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.

Bureaucracy

Perhaps this will be more of a vent than a post, but you can always skip it.  Also, I promise this will be my last post until I return stateside, at which time I’ll post another travelogue on the trip through Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapas and Oaxaca.  I did spend a lot of time this week looking for places to go and have come up with a travel plan.  For anyone interested in playing “Where in the world is that crazy old gringo,” I’ll put my intended itinerary (and “plan B”) at the bottom.

My first complaint is domestic and relates to Wisconsin and the new voter ID law.  With the new law, absentee voting via the internet is no longer possible and I left too early to personally pick up a ballot for the spring elections.  Mail to Nicaragua is too slow to turn-around fast enough, especially in my remote location, so mailing the ballot wouldn’t work.  Susan’s trip’s timing also did not work out for hand-carrying a ballot here.  The only way to vote now was to make a (minimum) 9-hour round trip to Managua to the US embassy in order to vote.  If it had been the recall, I would have done it, but for local elections (apologies to all my former school board colleagues!), the price was a bit high for me.  Thus I became one of the disenfranchised voters for the spring elections which should be occurring just about as I write this.

The second complaint deals with immigration and the annoyance of bad timing.  When I arrived in Nicaragua, I received a 90 day visitor’s permit, which seemed perfect because I would be leaving Nicaragua in about 86-87 days.  However, with the intent of making border crossings easier and more efficient, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala (and El Salvador as well, but I’m not going there) have a common visa system.  Therefore, leaving Nicaragua for Honduras within 90 days is not really leaving since I’m going to another CA-4 country—I have to be out of all those countries within 90 days.  So…that led to a trip to the immigration office in Ocotal the end of March.  BUT… I made the mistake of going a couple of weeks before my departure, thinking it best to get things in order before the last minute.  The good news was that they said it could be done in Ocotal without going to Managua or sending my passport to Managua (both of which I’d heard might be necessary), the bad news was that a) it costs C$500+ (about US$ 25) to renew the card and b) it can only be renewed within a 3-day window right before it expires (they are not really trying to optimize convenience!).  The guy at immigration told me I could come back the Monday after Easter (April 9, my last full day in Sabana Grande, and not a day that I wanted to be running errands), that the office would be open and they could renew it then.  However, at home I looked at the calendar more closely and saw that Monday the 9th is actually 4 days before expiration, so I was nervous the whole time waiting for April 9.  I spent Semana Santa (no work, so lots of time) working on alternate scenarios in case I failed in Ocotal on Monday:

• Given a failure in Ocotal, the best-case scenario I could imagine was to see if I could renew it at the border crossing the next day, and if the answer was “yes,” then simply take a few minutes extra for the paperwork and accept the (hopefully) short delay the next morning.  (Although if this were practical, one would have hoped to have been told of this option the first time I was in the office.)
  
•  If border stations can’t do the renewal, the next best scenario seemed to be going to an immigration office in Honduras, but I really wanted to avoid doing business in Tegucigalpa (the guide books say it may be half a day or more there, plus finding a place to stay, plus all the taxis), but internet searches failed in trying to find out exactly where other immigration offices might be in Honduras, although I did find sites that said that renewal could be done “in any immigration office.”  So if this were indeed what I ended up doing, I’d have to ask at the border where the offices are (and hope they know where and hope there is at least one somewhere along my route).  If necessary, I could also take a little side trip to an office.
  
• If it appears too difficult or time-consuming or there are too many roadblocks to accomplish a renewal with at most a couple of days delay, my last option is to “make a run for the border”—Mexico, that is (hence, a “plan B”).  I’ll just have to take buses all day and crash at night and get to Mexico before the tourist card expires—certainly possible, but not much fun.  (I also briefly toyed with a completely alternate route via San Salvador and Guatemala City, which is probably the fastest way to Mexico, but it involved arriving in San Salvador late in the evening and catching a 5:30 bus the next morning.)

And after all that sweating, it turned out that the 3 day thing was not all that important, BUT when I arrived, he needed photocopy of my passport and entry stamp, which, of course, I had securely in my wallet in case of surprise immigration inspections.  So I handed him the copies (full-size, but cut down to actual passport size to fit better in the wallet). BUT he needed them on full 8.5x11 paper, so I had to walk to downtown Ocotal to get photocopies.  Upon returning I filled out a long form asking for all kinds of information such as names and places of birth of my parents and my wife (but interestingly, nothing about where I was staying in Nicaragua), handed over my money and was expecting a nice little piece of paper, BUT his response was that I could pick up my passport on Friday—5 days—has to go to Managua!  So I should have been sweating for another reason…  I got my money back (except for 5 Cordoba, which is the price to fill out a form) and walked off with my passport heading to Honduras in the morning without an extension to my tourist card.  So I’ll be following the bulleted list above and hopefully stop at bullet 1 or at worse, bullet 2.  I’ll let you know how it turns out when I post again from home.

And, I’ll add a final, completely unrelated comment just to demonstrate what a compressed world we live in, not only spatially, but also temporally.  I was getting out of the shower yesterday morning (Easter, 2012) in rural Nicaragua about 7 and the radio was on.  On came the song “In the Summertime,” in English.  Only those of you considerably past 50 will likely remember the song, if you do at all, as I’m not sure it was as popular on this side of the Atlantic.  I think it was Mungo Jerry who sang it and it was hugely popular in Austria the summer of 1970 when I was there with a high-school group.  It was played at least hourly in every discotheque in Salzburg!  It brought back a flood of fond memories from my first overseas trip, so I hope that’s a good omen of things to come on the bus travels northward.  So this is signing off until I’m back home…

                                                                        

Tentative itinerary:

April 10:  Leave Sabana Grande and get to La Esperanza, Honduras—5 different buses plus a colectivo—Sarah are you jealous?

April 11:  Bus to Gracias, Honduras (only about 2 hr);  spend day and night there  (maybe take a pick-up truck if the bus schedule isn’t favorable)

April 12, 13:  Bus to Copán Ruinas (about 4 hrs);  spend almost 2 days/2 nights there (a UN World Heritage site)

April 14, 15:  5:30 am minibus to Antigua, Guatemala;  spend 1.5 days/2 nights there

April 16:  Early bus to Panajachel, Guatemala (Lake Atitlán in Guatemalan highlands);  spend day and night there

April 17, 18:  6:00 am inibus Panajachel-San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas;  1.5 days/1 night in San Cristóbal

April 18/19:  Overnight bus San Cristóbal to Oaxaca;  11 pm to 10 am  (Sorry, Sarah, 1st class—but not lujo!)

April 19, 20, 21:  3 days/nights in Oaxaca

April 22:  Morning flight w/ Chicago arrival just after 8 pm (and if lucky, on the Van Galder bus for Madison at 9:00)

April 23:  To Platteville in the morning

Plan B:

April 10:  Leave Sabana Grande and get to La Esperanza, Honduras—same as before;  simply can’t get much farther

April 11:  Bus to Copán Ruinas, Honduras and spend the night (hopefully catch about 2 hours of sightseeing)

April 12:  5:30 am minibus but get off in Guatemala City and spend the night (again, maybe 2 hours of sightseeing)

April 13 (the day my card expires):  Early bus from Guatemala City, arriving the Mexican border about 3 pm.  Perhaps make is as far as Comitan de Dominguez (I’d like to get away from the border ASAP).

8 days to figure out what to do in Chiapas and Oaxaca.

Dipilto

Well, I’m going to sneak in one more, short travelogue before I leave.  In looking for another interesting, nearby place that I haven’t visited yet, it turned out that Yelba, the wife of one of the technicians at the Centro Solar, grew up in Dipilto and offered to go there with me.  Dipilto is a town about the size of Totogalpa (so in the 8-10 thousand range for the municipality) that is located about the same distance north of Ocotal that Sabana Grande is to the south, or in other words, about 30 km north of Sabana Grande.  It takes a bus change in Ocotal each way and all except the last bus home were relatively uncrowded (i.e., there was room to at least shift your weight  from foot to foot if you were standing).   It turns out that Yelba (who is not very big) is a pro at the get-on-the-bus-and-get-a-seat-even-when-there-is-mob-pushing-to-get-on game, so I had a seat on 2 of the 4 buses!  (I just can’t bring myself to push as much as I guess I need to in order to get a seat—she said the key is being small and being able to squeeze through/under as needed.)

This was my first time north of Ocotal (although hopefully I’ll be retracing this path again on the way to Honduras next week) and it was truly amazing how much different the landscape becomes within less than 30 km.  The elevation is several hundred feet higher, which puts Dipilto in the midst of pines and even a little coffee (although the real coffee production is still a bit higher and farther north.  It is enough higher to be noticeably cooler/fresher than Ocotal or even Sabana Grande.   It is also located in/on/among real mountains as opposed to in a broad, flat valley, plus it has a clear, running river cascading down among rocks (even now in the heart of the dry season, which is called “summer” here).  The overall feeling is more like a small town in the Rockies than anything else I’ve seen in Nicaragua—however you could never mistake it for the US West because of the bananas and other more tropical plants.  It was really nice to sit there and hear both the rustle of wind through pine needles and the sound of rapids—it was reminiscent of our time in the Olympic Mountains two years ago or some of the forest streams up around Ashland.

Sign along the highway welcoming travelers to Dipilto, “with the aroma of pines and coffee.”  The building on the left is the municipal building (city hall), a very nice looking building right along the highway.  One other minor thing to notice is the Spanish solution to the he/she, him/her problem we have in English.  In Spanish, of course, masculine often ends in o and feminine in a, so in the word “bienvenid@s” (welcome), they insert an @, which is actually an “a” and an “o” in one symbol!  I’m not sure how it’s pronounced, however.

A view looking downstream at one of the foot bridges and also at a pathway along the stream.  Note the obviously tropical plants in the mix.  (The walkway is the same one you see at the right of the upper picture.)  During rainy season, this could be a much more exciting place to be!

The Pan-Am Highway through Dipilto is on the side of a steep slope, so there is not much at the same level as the road—you must either go farther down into the valley or farther up the slope to arrive at most houses or businesses.  In addition, the hills preclude the dense wall-to-wall packing of buildings as is typical in cities/towns here and they also prevent imposing a square street grid, so you don’t really get the feeling that you were left off the bus at much of a place.  Along the highway are:  the ubiquitous statue of Sandino, a small park (there is no typical central park across from the church here) and the municipal building—everything else requires an elevation change to get to.  

Statue of Sandino on his mule (and draped in the Sandinista colors).  The municipal building is the one to the left.

A small park with gazebo along the highway.

As you walk down into town, the streets are much narrower and windier than in Ocotal or Totogalpa, and also much steeper on average.  The highlights of Dipilto (in addition to the lovely setting) are the church and the Virgen de la Piedra (Virgin of the Rock).   The Virgin is a shrine to (surprise!) Mary and is located where she purportedly appeared to some locals in a vision.  The shrine is perched on the top of a large boulder with a small chapel next to it and this is all set in a beautiful garden along the river and leading up the hillside.  The plants are all watered so even in dry season, it is very lush.

Typical street in Dipilto:  paved with concrete pavers as is common in Nicaragua, limited line-of-sight due to curves and relatively steep.  Snow, of course, is not a consideration here.

A close-up of the Virgin of the Rock, although it’s very hard to get a good angle.

A telephoto view of the rock and the adjacent chapel from the highway.

The church is interesting to me to see how it was rebuilt after having the walls collapse with the rains of Hurricane Mitch.  Outside, it doesn’t look much different than many, fairly simple, old, small-town churches (and incidentally, in case you are wondering from past posts, it DOES face west), but it was rebuilt of concrete block rather than adobe.  Inside it is obviously much more modern and therefore less interesting (at least to me), but it does have some nice design features, such as stone/tile work and some pieces from the old church.  The acoustical tile ceiling doesn’t match other options for beauty, but the white ceiling and more windows than adobe churches give a much lighter interior.

Exterior and interior views of the Dipilto church.

It was mostly just a relaxing, restful stroll through a really beautiful place.  There are no doubt more interesting things to find, but the topography would have made more exploration more tiring that I’m currently in the mood for.  One hates to wish too much success on a place that is naturally so nice and uncrowded, but this is the kind of place that I think could generate some tourist activity for those looking for quiet, cool, restful beauty.

There is some tourism here as there are a couple of nice restaurants that draw folks from outside of town.  This one includes a pool for pre/post-dining swimming and has a lot of flowering trees and bushes such as that on the left.