Journal; Western Honduras, San Manuel, La Campa, Caiquin, Guanajulco, Gracias and Celaque mountain.
Tuesday 27th September
There were several factors leading to me almost missing the five am bus. I woke up an hour early due to alarm setting problems, I didn’t sleep well due to the coffee right before bed, and I had weird dreams where I thought I was awake. I’ve never had that before and it’s very odd.
The eleven year old boy woke me up just in time and I ran round corner under the orange sky through a huge plume of exhaust smoke to jump on the bus. Damn I forgot to leave them a tip.
I had heard the road to San Manuel was terrible, but it seemed fine to me – until we drove through a river. Maybe in dry season it is more like a ford, but on this day it was rushing and at least two foot deep.
Arriving in San Manuel a little girl in dirty pink shorts grabbed me. She actually came right up and wrapped her arms around my middle. I wasn’t fool enough to think this was sweet, but employed her as my guide for the next twenty minutes. There is definitely a tourist dilemma going on here. I clearly have more money in my backpack than these people see in six months, but if I just hand it out it will surely encourage begging from tourists on future occasions. Not only would these people be throwing away their dignity if they started begging, but it would ruin the experience for future tourists. Instead I try to pay for services – guides being the obvious one, but also tipping in comedors and hospedajes (except I was too rushed this morning), and just generally trying to buy as much as possible. Like setting off for a six hour hike yesterday carrying a litre of pineapple wine. That was a very practical purchase.
So, after the girl has shown me the church (which is impressive but looking a bit black round the edges), and the flower garden, I give her a tip and tell her to go away. She doesn’t. I know the tip should have gone to her mother when I see what she does with it; straight to the shop for crisps and bubble gum.
As she is still hanging on to me in the comedor, I share my breakfast with her, but then sneak away to get down to the river.
I am so tired I desperately want a meadow next to a gently flowing river where I can sleep. But nothing goes to plan. There is no meadow. From my first doze on a rock I was woken by a load of cows about three feet away from me – I nearly screamed I got such a shock. The man herding the cows didn’t quite know what to make of me.
At my next stop, a grassier area, I was just arranging a space to lie when I noticed my left foot was alive with ants. Luckily no one was around when I reacted by ripping off my shoes socks and trousers to shake them out. I hopped around madly for a minute because the little bastards were biting, changed my trousers and shook everything before moving to a better spot. Due to lack of sleep and an extremely low level of mental functioning I manage to move to a different spot, step on a second ants nest and repeat the process - without going so far as needing to change my trousers again.
The day is not going as planned. To get away from the ants I spend the next two hours sitting on a rock in the middle of the river. Not so comfortable, but warm, and very practical for washing my clothes and …..my hair! Yes, today I washed my hair in a river. I never believed I would do that, but having just purchased shampoo and with all the insect action it feels great to be clean. Well as clean as the river water anyway. As far as using soap goes…I know it is wrong, but all the locals do it too.
A few locals come and visit me on my rock. Sebastian is working down the road digging out sand to sell. That is what I call scraping out a living – a bag of sand can’t cost very much in these parts. He also has family in the states, one brother in Virginia, another in LA. They actually find me a lot more normal now I am washing in the river rather than hiking around with no purpose other than looking at the hills.
During and after lunch I am scouting around for a ride to La Campa, the next village, where I can find accommodation. The potential lifts are the Unicef workers, a guy who has a meeting with a women’s cooperative, and the “bimbo” delivery boys. (Bimbo is a type of bread, they also do a range of cake products which are available anywhere). So I am just waiting to see who finishes first.
The little girl (no, I can’t remember her name, I was too tired) is back and asking for more money. She followed me everywhere, yes, even to the bathroom. It even got to the point where I threatened to hit her over the head with a bottle. It was a plastic bottle, and she was refusing to apologise for “accidentally” smacking me round the head with it. I really started to wonder where the parents were when her brother hurled a palm sized rock from twenty metres and nearly hit her.
At three pm a lift with the Honduran equivalents of Wayne and Waynetta was offered. The truck was a mess with squeakier brakes than my car, and the accelerator pedal was lying on the floor. The man was wearing a vest, not actually string, but he had the stubble and the large belly to go with it. During the journey Waynetta took her dentures out, started picking her ear with a match, and was regularly coughing up phlegm and spitting it out the window. Nice.
I paid them the same price as the bus – more than they asked for, and was pleased to find that the village of La Campa was the first village in two days that didn’t smell of shit. Well the comedor down the bottom of town really stank, but apart from that it was roses.
There is a beautifully kept lawn facing the church and a nearby canyon makes for an impressive backdrop. When I asked around in the shops for somewhere to stay I ended up in Carmen's house, and she is loaded compared to anyone I’ve met recently. The house has tiled floors, furniture, and an indoor bathroom with dodgy wires taped to the shower head indicating hot water. Excellent.
Wednesday 28th September
After a fantastic warm and comfortable night I am toying with the idea of trying for a hot shower, but (as always seems to happen when there is a promise of hot water), there is no water at all. In fact the toilet has not been flushed for several hours and the inside bathroom is rank. These people are trying to be too posh for the facilities around them, if they had stuck with a bathroom outside they would be able to flush the toilet.
After a morning exploring the village I decide I can bear another day or two away from civilisation and set off on a very random mission.
Lempira is a famous Indian who fought off the Spanish successfully for a while before being killed and his people utterly conquered. The hill on which he had a fortress is a long hike from a nearby village called Caiquin. Apparently it is possible to hike from Caiquin, past the fort, to a place called Erandique. I have developed some kind of obsession with seeing this fortress and decide to go to Caiquin and find a guide to take me there.
The bus left at one pm, and after three attempts at getting up a muddy hill it made it to Caiquin. The accommodation is a big step down. I am offered a musty bed in someone's garage, when I ask for covers she just takes a manky blanket off the next bed and gives it to me. Hmmm.
Hanging out in the kitchen waiting for food I watch the women making tortillas from scratch. An important life skill I am sure. They grind up the cooked maize to make flour, then mash it up in a bowl and roll it out into tortillas with a stone rolling pin. I have seen similar rolling implements in the Olmec museum in Veracruz, which means people have used this same technology for about two thousand years. Well, if it works, stick with it I guess.
I eat with the bus boys, who also live in this house, and notice that only I, the guest, am offered a fork. The locals use tortillas as cutlery and still manage to scoop up all the beans. Impressive.
Heading back down the muddy track to the church (always the centre of town) I am looking for a guide. Most people have no idea what I am talking about, and then I find Doris who is extremely helpful and takes me to her Uncle, Vicente. There is some debate about which hill exactly I am looking for and everyone tells me that getting to Erandique is impossible (Oooof, very very far). In the end he offers to take me on a day hike to a hill called “Caraquin” which, according to the family, is the same as “Cerquin”, it’s just that different books use different names. So my hike for tomorrow is arranged, I will be here at 7 am.
Before heading back to my musty room Doris, her daughter Daniella, and several other children take me on a twenty minute walk up to Santa Elena hill. The little ones are brilliant, very happy and interested to talk to me. After the walk eating at the comedor and playing with a skipping rope on the lawn is an absolute pleasure. All the kids from the village seem to be there, and they are all having fun. Once they learn my name they won’t leave me alone, but in a nice way. After dark the family settle in the dining room to watch appalling Mexican telenovelas, and I start thinking about heading back to my shed. There seem to be distinct stages in the use of electricity in the villages. When it is new they don’t use it, when they discover tv it changes their routine and they stay up after dark watching shite, and probably don’t talk to each other as much. In the villages that have had electricity much longer, the youth have discovered the internet and can be found chatting online, (better then tv?). In the western world there was a huge gap between discovering television and the internet, here in Honduras they get everything at once I can’t help thinking there is a thesis in there somewhere about how the technology affects their lives.
When I get back to my bed the situation has worsened. There is some kind of religious meeting going on in the lounge and with no electricity I am forced to spend the next forty minutes huddled in my musty bed next to a candle listening through the wall to a man shout enthusiastically about god. He goes on and on, the rantings getting louder and louder. He is trying to get his congregation to shout too, but in the dark and the cold, on a normal evening, can the seven people he is raving at really see it in them to rejoice in the wonder of the world and give thanks for the maize and their broken shoes? It doesn’t sound like it. After he has said he is going to finish three times, he finally does and I can unclench my teeth. On my way back from the dark outside toilet I bump into some people leaving and am horrified to see some young children, maybe ten years old, coming out - poor bastards having to sit through that instead of having normal fun interactions with the other children at Doris’.
Thursday 29th September
After breakfast with Doris, who is my new best friend, I make it over to Vicente’s for the big hike. He has a horse. I told him I didn’t want to go on horseback, and I end up walking behind his bestia most of the way there - apart from the few uncomfortable sections where I feel so much pressure I get on the animal myself. I am too skinny for riding; my bony arse bumps around on the saddle in a most uncomfortable manner.
After two and a half hours we arrive in Guanajulco, and I can see the hill. Apparently a football team went up there recently for a photo shoot.
When we arrive in the village Vicente introduces me to almost all the members of his family that are not in the States. I get fed three times, and offered coffee twice. Vicente seems to think I want to stay the night, and there is a slightly awkward moment when I have to turn down the hospitality and explain that I really want to get back today (I need a bit of civilisation, and some different food). I thought we arranged that yesterday, but in the future I will double check these things.
After the first round of food, before I have put my foot down about getting back to Doris’ today, there is some confusion about why I wanted to come all this way to see a hill. Don’t I want to climb the hill? Or at least go into the foothills? They don’t quite believe me when I tell them I just wanted to see it, and that now I’d like to go home again please. To keep my guide happy I go with the men for a hike down to the river, and to a spot where we can get a better view of the hill – it does indeed seem a bit pointless, we get to the maize field and I’m like “yup, there it is, again”.
Plus with this extra walk I am force to cross a river on a thin log. On the way back the three macho guys who have been spitting a lot, and trying to hit birds with their catapults, see me fall off the log and just manage to save myself by grabbing some rocks with my hands. I ended up crawling across the river. Very elegant.
After seeing the famous hill, I chat to various family members about it and discover that it is unquestionably the wrong hill. Cerquin is a very different hill, and is a very long way from here. Oh.
When I have been taken to the house of every brother, sister, and parent, we finally leave. There are only two and a half hours of daylight and the way back is uphill. After climbing the steep first half an hour I am having my red in the face overheating problem. I can tell it’s bad from the scared look on the face of my guide. After about forty minutes of flat I am nearly back to a normal colour. Much as I like Vicente I am seriously running out of conversation topics by now. I can’t ask about his family any more because I have met them all. I don’t understand what he actually does for money so I can’t ask about that again, and I just don’t know anything about farming. I try to get ideas by watching a conversation with another local, but they talk about what a great looking bull the guy is leading. I wouldn’t have known if it was a good one or not.
We make quite a pace, and even after a short heavy rainstorm we do it in two hours. Which leaves me back in Caiquin after sunset with no real hope of getting a lift back to the nearest town, Gracias. I cannot stand another night with the religious fanatics, and Doris very kindly offers me her bed, she will sleep with her daughter. I try and keep smiling, but wearing wet clothes I am getting chilli, and a cold shower is not a great prospect.
I think they pick up on my desperation when by some miracle (!) a truck is heading out of town. I go haring across the church garden, straight through the enormous puddle, and flag down the vehicle with shouting and frantic waving. Yes they are going to Gracias, and yes they will wait a couple of minutes.
I say farewell to my new friends from the village, and apart from the call of a hot shower, am genuinely sad to leave. I want to give the children enormous hugs, but there isn’t really time for all that. Before I know it I have my bag on my lap and am sitting on the back of a pick up, on a pile of logs with three adolescent boys. The ride wasn’t so bad at the beginning - there was something soft to sit on, and I was laughing and joking away at the prospect of a proper hotel. I was still finding the situation highly amusing through the first rainstorm, during which we cowered together under a giant black bin bag. It was the perfect end to my adventure, bouncing along dirt roads, through the occasional river, in the pitch black and trying not to get drenched. By the third rainstorm it was a slightly different story, the cold was setting in and the hormonal kid next to me had decided to use the huddling as an excuse to touch my leg. It was quite sweet in a way.
I missed my chance to get out in the centre of town because I was curled up buried under plastic, and ended up at the rather posh house of the family. It was still chucking down, so in true Honduran hospitality style they invited me in, but I was soaking wet and muddy so I was on a plastic chair in the corner shivering, while they sat on plush sofas watching cable on a flat screen tv. The coffee helped me warm up, but I needed to get out of my wet clothes. One final random situation before I left was when I asked to use the toilet. As usual the indoor bathroom didn’t function properly and smelt very odd, but unusually, in a slightly over familiar gesture, I was lead into the bathroom to use the toilet whilst one of the adolescents was in the shower. They were behind the curtain and there I was doing my business. When you are invited into someone’s house you really are treated like one of the family!
When the rain dropped off a bit I ventured out to get a taxi to the hotel and in a classic traveller situation I turned up at reception soaked to the bone, treading mud everywhere asking please for a bed and a hot shower.
I don’t know whether I have ever had a better shower. I had spent the last three hours soaking wet waiting for that moment.
Friday 30th September
In my small hiking bag from the last five days there is nothing clean to wear. The best I can manage is a one day old t-shirt and my tracksuit bottoms rolled up to hide the mud. Thankfully my shoes have dried out, but they STINK.
At a pleasant breakfast in the hotel (no tortillas!) I met some “local” gringos – a couple of teachers from the bi-lingual private school, and a Dutch man who is planning to buy land and move to the area. The school is owned by a Dutch lady, and I find myself hoping that these people are doing good for Honduras as well as making their own profits (and by good I don’t mean moving here to take a twenty year old Honduran wife). Having English conversation is great!
On the quick trip to Santa Rosa to collect the rest of my stuff I am shocked by the busyness of the bus. Especially since on this ride I am the one who smells really bad. When I get back to Gracias there is rain, rain, dinner, more rain, and bed.
Saturday 1st October
Now this is what I call a rest day. I put in a bit of time for the guide book by giving it to the local Dutchwoman and asking her to write in corrections (cheat!) and watched nearly two movies. Monster-in-law with JLo was spectacularly bad, whilst Tomb Raider 2 was above expectations, until all of the channels got cut off by more rain. I finished my tv marathon a little later with World Series Poker on ESPN. They all wear sunglasses and I haven’t got a clue what is going on.
Eventually I brave the rain to go and meet some British folk for dinner. I’m not best pleased when the grumpy woman at my new hotel catches me on the way out. She tells me off for arriving back at 11pm last night, and says I am lucky the door was open because they normally close it at ten. Bloody village life, it’s all about getting up early. I ask her if there’s a key or a doorbell to get in later (it is Saturday after all) but she says neither of these things exist. Hmph. So my chemical filled Chinese dinner (the kind of sauce that looks like it would glow in the dark) is cut short and I am back with the tv (as loud and disturbingly as possible) by ten.
Sunday 2nd October
I spent three and a half hours on the computer, mostly working on guide book stuff. Then when I started to go cross-eyed I headed for the public swimming pool. It would have been a great afternoon hang out if I had any friends! As it was I spoke to some teenage boys in very basic English, while they played in a boat on a very small lake. If I had been here with someone silly enough I would have been on that waterslide and in that lake.
Then, what do you know, that very evening I find some Canadian lads who are also going to Celaque mountain. The day culminates in a shack on a hillside in the rain. The lads teach me some poker by candlelight (I’m not quite world series standard yet) and share their rum.
Monday 3rd October
5am: The alarm goes off and everyone promptly goes back to sleep.
6am: I open the window to let in light and encourage movement.
7am: We have just finished breakfast in a shed, which is the house of an old Honduran couple. One of our party has been attacked by a large turkey, and we are buying firewood.
8am: We are waiting for Jamie to come out of the shitter.
8 15am: We finally leave. Man that’s some faffing.
The 3 lads were a bit gung ho, but I was carrying less so it balanced out. We went to look at a waterfall and then followed a sketchy path down to the river, I fell over like 3 times.. it was steep. After the path completely disappeared we gave up and climbed back where we came from. It was when we got to the top for lunch that Ben realised his rucksack was hanging open and his passport had fallen out somewhere below. doh. I left the boys to search and set up camp, and headed back into town.
The worst thing about this walk in the woods was the spiders webs across the path that you were constantly walking into. The best thing was the random fungus, the jigsaw shaped bark and the weird red things that looked like flowers at the top, but had no green on them anywhere, not even the stem.
When I was nearly back from the very cloudy mountain I got attacked by the turkey. I never realised they were viscous, but I was walking past thinking how enormous and ugly it was and it started sqawking and then flew/jumped at my leg with its claws out. It had a blue head with pink bits and it jumped at me about 5 times before eventually letting me pass. It wasn`t too scary though, once I had sussed its moves I could easily have kicked it... but I don`t think the poor old Honduran couple who owned it would have been best pleased if I damaged their prize possession.
I missed the short cut because I was too busy trying to find the fluffy cover bit for my headphone and took the long route home. Is it terribly wrong to be walking around a national park listening to hip hop? I say no. hooray for the iPod.
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