Honduras

The fact that I’m writing this tells you that I did indeed arrive home safely and was able to solve my immigration problem.  It actually turned out that the problem was a mirage.  When I arrived at the Honduran border and asked about an extension to my tourist card, the guy looked at me strangely and said that I already had 90 days more from that day (April 10) and didn’t need to pay for any extension—it was like he’d never heard of the stuff about which I’d read such dire warnings in my guide book!  Anyway, it turned out that the bureaucracy in Nicaragua actually ended up saving me $25 because I put off the visa extension until Honduras.

[These last few posts will be a travelogue over my 12-day trip, starting with Honduras, then Guatemala and finally Mexico.]

My first day traveling was focused on getting as far as possible with no real attempt to see anything.  I had a total of 5 different buses, one taxi and one short walk at the border, arriving in La Esperanza after about 11 hours on the road.  The total distance was about 340 km, so my average speed (including layovers, of course) was only about 31 kph (19 mph).  Not really impressive, but I was somewhat surprised by how mountainous the spine of Central America is (and my itinerary pretty much passed directly through the mountains all the way).  At first I thought Honduras was significantly cleaner than Nicaragua, but that turned out to be true only for the first 10 km from the border.  Honduras did appear more prosperous (as expected), but not noticeable based on rural housing conditions—those were very similar to Nicaragua.  What showed the prosperity were things like more paved side roads, 4-lane expressways, many more US franchises in the cities, more cars/traffic, better and less crowded buses, etc.

Garbage dump burning along the highway between Tegucigalpa and La Esperanza

View of the expressway (towards the right of the picture) heading out of Tegucigalpa looking down from the ascent into the mountains.  Also you can see a radio telescope or very large radar system (about in the center).

For the most part, the trip was uneventful and according to my planned schedule.  One exciting interlude was the trip between bus stations in Tegucigalpa.  I’d estimated that it would take a half hour or so, but it was less than 10 minutes with the cabbie I had.  I’d never been in a cab anywhere that showed such urgency to get from one place to another.  The horns (it had two horns—one like a bird tweet and one a more typical horn) were on incessantly and his head was out the window yelling most of the time.  I’m sure that we were going faster on city streets than any of my buses went on the highway.  The other unusual happenings both occurred between Tegucigalpa and La Esperanza.  First, we stopped to rescue passengers from another bus that had stalled.  In Nicaragua, this would have been virtually impossible since both buses would have already been SRO, but in this case, only a couple of folks ended up standing.  Second, the driver stopped at a road-side bread stand and bought about a dozen rolls—I’ve never had the drivers just stop and transact business before.

Transferring baggage from the broken-down bus to ours.

Bread stand along the highway with our driver stocking up on bread.

My first night was spent in La Esperanza, in a very indigenous (Lenca) region, and the highest-altitude city in Honduras (1700 m).  The weather was very pleasant for me in a tee shirt, although most natives wore jackets and sweat shirts.  I arrived too late to see the local museum but had an hour or so to wander through town before dark.  The highlight, other than the museum, appeared to be a grotto built in the cave on the west edge of town.  It is currently a Catholic shrine, but legend has it that Chief Lempira hid here during his resistance to the Spanish conquest.  (Chief Lempira’s name lives on as the unit of currency in Honduras.  Incidentally, the Lempira is worth about 5 cents, but everything down to 1 Lempira is paper.  The largest coin in 1/2 Lempira—I never received a coin in change during my time in Honduras.)  Something that I would have liked to have seen was the Bosque Enano (Dwarf Forest), which has hundreds of dwarf pine trees and it’s not really known why they in that particular spot, but that will have to wait till next time.  La Esperanza was also notable in that I had the cheapest room I’ve had since I was traveling in Europe almost 40 years ago—about $4 for the night.  The room was probably worth about that, but given that I arrived about 6 pm and was planning to leave at 6 am, it was very close to the bus station and it had a bed, it was adequate for the night.

The “Welcome to La Esperanza” display across from the bus station.  The area is well known for pottery and typical examples are included here.

Catholic shrine at La Gruta in La Esperanza.

Interior of the church in La Esperanza still with Easter decorations.

Up until Honduras, my guide book had done pretty well (except for the immigration thing, of course).   However, in Honduras it started to falter as it generally understated costs by 15-20% and more seriously, buses and even bus stations that were listed didn’t exist.  My first experience with this was the next morning when I arrived at the bus station for an expected 6 am bus to Gracias, but ended up having to wait until 8 am.  Finally, we left La Esperanza in a mini-bus with 15 seats and 20 people for Gracias, about 76 km away.  It took a bit over two hours—one hour for the first 16 km and just over an hour for the last 60 km.  The first 16 were on an unpaved road that had been torn up by heavy equipment preparing it for paving.  Ironically, after the roughest hour I’ve ever spent in a vehicle, we suddenly emerged onto a smooth, brand new surface with paved shoulders and complete striping.

With lots of time waiting for my bus, several things caught my eye.  On the left is a bus door with a rosary and Mary on one side and a Playboy bunny on the other—seems like a strange combination!  On the right is a store that faces the bus station and I found it interesting that the entire decorating motif is snow and most people have probably never seen snow.

A couple pictures of the trip from La Esperanza to Gracias.  The top shows how it went for the first 16 km and the bottom shows the road after 16 km.  You can also get a feel for the general landscape in the Honduran mountains.

 Gracias is a small colonial town that at one time was briefly the capital of Spanish Central America.  The name was formerly “Gracias a Dios,” which was a shortening of the first Spaniards reaction to arriving:  “Gracias a dios que hemos hallado a tierra llana.”  (“Thank God we’ve reached level ground!”)  The current city, however, is not in the same place as the original founding and is now not so flat.  It is located near the base of Montaña de Celaque, the highest mountain in Honduras and now part of a national park. Gracias was also my first encounter with Tuk-tuks, or mototaxis (small, 3-wheeled, open-sided taxis), which seem to be in all small to medium cities in Central America, and also my first experience with plug-in hot water shower heads (which actually worked quite well).

A picture of Montaña de Celaque with the clouds covering the top.  A large fraction of the water supply of Honduras originates on this mountain.

A group of school kids waiting for rides or being taken home in a mototaxi.  Each city seemed to have a predominant (though not universal) color for these mototaxis--obviously red in Gracias.

A plug-in hot-water shower head.  Turning the water on activates the electric resistance heater and the rate of flow determines the temperature.  Even though having electric wires going in to my shower head seems a bit sketchy, it worked fine.

 Gracias has the usual assortment of colonial churches, although the cathedral interestingly does not face the central square even though it is located on the square.   Fort San Cristóbal (19th century) with a small museum, a sculpture garden and the grave of Juan Lindo, who was the president of both El Salvador and Honduras, sits on a hill overlooking the city.  Another highlight is Casa Galeano, a restored colonial home that is now a museum and botanical garden.  Near the cathedral is the stone arch over the door of the building that housed the Audiencia de los Confines, the governing body from Chiapas to Costa Rica.

The church exterior and interior in Gracias.  Like La Esperanza, the inside is still decorated for Easter.

Fort San Cristóbal with closer details of some of the sculptures that are scattered about.

Casa Galeano museum with the trees of the botanical garden visible above the roof.  There is also another tuk-tuk in the picture—they are literally everywhere!

The arched doorway is the entrance to La Audiencia de los Confines, which for a time in the 16th century was the governing body for the region from Chiapas to Costa Rica.

Getting out of Gracias was another place the guide book failed.  Neither of the bus stations it listed existed any more (the book is only 2 years old) and the new “station” is just a parking lot with trees to sit under while waiting and no “office” to ask questions (although it does have a big sign painted on a market building).  It turned out the express buses mentioned in my book were much less frequent than advertised, but I got a local bus to Santa Rosa de Copán, where I changed to a bus to La Entrada, where I changed for a bus to Copán Ruinas, my final destination in Honduras.

At La Entrada, I saw this little girl (probably about 8-10 years) who was selling snacks to bus passengers.  It was a school day and it’s possible that she goes to school in the afternoon, but it’s likely that she does this all day.

Another thing I noticed from the bus is a small store that illustrates some of the strange combinations of products you find in shops.  The shop on the right is a variety store that also sells sweets—not so strange.  But below, is says that they also buy gold.  Who would think of going to a sweet shop to sell their gold?

On the road to Copán Ruinas there happened to be a small carnival set up in one of the towns.  Notice that “Crazy Cars” is in English.

Copán Ruinas is also a small town, but it is much more tourist oriented with nearby Mayan ruins that are a UNESCO world heritage site.  I spent most of one day at the ruins (both the main area and a separate part about 2 km away called Las Sepulturas;  the main area was a ceremonial space and Las Sepulturas was a residential area) and in the sculpture museum.   While places like Chechen Itza and Tikal are famous for large, impressive architecture, Copán is famous for its sculpture, although I found the architecture to be quite impressive as well.  I think the impression was heightened because from 8 to 10 am I was alone in the ruins except for a few workers.  At 10, a couple groups of French tourists arrived, but it was never crowded.  (The weeks after Holy Week are apparently off season because no place was crowded on my entire trip.  I was also somewhat surprised at how rare US travelers were—there were Spaniards, Canadians, Germans, French, South Americans almost everywhere, but very few from the US.)

A model showing the layout of the main area at Copán Ruinas.  The top picture below is taken from the far left to the front and the bottom picture from the opposite corner of the great plaza.

Two views from opposite corners of the great plaza.

Ball court at Copán Ruinas.  It is not known specifically how the game was played, but courts such as this are found throughout Mesoamerica.  It is believed that the losers were sacrificed to the gods.

On one side, the river has washed away much of the larger, elevated structures.  The river has been diverted to protect the ruins and the ruins stabilized, but a large part was already lost.

A house in Las Sepulturas showing a raised bed of stone.  The opening is for the deposit of relatives bones when they die. 

Photos of stelae (carved stone pillars) that show the intricacy of the sculpture at Copán.  The first two are the same:  on the left is the original in the museum and on the right is a copy that is in its original location.  On the far right you can see a bit of the red coloring that was commonly applied to Mayan buildings and sculptures.

On the top is a full-scale replica of the Rosalila temple (in the museum) which was discovered in tact under one of the buildings of the Acropolis.  It was apparently so sacred that it was not destroyed when the new structure was build.  The bottom picture for National Geographic shows how the temple was oriented under the structure.  It is not possible to see the original.

Some more intricate examples of carving from the Museum of Sculpture at Copán Ruinas. 

After a full day of ruins and museum, I decided to splurge and take one of the mototaxis back to town.  Here is a view from the back seat.  It’s mostly blocked by the bar, but we are meeting another mototaxi at the time.

There are two recommended museums in town, but both were being renovated so I missed both of them and the butterfly garden was also closed, but with no explanation.  In addition to the usual wandering, my to-do list was thus shortened to Macaw Mountain, about a 3-km walk outside of town.  Originally, I’d planned to skip it, but it turned out to be quite interesting and peaceful.  They rehabilitate Macaws and other birds for release into the wild.  Scarlet Macaws were once native in the Copán valley, but had disappeared, and are now being repopulated.  They also have a restaurant, a small swimming hole and a small coffee plot, making it a very nice place to spend a few hours.

Scarlet Macaws and some green parrots at Macaw Mountain.

A view from the restaurant deck to the swimming hole with the changing cabana to the right.

The central plaza and church in Copán Ruinas.  Although heavily tourist-oriented, it is a real town with typical services and amenities that are typical.

On the way to the closed butterfly gardens, I happened to go by the town cemetery, which was somewhat different that those I saw in Nicaragua.  It is organized in a sort of “urban” style with what appear to be buildings and streets.  Note the re-bar sticking out of the top of the concrete, which allows additional levels to be easily added at a later time.