While the bulk of our cohort scatters for the US or the laid-back English-speaking Bay Islands (Roatan, Utila, Guanaja), we droned east along the coast of mainland Honduras on a windless day, thinking that some paint we ordered in Puerto Cortes might have arrived there.
Flat calm had its rewards – a pod of dolphins stayed to play for 15 or 20 minutes. PHOTO DOLPHINS And I swear the one in the middle kept rolling over to look at me.

An interesting book I read last year, Beautiful Minds: The Parallel experiences of Dolphins and the Great Apes, or something like that, made the point, among others, that despite their intelligence, dolphins are sort of ‘stuck’ evolutionarily, because neither their bodies nor their environment offer the ‘advancement opportunities’ that the great apes have received in their jungles. That might have been Stephen Hawkings looking up at me with the key to the universe, were I capable of receiving it!

I did my best to emote empathy and encouragement, but the dolphins moved on anyhow.

And so did we, anchoring in the slanting late afternoon light in the southeast corner of the bay, a big port operation on one side, Navy base ahead, and a beach on the other side, mountains beyond, yellow quarantine flag flying.
ANOTHER DOLPHIN PHOTO, the boat and I are also reflected, and my technology tool, created from mined, processed, transported and fabricated materials, by opposable thumbs.

Doug is a believer in evolution: “It’s made me what I am today”, he says.