checking ID. I was basically the free condom guy. It was definitely a unique experience—but wearing a hazmat suit in that heat was absolutely miserable.

The Collapse: A Nation in Turmoil

The Peace Corps makes you live with a third host family for three months once you actually arrive at your site to help you integrate into the community. One morning, I was in bed in my host family's house when I suddenly woke up to the bed shaking. Remember those coin-operated beds they used to put in cheap motor lodge hotels back in the late '80s? Well, that is what I woke up to. It was a massive earthquake.

I stumbled out of bed while my host mother yelled at me in Spanish to get in the doorway and not move. I just remember being half asleep and terrified at the same time, wondering if the whole thing was just a dream. The ground shook for what felt like an eternity. The earthquake's epicenter was actually quite far from where we lived, but it was something like a 7.3 on the scale. The house was left undamaged, but I was left wondering why I chose this path in life. It really shook me in more ways than one.

Luckily, this was not the collapse referred to in the title of this paragraph. Another morning, maybe one month later, I woke up to a text message on my brick greyscale Nokia phone from the office of the Peace Corps at the United States embassy. "There has been a coup in Tegucigalpa. The president of Honduras and his wife have been taken by the military and deposed to Costa Rica. Stay inside, don't leave your homes and wait for further instruction."

At this point, I was already kinda over the Peace Corps due to the hazmat situation, but this was the cherry on top. They ended up declaring martial law, and no one was allowed to be outside of their house after 4 PM! Now think about this... 4 PM in a rainforest in Honduras. It is the hottest time of the day, and houses in Honduras have no air conditioning but rather tin roofs, which radiate the heat they collect downward onto your body. You could feel the heat in your soul. It was hell.

After the coup, the entire country went on strike. The teachers, the doctors, everyone. I had no work to do in the local school, where I taught basic English, because there was no school and no work to do on the border because the doctor I worked with was also on strike. Peace Corps did nothing to squash our fears. It was something along the lines of, "You never know with these kinds of things in Central America. It could be two days, two weeks, two months, two years, two decades, who knows?"

All governments around the world pulled their ambassadors and aid organizations. Not the USA. The USA decided they were not going to get involved or take sides because of our checkered history in getting involved with the affairs of Latin America. We (the USA) don't have a very good history in Latin America, which I won't go into here. Also, Peace Corps is supposed to be a non-political organization. By pulling out the Peace Corps, it would have been seen as taking one of the sides between those that supported the coup and those opposed.

So they just left us there in martial law, where we could be jailed for being on the street after 4 PM. I lasted about one month before I finally saw the light of Jesus and decided to throw in the towel. The only problem was I had to get to Tegucigalpa to be evacuated, which was about a 15-hour bus ride from Ocotepeque.

Somehow, some way, my bus made it through mountains of burning tires, protestors laying across the highways trying to shut down trade, and crowds of protestors to reach Tegucigalpa. Just to leave the Peace Corps, you have to submit yourself to all kinds of medical tests and dental appointments. They have to make sure you are in the same condition when you leave as when you arrive.

Thankfully, you are given a diplomatic passport and diplomatic insurance, so it is all taken care of. After five days of tests, debriefings, interviews, and dental appointments, I left the Peace Corps. I arrived in January 2009 and left in July 2009. I made it about six and a half months. I couldn't have been more relieved, but as soon as I got back to the United States, I remember thinking, "What now?" The economy was down the toilet, and people with master's degrees were working at Starbucks. I knew I didn't want to stay. So I made the decision to leave again. The idea had been floating around in my head for quite a while.

To be continued in Part 2

The river I used to sneak off to