Warthog Pinacate

Back to Honduras for a moment.

Much of Honduras is made of limestone. The roads are often carved through pure pockets of limestone. The local business take advantage of this in a unique way. They have polished the walls alongside of the road and covered the limestone in advertisments.

This sort of thing happens a lot in Central America but it usually consists of crudely painted slogans. Here the limestone allows the creation of advertisments that are works of art. They are able to paint in full color and the rock holds the colors like a canvas.

I left Antigua early Sunday morning and headed for the Mexican border.
I left on Sunday morning because I’d read that while they’ve got temporary repairs on all the damage they are closing the road for most of Monday to make more permanant repairs.

It’s slow going due to twisty mountain roads but it’s quite beautiful and peaceful. It was here that I had my first trouble with the Landcruiser. High in the
mountains, lots of pine trees and really cool looking people. The women
especially. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not sexually attractive (to me,
though it’s obvious by their numbers that they are to others). Anyhow they
are impossibly short, wide of shoulder and hip. They look as I imagine a
female hobbit would. They carry themselves with a comfortable dignity.And their dress is fantastic mix of colors. Each one a little different and as you drive through the mountains you can see the colors and patterns vary somewhat. I think they’ve got something going similar to the Scottish.

Anyhow this particular area is where much of the damage occured due to
Stan (the hurricane). Forty two bridges were damaged and twelve completely
destroyed.

The road is of the familar twisty mountain type. As you drive along the
remaining half of the road you get views of 2000 foot drops down the side
of the mountain.

Luckily I was going slowly when the Landcruiser started screaming and
became uncontrollable. I was in a curve and quickly crossed over to the
wrong side of the road. I got the car stopped in the middle of the wrong
lane, no one was around. The car wouldn’t really move and it certainly
wouldn’t go in the direction I pointed it. I got out and noticed that the
left front tire as in a sharp left turn and the right front was in a
sharp right turn!

I crawled under the car and saw that the tie-rod steering ball joint on
the left side had broken. By manually repointing the left tire I was able
to pull off into a small village.

As you can imagine I had the whole (male) population of the village
helping and advising me on what to do. I bought 20 ft of bailing wire and
made a pretty good repair. Then I limped into the nearest big city, about
an hour drive. Cool place named Quetzaltenango.

I found an excellent old colonial style hotel near the city center and got
a room. Unfortuanately it was Sunday. So I waited out the night and went
looking for parts and a mechanic the next morning. It was easy to find the
mechanic and I found a Toyota dealer. Of course they didn’t have the part
so they ordered it from Guatemala City to arrive the next day.

That’s when I started getting bored. I was able to check Bentley into the
hotel and I had safe parking. All to the good, the biggest problem was
that the car was parked aways from the hotel and required staff assistance
to get at it. This arrangement made it difficult to explore around since I
couldn’t easily drop off Bentley when I needed to go someplace that didn’t
want him around.

I was sure that one of two things would happen, either the parts wouldn’t
show up the next day or they’d be the wrong parts. The next morning I went
to the toyota dealer and the parts had arrived. But they were not the
right ones. The dealer said he ordered and got the parts his catelog said
were correct so he couldn’t do any more.

I had wanted to get Toyota parts but I gave that up and after walking all
over the place I found an after market replacement. I had wanted to
replace both the left and right ball joints under the theory that they’d
seen similar numbers of potholes; however the store only had the left one.
I was happy though because that was all I really needed to get back on the
road.

I’d been told enough stories about the horrors of driving (or being for that matter) in Guatemala City that my plan was to immediately hire a taxi to lead the way across the city and for me to follow in the Landcruiser.

It didn’t work out that way. Guatemala City was actually a lot nicer than I’d expected. It’s a lot like LA, there are millions of people living there and it sits in a large valley twenty miles wide.

There are many differences between the two cities but one noteable one is that there are no freeways. The basic problem is that you have to cross twenty miles of solid, complicated, confusing city on surface streets.

I pulled out the GPS when I first entered the city. I noted the point I wanted to exit at and started driving holding the GPS in my hand and turning where it felt good.

It worked great! I took an unrepeatable path but i think it was a pretty efficient one. Most importantly it got me to my destination of Antigua.

The primary way we’ve had trouble crossing the borders is due to incorrect paperwork. What happens is at one border someone fills out something incorrectly or neglects to fill out something.

Sometimes this is done on purpose. The problem arrises when you reach the next border crossing and they discover the ‘problem’.

I had an interesting insight into one reason this happens. At one of the many windows where you get some of the many papers stamped I came across a pretty nice guy that hadn’t a clue what he was doing. He was an ex-banker and was plenty smart enough and willing enough and honest enough to do the job.

His problem was that nobody had actually sat him down and explained the process. So his solution was that leverage the more experienced guard. Imagine a fellow with a sawed off shotgun whispering out of the corner of his mouth ‘no, no he gets the pink copy and you file the green’.

After the relatively smooth crossing into Honduras I drove about 1 km and was stopped by the police. All in all I was stopped five times before reaching Lake Yojoa.

My plan had been to drive to San Pedro Sula in the far North of Honduras and failing that to stop at Santa Barbara. These are both places the guidebooks stay are safe places to spend some time. Dueto the lost time with the police I didn’t make either before dark and ended up staying at Lake Yojoa. Lake Yojoa is a large fresh water lake in mid-Honduras. It’s a tourist place, but only frequented by Honduran tourists.

Honduras is the scariest place in Central America, for me at least. I hadn’t seen any place worth stopping at since entering the country until I reached Lake Yojoa so I jumped at it.

One of my primary requirments is a safe place to keep the car and Lake Yojoa had a nice one. The problem was it was guarded by four large German Shepards. As soon as I took Bentley for a walk all four of them came at us in a big running attack. They knocked Bentley over and he came up fighting! He was holding his own quite well but was badly outnumbered so I kicked at the lead dog and they all backed up pretty quickly. I didn’t seen any damage to any of the dogs, but they did sit outside our room all night and bark whenever Bentley made his collar jingle.

By the way, the police stops are all of the roadblock type. They don’t chase you down by car, they’re too poor to afford the gas. None of the stops were really bad, they just inspect the papers, talk about the dog, inspect the car and send us on our way. The process can take half an hour or more and you never really know where you stand.

I drove on to Copan the next morning. I took the back road through Santa Barbara. This was really interesting. Very few towns, lots of trees. The whole place looks and feels like the Pondarosa Ranch on Bonanza. Honduras is maybe the prettyist of the Central American countries. The villages around Santa Barbara are full of artisians, each village producing a unique product; woven hats, reed baskets, blankets, pottery, even cigars.

I made it to Copan without any more police stops.

Copan is worth a visit. It’s a wonderful place with impressive Mayan ruins. The city is charming. The people are friendly. The food is good, cheap and varied. There are many foreigneers in town, brought there by interest in the Mayan history.

I’d been exchanging email with Howard, the owner of the Hotel Casa de Cafe. I had hoped to stay at his hotel but it was full. The connection ultimately proved to be very valuable. I asked Howard if he knew of anyone that could accompany me to the Guatemalan border in the morning and help my through the paper work. He said he knew just the person, his neice. Boy was he right, Joyce is a Honduran law student two months away from graduation. She speaks english and, of course, spanish. Any being a student she was quite happy pick up a few extra dollars. The border crossing leaving Honduras and entering Guatemala went smoother than any of the others due to her presence.

I’ve not been looking forward to this border crossing. My paper work says I’m to leave the country at El Espino. I chose that location because that’s were Carolyn and I crossed on the way down (the devil you know) and because of Roberto. Roberto has a small Bed and Breakfast place in Honduras near El Espino.

I had been planning on calling Roberto and getting him to drive down to the border and help me cross. Roberto speaks english quite well and Carolyn and I had a memorable experince at his place on the drive down. Honduras was getting downright scary, we found ourselves driving at night through bandito ridden towns when we stumbled upon Monte Lorenzo (Roberto’s place).

Anyhow I called Monte Lornezo and got some relative of Roberto’s that doesn’t speak english. I learned that Roberto’s won’t be back for at least a week. I don’t want to wait around.

I did a little web research on El Espino and learned that a couple of months ago the Honduran banditos attacked the police at the border with machine guns. Hmm.

In the same search I learned about a small town a couple miles from the border named Somoto. The person making the posting had had a great time there and in particular spoke highly of the Hotel PanAmericano and it’s english speaking owner. So I decided to drive to Somoto and cross the border first thing in the morning.

I arrived in Somoto and found it to be a friendly place just as advertised. No tourism. I checked into the PanAmericano ($7 per night by the way, including hot water, shower, cable tv, secure parking and dog friendly).

When we first started this trip I thought I’d be able to make the border crossings and country crossings easier by teaming up with someone else doing the same thing. That might work but for there isn’t anyone else doing this kind of touring.

I had an amazing dinner in Somoto. Pollo en Planca. The place had no appeal, other than being next door to the pool hall, but the food was great. The chicken was cooked and served on a steel plank, with fried potates, vegetables, beans and rice.

Things went very well at El Espino. I was across in about the same time it took at the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. I’ve decided that one key element is altitude. The high the border the better. Everyone is more calm when the weather is cool. The process is very messed up, even more so than on the trip down. This time they stamped my car information into my passport. In addtion to having to travel back and forth to have the passport, dog passport and car passport stamped and restamped they made three copies of the page in my passport containing the stamp and then took these three copies to three more places to be stamped!

I’m sure this isn’t news but there are a lot of poor people in Central America. There is trash, dog shit and other such things not too far from the nicest places. I’m pointing this out so as to not give a completely distorted view of these countries.

Actually many of the times I’m most favorably impressed by something its in part due to the contrast provided by the underlying reality of poverty. That the people are amazingly happy, friendly and welcoming in spite of these problems is inspiring.

There are beggars around, but not many. And the people selling things in the parks are not at all pushy. Nothing like the border town effect we’ve seen in say Tijuana.

In the park in Granada there’s this guy that sells cashews. They’re great. I bought a few pounds of them and give them away when beggars show up. It works surprisingly well, even at the border crossings. Someone shows up demanding money, I give them money and they keep on asking; I give them a handfull of cashews and they politely and with feeling say thanks and don’t bother me again.

We found the food in Costa Rica to be good and inexpensive, in the rest of Central America it’s downright cheap.

In most places the selection is limited (fish at the coast, beef in the mountains, fruit and rice everywhere). Granada has more variety than most; french, italian and tourist-california are common.

I had a great meal last night at the Hotel Gran Frances; french onion soup, ceasar salad, bread and filet mignon and two glasses of wine. (Yes, I had two glass of wine.) Cost $9.

My usual meal is a rice beans combination known as gallo pinto, accompanied by filet of fresh sea bass and garlic and a couple of beers. Cost $4.

Tonight I had Vigoron in the park. The park is a peaceful place surrounded by a couple of old churches. On each of its four corners there are Vigoron stands. Vigoron is the tradional dish of Granda. Its served on a banana leaf and consists of some vegetable that tastes quite a bit like potatoes, on top of this is piled a bunch of cabbage and on top of that a pieces of fried pork. The stands all serve various juices, all of strange fruits and some very good. I’ve been drinking this sweet juice the color of the purple dye from sea slugs. Cost $1 for the Vigoron and $1 for the juice.

We got lots of great fruit plates in Costa Rica, this doesn’t seem to be an option here. At breakfast yesterday I asked for a fruit plate and the girl gave me a funny look and suggested I go to the corner fruit stand and buy some fruit. She wasn’t being a wiseass either, she thought a fruit plate a reasonable breakfast she just didn’t understand why you’d go to a restuarant to get it.

Granada is definitely worth a visit. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time sitting on the sidewalk in front of my little house. This is common behavior, all the neighbors spend time out here. And there is constant traffic passing by and stopping to talk. I’m out here with Bentley and he attracts lots of conversation.

Currently a couple of guys with a trumpet, drums and a marimba just showed up two doors down and started playing. I think there’s a birthday party for a teenager happening, and these folks are the live music.

Another two doors down some lady has drug her portable BBQ outside and is cooking something that smells really good. A bunch more people are gathering there.

There are relatively few tourists in Granada. It’s really a city that stands on its own, that is its not created by and for tourists. I’m sure tourism is important to the local economy but its rare to see any around here.

Friends meet each other on the street. Often one will place a hand on the shoulder of the other while they talk. This is true for male-male and male-female conversations.

Dogs are everywhere. It makes it somewhat hard to walk Bentley as every dog in every house has to comment.

Down the street there’s a group of mostly teenagers playing with old fashioned tops. The group is joined by a couple of parents ’showing’ the kids how to throw the tops, and indeed the adults are more skillful. Tops are common entertainment across Central America.

Lake Nicaragua is huge. It’s one of the worlds largest fresh water bodies. It even has the worlds only species of fresh water shark.

It’s got ferries that run across the lake and out to the twin volcanic island of Ometepe. Ometepe is the largest island in the world in fresh water. Ometepe is a principal tourist attraction of Nicaragua with a great number of ancient petroglyphs, waterfalls and beach activities. I had intended to take the car to Ometepe but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Next time.

I toured the Isletas of Granada yesterday. The Isletas are about 365 small islands just offshore from Granada in Lake Nicaragua. They were deposited there in a volcanic eruption around 10,000 years ago. It’s sort of fun to imagine these huge chunks of rock being spit from the volcana and splashing into the lake. The islands are around 1 to 5 acres in area and have each now become little bits of jungle.

I rode among them in a small boat. It’s one the best birding places I’ve seen. It’s very easy to get to and makes for a pleasant afternoon.

Mansions and a couple of hotels and restuarants are built on the islands. Each of the islands appears to be owned by a single owner, that is no island has multiple houses. Quite a few of the islands are owned by Americans, some Canadians, the usual mix of Europeans; however most seem to be owned by Nicaraguans. Many are for sale. You can easily see the town of Granada across the lake. It’d be quite easy to relax on your own island and take a small boat into town for dinner.