San Pedro Sula, Honduras

Edit: most pictures removed from this post at the subject’s request.

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I’m getting better at packing the bag and can usually take it from completely unpacked to packed in about 15 minutes without interruptions. Today it comes together pretty well and the owner of Hotel Los Gemenos agrees to put it in the office for a few hours until I can get my act together.

Fast becoming one of my favorite pastimes is simply walking the streets of a city. I’m not talking about walking down alleyways, but rather walking the city proper and listening to the people, wandering in and out of shops at random intervals and just looking at what passes for a business model in that town. I have met some of the coolest people on my trip by doing just this. It acquaints me with the city and often allows me to help out other people later, even if I have only been in the city for a short time.

Today, I see a couple of Irish girls who have that unmistakable “we’re lost” look about them. A couple quick words and I walk a couple streets over to the travel agency that can sell them the bus tickets they are looking for at a reasonable price and get them there much faster than a chicken bus. It’s times like this that I like humans. Most people will toss a quick “thank you” over their shoulder at you while they walk away, but these girls went out of their way to stop and thank me sincerely a few times before they went in to get the ticket.

Fresh bread is a favorite fare of mine while traveling. I picked up this habit in Spain a few years ago. It’s usually quite cheap and very tasty and simple to hold over hunger on long bus rides. Wandering around the neighborhoods away from the city center, I get to meet all kinds of folks while I am hunting for a decent panaderia. The only one closer to Parque Central is just a reseller and mostly vends pastries.

After about an hour, the only one I have come across is closed for the day, so pushing past 11 a.m. I figure I will swing into ViaVia again for some food. It’s nice and I still think that this restaurant has the most consistently informative, helpful, and responsive employees of any restaurant in the city. The internet is decently reliable and the food is tasty. The only drawback to this is that other people know this and there is never a quiet moment there. Fast forward another few hours. We are chilling in something of an abandoned dirt lot waiting to get onto a shuttle that seems similar to most of the minibuses I have been in over the last while, but the driver pats down all of the locals as they get on, refraining from checking me or the two Czech guys getting on the bus with me. I wind up in the seat right behind the driver with a slender San Pedro Sula native to my right. She works in Copan and is going home to San Pedro Sula, SPS, for the weekend.

The ride is at least as mortally dangerous as any vehicle I have ever entered, which makes me laugh out loud when I think of the security scan we went through on the way into the bus. As if any weapon that could be smuggled on to the bus would be anywhere near as dangerous to the inhabitants of the bus as the ride itself. At numerous points during the trip we pick up additional peoples for a short jaunt to the next stop and have as many as 5 people standing up at any moment. The added bonus of today’s ride is that about 45 minutes into the ride a girl in the middle of the bus got sick from our vertiginous route through the beautiful Honduran mountains and threw up in the bus.

The ride is eye opening. Iris, the girl sitting next to me works in the hospitality industry and has applied for a Visa to go to the U.S. twice in the last two years. The application process has taken up around a total of $500 USD of her money for hotel, travel costs, and the $150 application fee per application.

I know people who have visa’s and have come to the U.S. to work and have either stayed or left thereafter. I also know people who have come to the U.S. illegally and later realized what a mistake it is and gone through the proper channels for their citizenship. I have seen the conditions in which illegal aliens live in the U.S. and it is much worse than most of the people I have seen living in Central America so far.

Iris’ next words are startling. Starting at around $5000 USD a person can pay a smuggler to try and sneak them across the border into the U.S. This fee can go to well over $10,000 per person, and while perhaps offering a bit more chance of success, are by no means a guarantee that the person will make it into the States. In fact, she tells me, most women who make the attempt, no matter how much they are paid are raped on the journey; perhaps multiple times. The money is not a guarantee one will live. It is not uncommon for the guide to simply leave his people in the middle of the desert and leave with the money. In the better of bad circumstances, the guide is paid and he simply skips town with the money. Despite all of this, the people smuggling business is alive and well.

I can’t really process this so I keep asking her how it works, who goes where, and how many people she knows who have done it, and the story just never gets good. The only part that doesn’t make me cringe is that Iris has no intention of trying to go anywhere illegally and continues to have a rewarding life in Honduras.

When we finally get to SPS, Iris is kind enough to let me use her phone to call the couchsurfing host I am staying with for a couple days and my host is gracious enough to even come to the bus station and pick me up. She has limited space, and already has two people staying over, but has graciously offered me the floor, a roof, and a hot shower.

In the interim, my host needs to head out to classes at the University as she is finishing her Masters degree in Finance this year. She finds me a café to hang out at with wifi and calls Arai to let her know where I am so we can meet up.

Arai is a friend of a friend, really, though we have been communicating over email for some time, we have only met once, briefly about 3 years prior. Despite the look of it, she is not named after the helmet manufacturer, but rather the bearer of a fantastically Uruguayan name meaning, Roots of Heaven. I recognize her from memory and recent pictures when she walks in, but apparently she doesn’t realize I am me with the several weeks of beard growth obscuring the larger part of my face. She is even nicer than I remember and we cruise around the city checking out the sights and her house which is just about the nicest thing I have seen so far.

I love it. 9:30 comes and goes, and around 9:45 we hear from my host for the night. Sometime after 10 we make it back to her place and manage to fire a Port Royal around half of her kitchen. Moments later her other two surfers arrive and we have a great night of conversation about Car prices in brazil, the availability of holiday work in Central America, and what a vegetarian can do to survive on the road. Despite the delightful company and the newness of it all, I am quickly fading and upon learning that I need to be up and out before 8 a.m. I lay down on the floor sometime after 1 and am asleep before I can even put my headphones in.

Morning arrives with the usual chickens and I have time to grab the anticipated shower before my host gives me a ride down to Parque Central to find both a cel phone and some breakfast at a café I heard about. The cel phone was pretty easy to come by, because every, and I do not underestimate, every store in the mall sell chips and/or recharges mobile plans. The mobile communication industry is literally booming in Central America. I’m surprised that there is any other job to be had.

Dave in Honduras: 011-504-9704-9638

For  voicemails, regardless of the country I happen to be stationed in, dial 1-919-747-4097, this will reach my computer if I am online, and will leave me a voicemail if I am out and about.

Parque Central in San Pedro Sula is brimming with my favorite people in the whole world: Money Changers and Taxi Drivers. And inexplicably, they are all my friends. Once I wake up enough to read a map for the morning, I realize that Café Skandia is on quite the other side of the park.

If the hype is to be believed, Café Skandia makes some great pancakes, though I have to say the coffee was mediocre, and the ommelette was good, basic nutrition with no frills. There is a weak WiFi signal there that managed to power my recently resurrected blackberry enough for me to check email.

Following up on my promise to Arai, I shoot her a call so that she has my mobile number for the time being and she surprises me by coming to meet me for breakfast. She knows the café and is glad that I chose it for food. A strange phenomenon starts up that is to follow me for some time. I start getting text messages… in Spanish… about Tiger Woods and Football scores. Arai tells me that I don’t get charged for incoming text messages, so I should just ignore them and maybe they will stop eventually. Arai has a loose work schedule for the morning, so we roll out to go check out the local market and I can tell you, if you have seen one Central American Mercado, you can certainly give this one a pass. Lackluster is a good description.

Nearly every parking lot in the city has a man in an orange reflective vest just standing around. When you get in your car and try to leave, he comes up to your window and beings whistling and waving at you. Apparently, standing around a parking lot with shiny clothes consists of a job in Honduras, because as a driver, you are required to give this man money before you can drive away.

All morning long, Arai and I have been practicing one another’s languages. I know that I need a great deal more practice than she does, but since she is much better at speaking English than I am at Spanish, we will speak English for long periods of time. I think this is also largely due to her discomfort at hearing me butcher her language so badly.

Tonight, the plan is to make a traditional dinner at Arai’s house and go sing karaoke. As my part of the dinner, I have offered to make guacamole. In order for dinner to succeed, we’ll need to go to the grocery store, since I don’t make a habit of carrying avocados around with me.

In leaving the grocery store, I realize something interesting. Thus far in Honduras, being here for a few days, I have never seen a centavo, a coin. Every transaction I have done has been for whole dollar amounts. This means that either everyone I have exchanged goods or services with has done an amazing job of tailoring their prices and taxes to precise dollar amounts, or the prices are largely imagined up on the spot depending on how much it looks like the customer should pay. I’m sure the truth is a little of both.

Life is good with food in hand, but food in belly goes a long way too. That being said, we head back to Arai’s house to deposit groceries and head out for some Mexican food with her roommate Sandra. I’m surprised at the big city prevalence of chain restaraunts and horrifying drivers, but perhaps only because this is the largest city I have been in for more than 30 minutes in some weeks. The presence of a large city not crippled by pollution and crime is a difficult concept to wrap my head around down here.

The days passes quickly and Arai bails out to go to an appointment in the city so I get to chill out at a couple of coffee shops with WiFi. I’m really surprised at the amount of wireless available in the city, and NOT present in people’s homes. It’s a trip from any residential area to any free wifi area, so it’s somewhat of a hike.  If you are planning to stay in San Pedro Sula, plan accordingly. Get a place near downtown or ask your host if there is internet available. Tigo sells a cool USB unlimited cellular internet card, much like the Verizon aircard, for $16 a month; it’s slow, and moderately unreliable, but it’s progress.

I get a phone call from my couchsurfing host that she has to leave for Costa Rica at 5 a.m. in the morning, so I will have to be up and out in a strange city before then. Not really an appealing idea. So I ask Arai to drop me off at a hotel that I spoke with a couple of days prior. Turns out, she and Sandra have a guest quarters behind the house that is just being used for storage, and Arai invites me to come stay there instead. Arai even breaks out the cleaners and we go to work on the place. It is better than half of the hotels I have stayed at when we are done.

I am consistently failing at writing what I want to get done. At least it is consistent, eh? I haven’t nearly caught up with my writing when Arai calls me on my new Honduran phone and tells me she is going to swing by and pick me up. This means we get to go to her dance classes; hip hop and Arabic.

I amuse myself by making faces at the little kids running around and doing a bit of writing before the battery on my laptop dies, and finally we roll out to the house and commence the greatness that will become dinner.

Interesting fact about avocados in Honduras… there are a version of avocados called ahuacates hondurenias that really look nothing like avocados as I know them and are somewhat more duro, or hard, on the inside. If you can get them ripe enough, though, they make rocking guacamole. Combine red onions, lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic, and cranberries if you can find them, and you have some life changing guacamole on your hands.

Dinner is a combined effort of the two roommates and is a total success. Typical Honduran food with eggs, meat, beans, sauces, etc. Sandra can’t stop eating the guacamole. The secret to Honduran food appears to be the sauces. They are varied and include combinations that I have not ever considered before. You really have to see it to believe it.

 

My couchsurfing host was going to meet up with us for lunch and again for dinner, but she is otherwise busy. After dinner we have an appointment with a karaoke bar that should prove interesting.

Karaoke is something that seems to change with each culture, but retains the same horrible sound system. In America, it is largely boisterous, feel-good songs that get sung. In Japan, it is mostly sad songs about lost love. In Central America, it seems to be loud overly romantic ballads. A lot of heart in Honduras.

For no reason at all, the karaoke is interrupted at around 11 and music videos are played while people get up and dance. I do my best to eke out some salsa, merenge, and reggaeton dancing, with Jiemmy, but I’m a rather poor showing next to some of the guys up there. I rapidly retire my dancing shoes to protect Arai from the vultures circling our table.

We all requested a number of songs, and none of them have come up by 1:30 in the morning and everyone is flagging. Time to get some sleep.

The guest quarters were a great temperature all night long, the bed was relatively comfortable, and a cold shower feels good. Arai has a dentist appointment at 8:30, then 10, then 9:15, then finally it is rescheduled for Wednesday. This means we have the whole day to go adventuring. It also means that I won’t get any writing done today. The breakfast Arai makes of ommelettes and fried platanos is the best one I have eaten on the whole trip. Add in the guacamole leftover from last night, and it is an Oscar winner.

One hears of pirated DVDs all over Asia. I have never heard of pirated DVDs in Central America, but I tell you now, this is a booming business. I have seen people selling them all over the streets; in gas stations, bus stops, and mercados. When we are getting ice cream, I manage to get this great picture of the security guard and the guy breaking the law sitting hanging out and having a chat with one another. Note: if you are shy of guns, Central America may not be for you. There are guys with shotguns and assault rifles all over the place.

Not that I would endorse breaking the law or purchasing illegal goods; far from it. So you can be assured that I would never buy pirated DVDs. Not even for the purpose of learning Spanish. Never.

Throughout the day, Arai tells me stories of the perils of Honduras. Police are not something to feel secure about. Most of the time, one need fear the police more than the criminals. She has been robbed at gunpoint, nearly been kidnapped and falsely arrested; but she says these things are just part of life here. She says something else too. “The more good you are, the more good you see.”

This simple sentiment is her justification for being a good person. She believes that because she is good to others that truly bad things will not happen to her. Sound reasoning I think.

This was not the only piece of life changing greatness to come from Arai. She actually invented an entirely new number. Somehow, she has managed to see through the roots of Arabic and mayan mathematics to a number no one has ever imagined… Fixteen. Yes, you heard it. I believe it lies somewhere between 10 and 20, though I am not exactly sure where. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out for sure.

Travesty. Travesti.  The first word means a mockery or a sham; false pretense. The second word means there is a name for the man dressed up as a woman with his bare ass showing standing on the street corner as we drive back to Arias house around 9:30. I wish I had been fast enough to take a picture, but then again, you probably do not want this mental image.

There is some truly fantastic food to be had at great prices all over San Pedro Sula, but if you don’t live here, you won’t be able to find it. Most of the accessible restaurants are chains or rather expensive. Luckily I have my own guide who is continually serving up new and wonderful places to eat. Dinner tonight is a large old house that has filled the courtyard with plastic lawn furniture and they crank out fantastic Honduran food. There is no menu, you simply say wether you want beef or chicken and what you would like to drink, then it is brought to you along with a wild array of sauces, picantes, and sides. This is another typical Honduran dish called, Parrilladas. Between this and baleadas I can see why some people here pack on the weight.

 

By the time Arai and I get back to the house, we are good for little more than laying around on the couches in the living room and mumbling. I head off to sleep with the two geckos that have taken up residence in the guest quarters.

Arai and I roll out around 8:30 the following morning after another fantastic breakfast and after some downtime due to a mysteriously cancelled bus, I get rolling out to La Ceiba.

I firmly believe that if all I get from this trip is bug bites and the friendship of one person like Arai, then every second, every dollar, and every mile will have been worth it.