Ok, so this is the big one. The apple of every drug lords eye, the grand fromage of bandito towns. SPS.
All I can really say by way of a headline is, what a load of old cobblers! SPS is just another big city with stuff in it. Well the bit I'm in anyway. There's no late night gunfire, no burning vehicles, no wading through rivers of blood. There's a TGI Fridays on the corner and a guy watering his garden over the road. You've got to be lost, unlucky or an idiot to get caught up in the violence as far as I can see. I'll guess at a comparison from my few hours here. You wouldn't fly into Los Angeles and catch a cab to LA South Central to take a few pics would you? No, you'd go to Beverly Hills or something because that's where there are things to see and it's safe. Same here. Simples. SPS doesn't have a Beverly Hills in fairness but it seems fine from where I am.
The journey to SPS was about as much fun as a 12 hour bus ride can be and I do kinda get what some of the fuss is about. We went through about twenty police/military checkpoints, and were boarded three times for them to check things over.
We did get attempted 'hold-ups' on six or seven occasions (I was in the front seat of the coach so had a good view of what was going on) but these were mostly halfhearted affairs by kids in the middle of the road swinging spades around their heads. I saw one machete but in each case, the driver just ignored them and they either shifted or got run over. They shifted. Frankly it was all very speculative on their part and you've got to be a special kind of lemon to stop and get turned over by them. Maybe there are some more serious gangs of highwaymen out there but I didn't see them.
Still, it's more road grief than you get in most countries, so I can see why the media pick up on it and why I've been warned by other travellers not to go to Honduras. I've seen a bunch of civvies tooled up but none of them appeared jumpy or ready to blast away at strangers, just their own form of risk mitigation in blued steel and brass cartridge.
I suppose it's as much down to being organised as anything. I invested much more time in preparing for this bit than any other. Booked ahead, arranging for taxis to and from the bus terminal with the hotel, found the nicer part of town on he net. All of this has paid off in the end.
Honduras is, or looks to be at least, poor, dirt poor. As ever, nothing wrong in that. It's pretty much what you'd expect a cliched banana republic to look like. Lots of.....bananas and pineapples and avocados being sold from shacks at the side of the road. I passed through the capital and it is as run down and slummy as anywhere I've seen. Think india but with tropical fruit. The roads here are the worst I've come across and the coach must have done twice the straight line mileage just trying to avoid potholes.
The scenery is quite beautiful if you look past the shanties and more diverse than I'd've guessed. It gets quite brown in the South, moutainous in the centre and greener and more lush the closer you get to the Caribbean.
I got so cocky last night I went for a beer and Honduran BBQ last night which was terrific.
Honduras side of the border
Ticabus
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