Honduras

Guatemalan Border Crossing

We crossed the Guatemala - Honduran border some 100km inland near the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas. The border is at the top of a mountain pass. There was a long queue of trucks waiting to get through, parked up on the roadside. A gaggle of shifty money changers were shuffling around, calculators in one hand and huge money rolls in the other. They hissed "Lempiras?" or was that "Lempiras!" at us as we passed. We decided to hang on to our dollars until we got over the border, where the rate is better. We had read some bad stories about Guatemalan border officials extorting illegal 'exit taxes' from tourists, and it was with some angst that we approached the concrete frontier buildings. They were fine though, just a quick stamp and out! It was the Hondurans, a few hundred yards further on who were levying suspect 'entry taxes'.

A really decrepit old Canadian schoolbus was waiting the other side of the border, it was leaving in half an hour. I really needed a beer, so struck off to a roadside bar. I was having a good chat with the barman in my less than adequate spanish when to my horror, I saw the bus moving off, with my pack and my girlfriend on board. It was leaving early, and Katie was screaming at me. I had to abandon my conversation and run like a headless chicken to avoid being stranded in frontierland.

This particular bus journey was even more lunatic than is usual for Latin America. The windscreen of the bus had been penetrated by a number of bullets at some point in time. The driver made full use of the horn in preference to the brakes as he bullied his way around hair-raising mountain roads. The journey was slowed by numerous mudslides that had covered or even swept away the road, Honduras used to be heavily forested, but slash and burn farming techniques have left much of the landscape nude and vulnerable to massive erosion. One side effect of this was that the roads were 'buggered' for want of a better word. Nevertheless, we survived, and after a couple of hours arrived at the rural hilltop town of Santa Rosa de Copan.

Santa Rosa de Copan
We never intended going to Santa Rosa de Copan. We were heading for a bigger place called Progresso, but we'd had enough travelling for one day, and Santa Rosa sounded appealing, set amongst the hills, a tobacco growing centre, completely untouristed, smaller and friendlier than Progresso. We got off the bus too early, and had to climb steep cobbled streets with all our baggage. It is a pleasant antiquated place with darkened corner shops each seeming to sell a bizarre selection of unrelated goods, from motor parts to cans of soft drink. The centre of town is perched on the apex of the hill with a large central Plaza. We took a room in a hotel a couple of blocks off the square. It had its own resident cockroach waiting to greet us in the shower. Katie pointed it out to the owner, thinking she might offer us a better room, but she simply tutted, and got a broom to kill it.

There's a bank in the main square, and amazingly it hadn't been robbed that week, so we were able to change some money, which was a huge relief, since we only had about £2.50 in Lempiras. We were so pleased in fact that went to the town's most expensive restaurant to celebrate, a place called Flamingos. We ordered two main courses. For some bizarre reason we got the two main courses we did order plus two very substantial club sandwiches plus chips, which we didn't order, and then we had a huge row with the waitress about it "Look, I'd bloody well know if I'd ordered a club sandwich with chips. Do you really think we want to eat two main courses each, you cretin? No we're nopt paying for it." etc.

The following day, after asubstantial breakfast, we went to take a look at the cigar factory:

The Cigar Factory Santa Rosa de Copan is the Tobacco capital of Honduras, and it has an excellent Cigar Factory, which makes first class cigars - not to be missed, especially since a visit is free. You just turn up at reception and ask for a tour. They take you inside, and you're left to wander - that's it! There is no machinery in this place, all the cigars are hand-rolled by rows of young workers sat at wooden benches. The rolled cigars are placed in semicircular wooden blocks to be pressed and trimmed. We said hi to a few people and asked a few questions, the answers to which we didn't really follow. There is a small factory shop, where you can buy a few cigars on the way out, and of course I obliged - and very good they were too.
Flor de Copan cigar factory	Cigar rolling process	Cigar pressing area

Copan
After our visit to Santa Rosa's cigar factory, and a 75p haircut, we hefted our bags back down the cobbled street to the bus stop. Things started promisingly, a comfortable modern bus came by and whisked us off to Progresso, where we had to change to a local bus for Copan. Then at Progresso, things took a severe down turn. The local bus to Copan turned out to be the bus from hell. It was supposed to leave at 11am, but the driver decided he wasn't going until it was full, and then some! It was like a Guiness World record attempt at how many people you could cram in. I counted 80 then gave up. The bus left two hours later, and being so jammed full, it's 40 year old engine struggled along at a snails pace.

Incredibly, the conductor, who was riding in relative comfort on the step started cajoling more people onto the bus from the street. He would not take no for an answer, and even disappeared into houses and bars to seek passengers. I'm sure some of the people on that bus had no intention of going to Copan. The people who'd beeen waiting for the bus were reluctant to board, preferring to walk or stay another day in town than chance it, but the conductor from hell was physically man handling people on. It grew unbearably hot. Our seat, which was designed to just about fit two small Canadian school children was crammed with three adults. To make matters worse, as we started to climb into the hills, the bus' engine started to show its age, It couldn't take it, and we had to stop lieterlly every mile or so for water for the engine! The journey took two and a half hours to complete, an average speed of just 9mph. This was very irritating, since we had hoped to visit the ruins the same day, but we arrived so late, that this was all but impossible.

The bus from hell

The bus was met in Copan by hordes of underaged hotel touts. We were about the only tourists on the bus, so we got the full treatment "Come to my hotel my fren', eets very cheap, tv, shower" etc. "Go away - shouldn't you be in school?" I said grouchily. But they clung like limpets, and were in fact quite affable. We relented and followed a couple of them to check out some of the places. Copan's proximity to the ruins means it has some excellent hotels - and they're very good value to- our double with TV and ensuite was less than $20US for both of us.

Copan Ruins We decided to go and see the ruins anyhow, despite the late arrival. This was a mistake, since we ended up practically running around them. Worse, we went around without a guide, and I always think a guide is pretty useful in these places. The reason we went without a guide was that he entrance fee was four times as much as our useless guidebook had suggested. Copan is remarkable amongst the great Mayan sites for its Stellae. These are like huge rock totem poles or statues of gods. The main temple's stair case is impressive too, with intricate astrological carvings on every step. There is an I shaped ball court here, just like the one at Chitchen Itza in Mexico, and other similarities in layout as you might expect.

Horse Riding Around Copan

I was all for moving on from Copan the next day, I had a head of steam, was ready for action, peoples to see, things to do. Katie was having none of it. "Don't you think we've done enough rushing around in the last few days, what with speedboats from Belize to Guatemala, and the mobile black hole of Calcutta up to here, I need a rest!" She was right of course. My idea of a rest was to book some horses for a trek up around the valley. Our guide was called Roberto Flores, which was cause for much amusement, since its the same name as the president of Honduras. He was a really nice lad, friendly talkative and trustworthy, arranged through the hotel. This was his day job. To make ends meet he worked evenings at a place called El Rancho, looking after security. This was a source of much confusion, because I thought he meant a real ranch, looking after horses, but El Rancho was a restaurant in town.	Roberto Flores, our guide.
We set off into the countryside with Roberto behind, on foot! The area around here is also big on tobacco growing. We passed many of the tall black Hornos - or drying sheds in amongst the fields. It was a swelteringly hot day, so we took it easy, riding alongside the river, which was low. A group of men were dredging ip mud from the river bed into wooden frames to be baked in the sun into bricks. Most houses in Honduras are made from such mud bricks. The men were struggling with their truck, a motorised antique, that had got suck in the mud.
We then started to climb steeply up a stony track until we reached a small farmstead. The farm owner had the good fortune to have a collection of lesser Mayan ruins on her land. As tourists, you only tend to focus on the massive monumental sites, without realising that echoes of the everyday Mayan civilisation are dotted throughout. For the paltry sum of 10 Lempira we were able to ride through her land and have a look at some of these. We took the opportunity to take a break and bought a couple of sodas from the woman too. We needed them! The ruins in the grounds comprised some form of ancient fertility or birthing area, with carvings of a mother and child, an aligator and a bug eyed frog. Views across the vaalley were good from up here. We could pick out other ruins, part of the Copan citadel,hidden amongst the trees below.
On the way back to town, we stopped at another fairly major group of ruins, the Sepulturas These are a large collection of royal tombs, all in quite good shape, but none particularly remarkable - Sadly, you get over-exposed to these things after a while.

Tela
Katie had set her heart on spending her birthday on a hot tropical palm fringed beach. What she hadn't planned on was sharing post prandial drinks with a sixty year old sex maniac and swinger from the US, or dodging knife-wielding criminals on the beach...

Tela is billed as Honduras' foremost mainland beach resort. That means nothing. Anyone with money or sense gets off the mainland and heads for the Cays or the Bay Islands. In Tela, you take your life in your hands strolling on the beach, where machete wielding thugs lurk to rob anyone who looks like they might have cash.

We took the early bus from Copan, thus avoiding the crush. It was an 'express' and was a lot more comfortable than the bus from hell that we got up here. We changed bus at San Pedro de Sula, Honduras second city, and reached Tela by mid day.

On arrival in Tela bus terminal, a muddy yard, a frenchman tried to sell us rooms in his beach cabanas just outside town. We thought we'd go a bit more upmarket for Katie's birthday though, and declined. He then helpfully gave us some advice "Be very careful at night, and don't go near ze beach. Zere are a couple of discos there and ze locals usually get a bit excitable. Zey all carry knives and use zem." Mmmm - welcome to Tela, how charming! We walked to the centre of town to check out some hotels. Our guidebook, the Berkeley Guide, once more proved to be totally useless. The highly recommended Presidente hotel was a vile pigsty. We eventually found a great place with blisfully efficient airconditioning and cable TV (if the nightlife really was that bad) for $20US.

We ate dinner at the cafe bundu a trendy and somewhat noisy bar / restaurant full of teenagers. The seafood was excellent, but the live music was utterly dreadful, so we ate fast and paid up. We went back to our hotel avoiding the beach and its villains.

Telephoning From Honduras Phoning home from Honduras is expensive. International calls can be made from Hondutel offices in most main towns. It costs about £3 a minute to call the UK, and you have to commit to paying up front for a minimum of 3 minutes. That can be very annoying if you get an answerphone, and even more frustrating if it's your deaf great aunt on the end of the phone saying "ooh there's nobody there, I shall have to hang up" even though you're screaming and weeping down the phone. I spent £12 on a non-phone call, enough money to live on for a day in Honduras.

Katie's Birthday on the Beach in Tela

Katie was hell bent on spending her birthday on the beach. This was despite the hotel owner's remonstrations about how dangerous it was. "Muchos, muchos ladrones" she kept muttering. Outside our blissfully airconditioned room, it was stiflingly hot and muggy. We left all valuables behind and headed off with just our hammocks, a good book each and a couple of cans of beer. The beach in Tela is a lovely cresent of palm fringed sand stretching for several miles. It's very uncrowded - no tourists at all, just locals having a laugh in the sea. We walked for about a mile, scouting out for suitable trees from which to pitch our hammocks that were far enough away from the dodgy looking shanty-style huts in the central section of the bay where we figured the ladrones probably lived. Katie made friends with a group of local girls and their mothers whilst I swung in my hammock sipping my beer, which was by now warm. They wanted me to join them, but I refused "Girls talk!", I protested, and slumped back in the hammock for a snooze. When I finally arose, I discovered I'd been feasted upon by tiny black flies, and my back was polka dotted with nasty red blotches.

The Swinger from Houston.

In the evening, we ate out at one of the nicer hotels in town. The local speciality in Tela and much of coastal Honduras is Conch. I overdid it and not only had conch soup for starters but conch sludge for main course as well. It was all a bit much. Katie had 'King fish', which was pretty dreadful too. We retired to the terrace for a beer, and got chatting to an old Texan chap. "I've been coming to Honduras for years - lovely girls!". Oh dear - where was this going to lead. "Back home, a 19 year old wouldn't take a second glance at a guy like me" he said. I looked at his fat belly and bald head, and couldn't help but agree really. "But here...." he smacked his lips". His name was Ed, and he'd even been married to a Honduran (second marriage). That had broken up and now Ed, who was well over 60 years old, was dating an 18 year old, on whom he lavished expensive gifts such as jewellery and quite probably cash. It got worse "Trouble is, son, I can't get it up as much as I used to be able to. I'm not getting any younger. Have you heard about this new drug viagara - supposed to be able to get it up several times a night. I don't know if I'd trust it not to give me a heart attack though" he confided. He called over to a young Honduran girl who was passing with her friends and chatted away in fluent Spanish to her. She looked embarrassed. "I met her earlier today", he said "I just told her I like her a lot, but her titties are too small, I like girls with big breasts". This was getting too much really, but we stayed out of fascination - I'd never met a true sex maniac before, and Ed definitely was obsessed. He confessed to us that he was a member of the Houston swingers club, i.e that he was big into wife swapping parties. "I'm very popular at the swinger parties, cos I've got my 18 year old girlfriend, but I don't just swap her with anyone". (Tough on the other chap's wife though I thought!) I began to worry that Ed might have designs on Katie. Ed had had a very bad day. He'd been robbed by a kid on a bike with a machete. They relieved him of his gold chains, his gold watch and wallet, which he'd just replenished at the cash machine. We felt mildly sorry for him, but he deserves everything he gets if he walks around dripping gold. Ed was by now inviting us back to his hotel for some whisky - er I really don't think so matey. We made our excuses and got a cab back. It was a very different birthday night out!

La Ceiba
It's a four hour journey by bus from Tela along the coast to La Ceiba. The mountains in Honduras stretch right up to the coast, so it was another circuitous trip. Most of the villages along the way are very poor,lots of one-room adobe huts and palm thatched rooves. La Ceiba bus station is somewhat out of town - a dangerous place. We took a cab into town to a hotel that had been recommended to us by our guide in Copan. At the hotel, we'd hardly had time to set our bags down before we met Dave, a forty something American with short cropped hair. "You guys need to take care around here!" was the first thing he said to us. Why is it that in almost every Honduran town we get to, the first person we see says something like "You kids want to watch you don't get brutally hacked to pieces in this neighbourhood". Dave had that very day seen someone get shot in the street. "Two local guys ride up on a bike and shot this fella point blank in the head - pow pow!" He used his fingers to show us exactky how it had happened, as if we couldn't guess. "Wanna come back to my room for a while?" I wondered why Honduras seemed to be so full of lonely American men of a certain age. Dave was a nice enough chap, a merchant seaman working on a geological survey vessel. He had a Honduran girlfriend half his age, so tended to spend a lot of his spare time in this hotel room. There was a flimsy looking knickers hanging from a rail. Dave was waiting for his kids to show up, he was going to take them out for a meal. Did we want to come along, he asked. We declined.

All the banks in La Ceiba have at least two armed security guards. They need them too. Honduras (poulation just over 5m) has on average more than one bank robbery per week. There had been one the previous week just down the road, where a pickup truck full of gun toting crooks pulled up and shot the crap outr of the bank. Despite lying on the ground in a pool of blood, the guard had managed to lose off a few rounds and killed one of the robbers. He was being touted as a hero in the local paper. It felt like the wild west. It was therefore with considerable unease that we set out to find a bank to change some travellers cheques.

In the afternoon, we set off down town in search of a secret elixir for warding off the evil mosquitos. As used by the US marine corps in Nam (alegedly), recommended by numerous world weary travellers, an urban myth extraordinaire: Avon Skin So Soft. Yes, this innocent, lemony moisturiser, made by your auntie Meg's favourite cosmetics company is an absolute demon mosquito repellent - the best there is, and we'd run out. One thing LA Ceiba does have is Farmacias, by the dozen, on every street, but none of them stocked our fave lotion. We settled for a bottle of rum instead. At least the alcohol would dull the itching.

Utilla

June 9th found us heading for the island of Utilla, to learn how to SCUBA dive. Utilla is one of the Bay Islands, about twenty five miles off the mainland, located right next to the second biggest reef system in the world (it stretches right the way up to Mexico). Because of this, Utilla is one of the finest places in the world to dive. But there's more! It's also one of the cheapest places in the world to dive, a veritable mecca for dive fanatics from all corners of the globe.

We took a cab to the port, about three miles out of La Ceiba town down a dusty track. There was quite a crowd of activity at the dockside, all trying to buy tickets for the daily SafeWay ferry to Utilla. The boat is a fair size, but the seas were rough and it took an hour and a half to reach the island. Several people were looking green and dashing for the door. This situation wasn't helped when the crew put on a particularly gruesome Van Damme video.

Utilla is a small island, just a couple of miles across. All activity is centred in the one town, which is also called Utilla. Most of this activity involves the diving industry. It's a low key place, a far cry from the other Bay Islands which are somewhat overdeveloped. As you approach from the sea, the first view is a series of wooden jetties, dive boats and wooden stilted houses, no high rise hotels. The dock was crowded with tanned young reps from the dive centres pushing information leaflets into peoples hands as they disembarked. The prices on offer were astoundingly low, typically $125 for an intensive five day PADI Open water course, including the cost of five dives, PADI certification, books, and accommodation for four nights. We picked Trudi's more or less at random and started walking down a street parallel to the coast. It's such a small place that most people either walk or use pushbikes to get about. There are only about three cars on the island, and a handful of quad bikes. It has an island feel, very different from the threatening atmosphere of mainland Honduras. Also in contrast to the mainland, most of the inhabitants are English speaking blacks, descendants of slaves left here by the British centuries before. The English spoken is actually a creole, from which only a few words are decipherable, like "wha's happenin'" the traditional greeting. The word "fuck" means "fuck" and is used liberally too.

Trudi's place looked really nice, a small wooden hotel, hammocks strung outside, overlooking the clear blue waters of the bay. We dumped our gear in the room, and were handed two PADI Open Water course books to study. They were thick books, about three-hundred pages, quite technical. "It's ok, you only need to have read chapters 1 and 2 before the course starts" said Trudi. In the hammock area, we met an Australian guy who was spending 12 weeks here diving. "Yeah, well my girlfriend is doing the divemaster course. I already did it, but I thought I'd come out and enjoy some diving". He was a confirmed traveller, on the road for two and a half years. I asked him how he managed it. "My girlfriend and I ran a little business over the winter ski season in the USA. When I was out in Bolivia I made some contacts, and we started importing beanie hats and Alpaca jumpers to sell in the ski resorts." He'd even built a cart to sell them from. Trade was brisk and profits were obviously good, since it funded his and his girlfriend's snowboarding, and subsequently the diving too.

Then we headed of to the Seahorse café to mug up on our PADI books. The Seahorse café serves wonderful licuados, fresh fruit shakes, and we had several. Everybody in the bar seemed to be doing a dive course too, it was more like a library, with people furiously mugging up on the physics and physiology of water pressure.

	Trudi's place was a disappointment, we were unable to sleep much, since the bed sagged badly in the middle, and the ceiling fan only operated in binary mode, force 10 gale in your face, or off. I slipped out early to see what the competition was like and found the Mango Inn, which was slightly more expensive but a million times better. It was only built last year, so everything worked, it had a bar, and most importantly, the bar had a TV, ideally for watching the World Cup 98. And the first game was today between Scotland and Brazil. We made our excuses at Trudi's and hauled ass to the Mango in order to see the match. Football Fever took over from Dive Mania for a the rest of the week, as crowds of various nationalities gathered around the TV in the Mango bar, with faces painted the colurs of their national flag.
The Utilla Dive Centre / Mango Inn Package The Utilla Dive Centre offers the PADI beginners course, leading to full certification in 5 days for just $140, including accommodation at the superb Mango Inn hotel - unbeatable value!
What it's like to dive in Utilla One of the reasons it's so cheap to dive here is that the instructors get paid peanuts. You might find this worrying, but in fact most of the instructors are European diving enthusiasts taking a couple of years out to pursue there passion in a warm tropical climate, prepared to accept the low wages, since cost of living is not that high and their goals are not to get rich. The standard of safety and instruction os superb. Our instructor was a Dutch girl called Diane. "The main thing to remember is to keep breathing" was her first piece of advice to us. It may sound stupid, but its true that the first instinct when you get below the surf is to hold your breath. From there, things get more complicated. We took in all of the details of the equipment, buoyancy control, weights, guages, airflows etc. The lads in the group were all itching to get out on the water, or under it rather. After a final test of our theory knowledge and a quick lunch, we found ourselves clambering aboard the launch which was commanded by a local and completely stoned captain. The first dive was made close to the shore, and was aimed at familiarisation only. All you do is sink down a few metres, and get used to the idea of breathing under water. Katie, sadly found this all a bit much, and couldn't cope with it. She found it impossible to supress the urge kick her way back up to the surface. After much agonising, Katie decided to drop out of the course at this point. Diane took this quite personally, and tried everything to get Katie to do it, including the offer of one on one free tuition after hours.
The PADI course has you buddied up with another diver for safety. It's an intense week. The second dive found us practicing safety routines, clearing masks underwater, swapping to auxilliary air supplies, and doing buoyancy exercises. As I was doing one of these, Diane started prodding me in the back and pointing behind me. It was a rather large evil looking Barracuda. They are very common in these waters, and are attracted by shiny things, like nervous divers practicing buoyancy. Thankfully, this one wasn't too hungry. After the tedium of the exercises, we had our first underwater swim through a small ravine, thickly clad in coral. There weren't too many fish, but the coral was superb.

Trujillo
Home to Mrs Brinkley's fabulous hotel.

You are reading the story of Adrian and Katie's travels through the Americas between May and August 1998.
Adrian and Katie put the rat race on hold for a year to travel the world.

                 

Adrian & Katie's World Tour - Honduras                                          Last Updated: 9 November 2000
Web Page by Adrian Ball  (email: adrian.ball@virgin.net)