At the end of this article you can find pictures from our trip to Honduras.
Guau is the Spanish spelling of the English word, wow. Señora and I just spent six incredible days in Honduras and the best word to describe our experiences is guau. Both of us were saying guau all the time as we were in the mountains most of our trip and the scenery was absolutely stupendous. And the people were generally kind, friendly and very welcoming, perhaps so, as we were, for the most part, away from the more common tourist areas. My Salvadoran tutor tells me that he likes the Honduran culture more than his own due to the friendliness and openness of the Hondurans, known colloquially as Catracho or Catracha.
The primary purpose of the trip was to visit one of my online Spanish tutors, Saúl Rios and his wife Sarai Paz, this young couple, both just around 30, make their living as Spanish tutors online. Saúl is on a platform called iTalki and Sarai is on Prepay. It is always hard to judge these things, but they seem to be making a living better than average for their country. Saúl is Mexican. As I remember the story he was on vacation in Honduras, met this Catracha young lady, fell in love, married her and has been there ever since. Ironically, as will become clear in a minute, he also stayed because he felt safer in Honduras. I had assumed that he would have returned to Mexico with his bride as the economy is better there, but he is from Michoacán, an area infamous for violence due to the narco-traffickers, which brings me to a bit of negativity.
I had stopped telling people that we were going to Honduras due the number of negative comments I was receiving. Señora has a very dear friend of long duration who works for the Red Cross. She travels internationally – a lot, and has been to Honduras several times. She was quite upset that I was taking her friend to this country. Interestingly, I have tutors from all three of the Northern Triangle countries, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries noted for their poverty and violence. They each have a slight tendency to say that one of the other countries is more dangerous than their own country. It always reminds me of Okies, Arkies and Texans denigrating the other states. The reality is that Honduras is a very poor country. Sixty percent of the country lives in poverty, less than five dollars a day, and fifteen percent live in extreme poverty, less than two dollars a day. The Hondurans I visited with had more than a little trepidation about the city we flew into, San Pedro Sula and the capital city, Tegucigalpa. Our State Department recommends against travel to Honduras due to:
“Violent crime, such as homicide and armed robbery, is common. Violent gang activity, such as extortion, violent street crime, rape, and narcotics and human trafficking, is widespread. Local police and emergency services lack sufficient resources to respond effectively to serious crime.”
However… Saúl picked us up at the airport in San Pedro Sula, drove us three hours back to the hotel in La Entrada, close to his house in San Nicholas. He was with us all the time except some of the evenings when we were back at the hotel. We paid a friend of his to drive us back to the airport Tuesday as Saúl needed to work. I never once felt threatened or insecure. As a comparison, I live in a very safe suburb of St. Louis, Chesterfield, but the actual city of St. Louis is frequently at the top or near the top in the murder rate for cities here in the United States. I worked at the Metropolitan Building in downtown St. Louis, and I was always cautious if I left the office late, especially if it was dark and always in the parking garage. Many of the women in that situation would have a security guard walk them to their car. Caution will not always keep you safe, but it can help. I will confess though, this is not a trip I would have made if I had not had an in-country guide. Saúl and I planned the trip out very carefully before Señora and I went. He and Sarai were incredible guides. At one point I told Sarai that her Mexican husband was a great ambassador for Honduras.
I did teach Saúl a new English phrase, “Jesus, Mother Mary”, Jesus, Santa Marie in Spanish, a Catholic utterance somewhat ludicrous for a lapsed Southern Baptist. I had previously thought the drivers of Naples, Italy, the worse I had ever seen, but I must have said Jesus, Mother Mary a hundred times while we were in Honduras as I thought we were about to have a head-on collision. Picture this: very curvy mountain roads, not always in the best repair, chock full of semis, motorcycles, tuk-tuks (3 wheeled motorcycles used for everything from taxis to carrying produce), older slow vehicles, tumulus (speed bumps) appearing unexpectedly, now add in that livestock in the road is a frequent occurrence, and EVERYONE is trying to pass ALL the time… Jesus, Mother Mary.
While we were there, Saúl, Sarai and I spoke mostly in Spanish. Since they both are studying English they used this time to practice their English with Señora. I would not call Señora a chatterbox, but she does love to visit with people and learn new things. I spent a significant amount of time translating for her in both directions. I will admit to my brain feeling a bit fried by the end of each day. It is one thing to speak Spanish for an hour online with a tutor. It is an entirely different to do so for the whole day for close to six days. I did find myself towards the end of our time together mimicking Saúl’s mild Mexican accent more and more. My fantasy is to find some way to immerse myself in the language for a period of time. Hopefully, such an experience would bring my Spanish to a new level. In CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) parlance I am currently at a B2 level, an advanced intermediate student. My dream and goal is to achieve C1 which is an advanced proficient user. C2 is mastery which will probably need to wait for my next lifetime. I am here to testify that learning a language in your decrepitude is not necessarily an easy undertaking. Can I get an amen?
The first day there we had a bite to eat and went to bed. We had started our journey by leaving the house at 3 a.m. for an early flight to Atlanta. In Atlanta we were delayed two hours as the pilot called in sick at the last minute. By the time they found a new pilot the co-pilot’s hours had exceeded limits and we had to wait for the airline to find a replacement for him. ¡Ay caramba! Once we took off all went well, but it was a long drive to La Entrada from San Pedro Sula for two souls already very tired.
Next day we took off early to visit the pueblo of Gracias, famous for its 500 year old colonial fort and its botanical garden. The garden featured many native trees and some plants that are useful for purposes varying from food to fiber. Our guides did not say, but I am assuming Gracias is a fairly typical mountain pueblo.
After Gracias we drove to Termas del Rio – Aguas Termales, a resort next to a very beautiful river. They have a nice restaurant there and cabins to rent. Of course the primary attraction is the aguas termales – hot springs – that start with a very warm small pool that flows in a second pool and finally into a very large pool set up like a swimming pool. The water in this last pool was like a very warm bath, but was deep enough and large enough that it was possible to swim in it. While we were there on a Friday it was not all that crowded. As a point of interest this attraction is owned by Juan Orlando Hernández, the Honduran ex-president that recently lost to the left of center candidate Xiomara Castro. Currently Señor Hernández is under arrest as the United States has asked for his extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges. His brother is already in prison here. As a precaution the current government had stationed soldiers at the entrance to the resort as Señor Hernández is not particularly popular. Ignoring that fact it was a delightful place and one I would recommend to anyone traveling in that part of the country.
This brings up another interesting phenomenon of Honduras, there are police everywhere. The ones I noticed were the National Police and the Military Police. It was a very common occurrence to go through a police roadblock several times a day during our travels. Saúl did comment that at times he felt like he was living in a police state, but perhaps that is why he felt more secure in Honduras than Michoacán. We were never pulled over, but we saw more than few vehicles that were, especially the small buses. Apparently they were looking for drugs and weapons. The other reason is mordiditas – little bites – that is small bribes to police and various governmental officials. From the stories I have been told if you want to avoid petty trouble with the police, you give a mordidita. If you want to grease the wheels to encourage a bureaucrat, you give a mordidita. It is not something I have ever had to deal with in this country, but I do remember my father giving an Italian carabinieri some money when we encountered a police roadblock late at night. Graft goes on in this country, but it is at a much higher level and involves larger sums of money.
These police move around the country mostly in pickups. There are officers in the cab and in the bed there are two benches back to back each facing the side. There were generally two or three policemen/soldiers on each bench. On the way to the airport our last day, we followed one such vehicle of the Military Police. The soldiers seemed so young, but discipline must have been lacked. One soldier had let his automatic rifle droop such that the barrel was pointed directly at us for kilometer after kilometer. We were praying that his finger was not on the trigger and the safety was on.
The day following our stay at Termas del Rio we toured Santa Rosa de Copán. My Salvadoran Spanish tutor calls this city La joya de Centroamérica – The Jewel of Central America. It is not a big city, but it is in the mountains and very clean compared to much of the country. Saúl and Sarai lived there for a good while before moving to San Nicholas. They showed us around, visiting the main park of the town, and then the bustling commercial area in the older part of the town. We ate at a very nice restaurant, El Mirador, which overlooks the city. We completed our visit there by visiting a shopping mall which would rival many in the United States. We spent the last part of that day at the home of Saúl and Sarai eating some local unknown fruits and playing table games, all in all a very wonderful day.
Sunday was perhaps my favorite day of the whole trip. We visited a coffee plantation, a finca, with our two guides, their puppy, two of their family members, and the family of one of their friends. The finca was very interesting with a tour of the plantation and an explanation of the coffee picking. There was a small motel and a restaurant there, also. Some of the group went horseback riding. It was also a working cattle ranch, and they maintained dairy cows. What I loved about the day was that it was such a family oriented time and they included Robin and I with much grace. It definitely left a warm fuzzy in my heart watching this group of folks that were so amiable and supportive of each other. It has been my impression, reinforced by this trip, that for the Latino culture, family is much more important than it is for most Americans.
Monday was our last full day in Honduras and we did the touristy thing and drove to see the Copán Ruinas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is an archeological site that has been restored in large part, and a Japanese archeological team is currently working on more restoration on one of the pyramids. Cerca 900 C.E. this Mayan city was the capital of this Mayan region. The Mayan civilization was more a series of city states rather than an empire. If you get the chance Great Courses, now Wondrium, has a wonderful 48 lesson course on the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed. I watched this before we went and it added good background for my visit. If you are interested in this subject it is well worth your time. I engaged a bilingual guide for our tour of the Copán Ruinas. We do this frequently when we can, and we find it more enriching than just wandering around the sites/buildings/etc.
This being the third Mayan site we have visited I am beginning to feel a bit like an archeologist myself (not). Both the Mayans and Aztecs were amazing civilizations, and when I think of what the Spanish did to both cultures I feel very sad. But it is the same sad story of European colonization and empire building in any part of the world. Oh the chutzpah we Europeans had at that time… and now for that matter.
After the ruins we toured the city. We ate at Saúl and Sarai’s favorite restaurant there, one very typical and away from the tourist areas. The food was very good and by our standards very cheap. We also visited a bird sanctuary where I took some wonderful pictures.
Afterwards they drove us back to our hotel and we said our sad goodbyes. We had a lot to do before leaving the next day early for the 3 hour drive back to the airport. It was necessary to have a negative COVID test within 24 hours of boarding the airplane. I had purchased some fairly expensive tests that we brought with us and took via a video conference. I will admit that this part made me a bit nervous. While I enjoyed our trip immensely, like any trip, I was ready to be back in my own bed. I certainly did not want to be quarantined for two weeks outside the United States. Fortunately we both passed, there were again forms to fill out online to leave the country. We ate a nice dinner at the hotel and went to bed early as it was to be another long day of traveling. Fortunately on the homeward legs no pilots called in sick.
I really do not have words to describe how wonderful this trip was. Robin and I have been to a few countries together and visited many incredible places both here and abroad. However, there was just something very exceptional about these two special people showing us around a place that they obviously love. I only wish we could return the favor, but it is exceptionally hard for Hondurans to obtain visitor visas for the United States. They have to have strong roots (financial, property, family, etc) in Honduras to ensure that they will go back. It is understandable and bothersome all at the same time. I just wish more of my countrymen would travel and have such experiences. Perhaps it would change their opinions on immigration or even foreign aid. Most of these folks love their countries, would prefer to stay there, but they need and want a way to support themselves and their families. Is that really too much to ask out of life? The problem is complex, and more than I need to get into here.
¡Gaua! Honduras.
As promised here is the photo gallery: Click on gallery, then click on any picture to start slide show.
What an awesome experience!! Thank you for sharing.
That was a memorable trip. Thanks for sharing this with us.
What a special trip. Great pictures. Thanks for sharing them with us all.