Travels thru Latin America: Tegucicalpa

Most people avoid Tegucicalpa or at most spend just one night there before taking the first bus out. It has the reputation for being inhospitable and rough town rival into the city did nothing to dispel this impression, as everything in the area I was staying shut down by 8pm and my little hotel locked the doors for entry and exit from 10pm. So it was into dead streets that I sallied forth that first night and the only restaurant open was Wendy's. Dinner was 2 hamburgers in the dismal neon light. At the street corners humans and dogs were vying with each other sifting through the mounds of refuse and apart from them and the odd vagrant in a doorway only one or 2 people could be seen leaving the area purposefully. The dogs were looking for food and the humans for aluminium and glass and plastic bottles for which they would get recycling money, as well as for food. No life, a sense of emptiness and lawlessness. Maybe I have a very bad impression based on the limited view from one district. Staying in downtown Harare would be similarly dismal. This is the capital city where the embassies have their offices, but perhaps too, as in Harare, the rich live behind high walls and frequent restaurants and night spots also behind similar walls or shopping malls with good security. I was determined to go the Museum of National Identity, which was reputed to be very interesting and good. After wandering around the market of Comayaguela and attending to some bureaucracy I went to the museum only to find that all governmaent offices were closing as the national team were playing their last game, against Switzerland. I had a hissy fit, as I did not want to stay in that hole for another 2 nights, and the security guards just laughed at me. In the end, I figured that football was very much part of the national identity and I didn´t have to go to the museum to see a live demonstration. The travel agent where I went to book my onward journey to Nicaragua was a bit like Kathy my old boss at Exec Air and she was just as dramatic and eloquent about extolling the virtues of Honduras. Except she didn't live in the town centre either and her daughters lived in Europe... Nevertheless, I thought at least I could try to get this blog up to date and see the museum too...

In the event, I was glad that I was there for the game, virtually everyone was engaged and very proud that they managed to deny Switzerland a chance in the last 16, giving a chance for a fellow Latin American team to qualify (Chile). I watched the first half in burger king and the 2nd partly in the main square, but then heard the passionate shouts from the internet café (as I did not feel like being pickpocketed again). Although I had been given the address of a decent restaurant, somehow it always seemed too late to go to the other side of town because of the lockup time of the hotel. So I ate something like 8 hamburgers in 2 days....

The Museum was definitely worth a visit. The whole bottom floor was dedicated to the national football team, so I got that in one. There was a great virtual tour of Copán which was a good review and reminder having seen the real thing, an ordinaire art exhibit, but the real meat was a vast display of the history of Honduras from 300 million years ago to the present day (excluding the coup)

Here I learned that Honduras was G-d's gift to humanity, as when the tectonic plate shifted the land mass that became Honduras into position, it closed the isthmus joining the 2 Americas, diverted the Gulf Stream northwards and so moderated the climate, changing many of the rainforests of Africa into savannah and allowing the chimps to come down from the trees, which gave rise to humans and of course, football. Without Honduras, no humans, and definitely no football.

This tectonic movement created mountain ranges distinct from Guatemala as they are due to wrinkling of the earth's crust rather than volcanic activity. So settlements were in isolated pockets, and the country was never part of an empire or extended kingdom. So it was with the conquest, the faction from Mexico entered via Guatemala, anothe faction entered via Costa Rica and the 2 slugged it out to try to establish their own spheres of influences, founding city states and garrisons to mark out territory, many of which did not survive to the preset day. There were 3 motives for holding the land. Gold as ever, the dream of uniting the Atlantic to the Pacific to create a new trade route to Asia, and farming. The English put paid to the idea of using Honduras as part if a trade route as the ports were too difficult to defend, being continually overrun by British and or pirates. The church did not have much luck here either, as the indigenous rightly associated the missionaries with bearing lethal disease, so they killed them or shunned them when they could. The miracle is that the Catholic church is so widespread and devoutly followed today.

Other than that, the history is one of opportunism. Take aviation for example. Seen as the great hope of finally uniting the country as numerous attempts at a trans coastal route had failed, the Honduran Government bought a Handley Page 9 in 1921 and hired an English ex-WW I pilot (Ivan Lamb) to fly it. He promptly pranged it. So that was that until 1924 when an American mercenary (Frank Brown) was hired to fly bombing raids on the capital in a violent change of government. In 1931 an enterprising New Zealander Lovell Jerex pitched up with a plane, established a parcel service charging $4 per kilo in 1931 money a whopping figure, which must be the equivalent of hundreds today. His Honduran license was handwritten on a sheet of ledger paper with an official stamp. (Although who was competent to test him, lord knows, as there were no pilots in Honduras) When Carias need help to depose the government prior to setting up his own dictatorship, Jerex put his aircraft at his disposal, lost an eye in active service, and was therefore granted monopoly rights and the right to import 4 aircraft a year plus spares duty free in recognition of his services. A similar story of mutual backscratching is linked to the establishment of banana and palm oil plantations. And so to the present day as privilege from patronage competes with the aspirations of the poorer people. The recent coup favoured entrenched privilege. It's an ongoing tension in Latin America.

The sign on the bus door, no weapons, no consumption of beverages, no smoking

The view of Tegucicalpa from Comoyaguela

One of the many markets of Comayaguela. Within the rabbit warrens of wooden stalls teamed with life, but I was reluctant to get a camera out

An arty café I found during my wanderings around town on the first afternoon after the football match. A relief to have found some normal life, a place with atmosphere where I could finally buy a cold beer... Until this happened....

When I walked into the café above, a group of students were partying around the table. I turned around when they called "Hey Meester" They asked me to kiss one of the girls there on the lips, I did and then asked them "What did she win?" It was a dare for a drink apparently. 15 mins later I was asked to kiss another, this time a long kiss... I said I only would if they took this picture. She can't have been much more than 18, with braces. Can't see why it was exciting to kiss a grizzled foreigner. As you can see she's proudly wearing a Honduras shirt. However, I declined to join their table as I didn't want to be their foreign mascot, but it was evidence of some kind of raucous sense of humour. I had the feeling that the culture here was of a brash macho kind