The capital of Honduras is known for being a bit dodgy, like pretty much all Central American cities- but not so dodgy as San Pedro Sula. To get down from the Caribbean coast to Nicaragua, I had to take the bus through the city, and I thought I may as well stop over for at least a day to breakup the journey. I dislike travelling through towns without seeing them, and it's exhausting travelling for eight or more hours two days in a row. Plus I just really didn't think it would be that bad.
I'd heard about a nice B&B through a friend, so contacted them in advance- the plan being that they would pick me up from the bus station on Sunday night. Of course when I finally arrived, nobody was there. I sat around for half an hour on a bench inbetween two armed guards with machine guns, but gradually came to the realisation that nobody was coming for me. Rather than bawl my eyes out like the child whose mum forgets to pick her up from school, I got chatting to a Turkish guy who had also been on my bus. He'd had a reommendation for a hotel by two local girls, which was supposedly cheap, clean and safe.
We shared a taxi to this hotel, went in to investigate, and quickly left after asking the price: 70 US dollars each! Either the local girls' idea of cheap was different to ours, or they thought that we were loaded simply because we were foreign. And so our fate was in the hands of our taxi driver, who took us to several cheaper hotels whose only decoration were biohazard and despair. It was getting dark, and we eventually setlled on a place called the Hotel San Pedro (or some similar saint). It wasn't pretty, but it was cheap and a whole lot better than any others we'd seen.
We walked two minutes down the road to find the nearest diner, followed all the way by a crazy guy who had learnt some English. "Five dollar", he whinged over and over while we ignored him. "Five dollar is nothing for you rich folk". The further we walked,the nastier he became, calling me a prostitute and threatening to kill us both. I laughed it off at the time, but I didn't doubt that he was carrying a knife. He even followed us into the restaurant, to our irritation not receiving a single word of threat from the staff or diners. Eventually we retreated back to the hotel, stopping at a fried chicken shop- the only place open which sold beer.
Turkey was getting the 5am bus onto El Salvador the next morning.
"You should try and get out of here tomorrow morning, too", he said.
"Nahh It's not so bad-" But I was cut off at precisely that moment by the sound of gunshots and screaming just outside the hotel. We barricaded ourselves in one room and drank beer until we fell asleep.
Things seemed better in the daylight and I remained determined not to be intimidated by the place. I would stay a day and see the sights. But first, an attack of sensibility: I needed to stop being so stingy, get out of this area and pay a bit more for a hotel- especially now I was alone. I found a hotel which was about 13 pounds a night- a lot for Honduras, but actually pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things (Why hadn't we stayed here the night before?!). I settled in, had a wash and hailed a taxi into the centre.
I told the driver I wanted to go to the art gallery.
"There's no art gallery here". He said,
"But it said there was the national art gallery online?"
"No. No art. No museums."
"I just want to find some culture..."
"Torture?"
"No... not torture- culture"
So he took me to the centre and I hopped out next to a great big sign saying "National Art Gallery". Triumphant, I went in. Two pre-pubescent looking security guards with machine guns greeted me- or rather, grinned and gaffawed like Forest Gump until I threw some money at them and edged past. It was a nice, old building and I was able to survey my surroundings from an upstairs window. Not so bad- an attractive cathedral, lots of shops... a man running down the road with a handbag...and some posters inquiring after information on a murder.
Inside the gallery, there were some good paintings by Jose Antonio Velasquez, but other than that... well I think there's a reason why Honduran art isn't so famous. Still, I left after a good hour's wandering and daydreaming, before finding a food hall for lunch. The place was pretty busy, so I sat next to a woman and her son, who started chatting to me- fascinted about where I was from and why on earth I was in Tegucigalpa. She told me that many women there try to bleach their skin to look more like me, and I told her that many women in the UK paint their skin to look more like her.
That night I ate a rather depressing picnic of avocado sandwiches and yogurt alone in my hotel room, but for the first time in 4 months I had a TV, and was super excited to find that Friends was on in Spanish. Outside there was a ginormous thunderstorm, the thunder shaking the building every time. I was quite happy, just sitting watching, but later the TV programme changed to a musical playlist of "songs for sad occasions", and suddenly realised that I was sitting in the rain with "All By Myself" playing in the background. To top things off, I´d asked the security guard downstairs to re-fill my water bottle and the idiot had refilled it with tap water. I realised before too long, but suffice to say was not feeling so well that night.
The next morning I set off on the Tica Bus to Leon, Nicaragua. The border was pretty hilarious- basically a warehouse with a spare room for immigration. The driver took my passport off me, which was alarming, but I figured it was ok because the locals had done the same. He disappeared for a very long time with 300 Lempiras of my money, while I was harassed by children trying to carry my bag for a dollar. I snapped at them to leave me in peace and was surprised and ashamed to find that I´d actually upset one of them a bit. I got over it quickly once I saw him eyeing up the pockets of the person in front of me.
The customs officer (or man in a straw hat who had been hired for the day) told me to open up my bag for him to check, before having a rummage through my underwear and asking me suspíciously why I had a tortilla basket in there (good question, really). Despite the fact that my passport had disappeared, I had no immigration form either, he waved me through and I found myself in Nicaragua. The driver did return our passports, although weirdly there was no new stamp in it. So I may be here illegally. But never mind.
Leon is HOT but a pleasant, colonial- looking city to be in for a few days. Yesterday I threw myself down a volcano on a dirtboard, which seems to be the cool thing to do here. I got the fastest time out of the girls, which won me a free night´s accomodation, too. Who knew I was such an extreme sportswoman.
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| For some reason my jumpsuit was about 3 times the width of everybody else´s. |
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