Alma, Arthur, and Taca, Oh My!
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
90
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Tegucigalpa,
Honduras
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Interestingly, the part of Honduras we drove through was virtually deserted; there were no towns and almost no houses or huts. It is considered the original banana republic (and also the poorest country in South America), but I only saw bananas and no republic until the outskirts of Teguz, which supported a new unifying field theory of mine - that the prosperity of a country is inversely proportional to the amount of corrugated tin used in fences, walls and roofs.
And what fun was there to be had here in Teguz? Well, I got two days of rain generated by Tropical Storm Alma which hit Nicaragua on Thursday on its way up here, which put a damper on seeing or doing much, such as going to the nearby national park La Tigra which is in a cloud forest and probably not too much fun when there are flash flood warnings. That said, I am glad I took the bus. The next day, that Taca Airlines A320 skidded off the end of the runway at Teguz' airport (considered one of the world´s most unsafe because of the short runway and proximity of the hills on the approach) here and onto a roadway, killing several. And (in a preview of things to come), I go next to the Bay Islands, which are currently being affected by Hurricane Arthur which just hit Belize on its way to the Yucatan.
As for Teguz, itself, I was able to get out a bit on my third day to a local vantage point and the city Centro, but, although pleasantly surrounded by mountains, it is a pretty grungy Latin capital with not a whole lot going for the tourist. Or, for that matter, a whole lot of tourists. I have only seen a couple other gringos, and they were in Colonia Palmira, the part of town with the tourist hotels, international restaurants, embasssys, and hip nightclubs. I stayed there too in a nice, but relatively expensive ($40 a night) B&B because every guide and website described it as the only safe place in the city to walk alone at night and the only place in the city with nightlife. Even the night dude at my hotel kept telling me how "peligroso" (dangerous) it was to walk anywhere downhill from where I was staying. The books and Wikitravel, however, forgot to mention the aggressive-ass hookers hanging out in front of the former U.N.
Airplane Crash - note crowd and how far it fell
Building who run across the street to grab you with the enticing come on of "fucky sucky, fucky sucky?" It was like a bad imitation of Asian hookers as portrayed by Hollywood movies, but fatter and with worse makeup.The Thursday night that I arrived, it was all I could do to dash through a gap in the rain with my book to a nearby English bar (with no Englishmen, or English speakers for that matter) for a steak and a couple of beers and then accross the street to a bar tha could easily acccomodate 100 people indoors and on the patio, but it was just me and some other dude banging the billard balls around by himself. Were we two hardy souls to have braved the weather, or two sad, lonely lushes? No, don't answer.
It was still raining on Friday which prevented me exploring the city much. I wandered around the area I was staying in, during which time the most exciting thing I saw or did was watching the news footage of the airplane crash site in Spanish while having a pretty damn bad hamburgesa. But I was able to catch the National Spelling Bee finals and am pleased that a kid one this year who is not a complete social cripple.
Dinner was better - piglet fajitas, in essence - at what Fodor's claimed was the most happening bar in the area. Well, I might normally give Fodor the benefit of the doubt because of the rain, but when I went to a nightclub ("Kaballah" since Jewish mysicism ain't afraid of a leetle Catholic country like Honduras) down the street a little later, it was packed to the gills with a line out the door 30 people long and I felt like a king. I was one of the tallest people there, the blondest and the oldest (by about 15 years), just like a king should be. I'm sure I was the wisest too. Unfortunately, I was a foreign head of state and forgot to bring my translator, so I was in no way any sort of conquistador; rather, I was kind of like the ambassador of Abkhazia at the U.N.
Chinese Market cum Nightclub
- tucked in a corner and ignored. The combination of my bad Spanish, a country where they marry young and don't speak good English, and a city with no expats is not a good one.The weather improved on Saturday and was able to explore the city a it. It sprawls over several hills, but can in no way be called beautiful. It is yet another scuzzy, rough Latin city with ugly squares, statues and monuments. And churches, always the churches. I did, however, like some of the modern Honduran art at the National Art Gallery, and I was able to get into "Casa Maria," a highly popular restaurant with the upper crust (I had been denied on Friday for lack of a reservation) and had a good ceviche appetizer and tilapia main. I even had a pleasant surprise later that night.
After being driven out of one bar by painfully horrid screeching in Spanish passing for karaoke, I heard what was clearly a live band playing the Doors. Following my ears, I found a bar above a Chinese bazaar with a pretty damn good rock band playiing classic garage rock songs in both English and Spanish (provided that some of them appeared to only be classics to the locals since I had never them before but they cheered them and sang along). Serendipity happens, and then you have to take a different route home to avoid the hookers abusing you in Spanish for not accepting their generous offers to fucky sucky.
Finally, an update on my gastrointestinal experiment. I have bought no bottled water for three days. That is not to say that I have drank that much tap water given that most of my drinks are at restaurants or from stores, but I was drinking tap water for those middle of the night drymouths. So far so good, although this has denied me the pleasure of photographing skanky toilets of necessity.
Now, I am returning to the tourist trail and conversations more intriquing than "How many time stay you in Honduras?" and going to:
Roatan, Honduras (The Bay Islands).
Church
