One uncle of this family finished a book he had been reading in a lawn chair.  It was Paddle to the Amazon, and it was the story of a Canadian father and son who paddled, literally, from Canada to the Amazon.  I opened the book and read about the pair portaging to the Mississippi's headwaters in Northern Minnesota, and suddenly, I was connected geographically to a hemisphere.

Up there in Northern Minnesota, history and science and geography were not something of textbooks; they were alive.  And Minnesota, suddenly, wasn't that place where nothing happened.  It was connected, and played a role.  And if you paddled down that stream over there, you could keep going and end up paddling to that 'fabled coast' of Honduras.

Over the next few hours, Elmer and I will walk through incredible diverse terrain.  We are deliberately slow, talking about all the creatures we find along the way.  An animal pounces and disappears across a ridge.  I am shocked by its size, but Elmer explains the large tail is deceiving.  It's a tayra, the mink of the Central American jungle.

Elmer asks me why I decided to come to Honduras. 

I've always wanted to come here, I tell him. 

I explain that I have this hobby where I write a travel blog.  "But it's not for work and I am not a writer for my living.  So, I can do whatever I want.  You'd be surprised, but it is very unusual for anyone to be able to write about whatever they want, and still have some sort of an audience for it."

Elmer is curious about all of this –  I suspect it is the same curiousity that got him out of the maintenance division at the Pico Bonito Lodge, and into guiding.  Weedwacker – that's his name around the lodge – because he was the guy who trimmed the hedges.

I explain to Elmer that I like to really get into the things that I write about; I let it consume my life in a way.  "For example," I tell him.  "For a long time, I was writing about the deserts in California.  And I was fascinated by the cactuses there, because there are so many different kinds.  So, I would bring the subject home, by growing cactuses at home, and learning to propagate them."

But in silence, I recount the ways Eastern Honduras led me on my path of traveler's questions, beginning with the old legend of the lost city.