March 3, 2001
Copán, Honduras
Greetings,
Eventually there comes a time on trips such as this one when you realize that you’ve been on one bus too many. For me that epiphany usually strikes when I am staring out a bus window at yet another dusty town made almost entirely of concrete block and corrugated tin, and I can’t remember why I wanted to come here in the first place, and I know there are a lot more bus rides between where I am and where I want to be. And usually when this happens I am in Honduras.
The buses are no worse in Honduras than other places; in fact they are usually half empty by Guatemalan standards. But most of the places in Honduras just don’t seem worth the trouble it takes to get there. I guess I have a bad memory, but for some reason I don’t remember that until I am already in Honduras.
We entered Honduras through the back door, across the rugged and beautiful mountains in the northeastern part of El Salvador. I’m not sure the place where we crossed even has a name. The closest town on the Honduran side was Marcala, about an hour and a half further on.
We had planned to explore the inland mountains of Honduras, but we passed quickly through several forgettable towns, spent one night in Honduras’ second largest city, San Pedro Sula (memorable for all the wrong reasons) and headed for the coastal town of Tela. We spent several days there, mostly because we couldn’t force ourselves to get back on a bus.
Tela is a relatively decent town. It was formerly the headquarters of the United Fruit Company, during the days when the Central American countries were called banana republics. (If any country still deserves that epithet, and all it implies, it is Honduras).
Today Tela feels like a cross between an old western town and a decaying Caribbean port. The United Fruit Company’s old housing compound is still the nicest part of town and functions as the Tela Mar Hotel.
From Tela we took a six-hour bus trip to Trujillo. We knew next to nothing about Trujillo, but it looked on the map like it might be an interesting spot.
Trujillo is pretty much the end of the road as far as the Caribbean Coast of Honduras goes. Beyond it, to the east, lies a vast roadless area call the Mosquitia. Next to the Darian Gap, between Panama and Colombia, the Mosquitia is the wildest most isolated area in Central America. Very few travelers make it there.
Trujillo is a different story. Columbus landed near what is now Trujillo on his fourth, and last trip to the New World in 1502. (Rumor has it that when he left his last words to the locals were “Don’t do anything until I get back!” —which would explain a lot.) The town was founded in 1525 and became the first Spanish capital of Honduras. The Spanish lost it to British pirates a few times, and the town was completely abandoned more than once.
American adventurer and wanna-be king William Walker made his last stand in Trujillo in 1860. Walker was a former lawyer and journalist from Tennessee. In 1853 he and a small band of followers tried to take Baja California from the Spanish, and failed. In 1855 he and his men attacked and gained control of Grenada, Nicaragua. Walker declared himself president of Nicaragua, made English the official language and legalized slavery.
Not content with being president of just Nicaragua, he tried to conquer the other Central American countries, but failed. He was arrested and sent back to the U.S. I’m not sure anyone took him seriously, but he certainly was an annoyance.
In 1860 he tried again, this time attacking the Spanish at Trujillo. Once again he failed, but managed to surrender himself to British troops. They promptly turned the pesky American over to the Spanish who executed him by firing squad. His simple gravestone in Trujillo’s old cemetery reads rather tersely, “William Walker, shot, 12 September 1860.”
The cemetery is overgrown and has been pretty well vandalized, but there are other gravestones which hint at interesting stories that probably no one remembers. There is a 20-year-old French woman who died in 1888, a 24-year-old man from Montenegro, which is a tiny country south of Serbia, who died in 1918; and a Palestinian who was buried in 1922, probably a sailor from the markings on the gravestone. It would be interesting to know what brought them to Trujillo and how they died so far from home.
Trujillo has deteriorated to become a rather shabby outpost known more for its robberies than its history or its rather nice beaches (where most of the robberies take place). It is the first place we’ve been to in Central America where we didn’t feel safe. We were advised not to go out at night, so we didn’t. But a couple staying the same place as us were robbed at knifepoint on the beach in the middle of the day. We were never threatened, but we heard enough stories to make us nervous.
One gets the feeling that sometime a few decades back, or more, the tide turned in Trujillo. Or maybe the tide has always been against the optimists who saw the natural beauty and thought it had potential. There is evidence of more than one entrepreneur for whom things didn’t work out right. A private school was built but never used because the teachers and the school sponsor couldn’t agree on a salary. There is a large luxury hotel which never has enough guests to justify its existence. It is painted a tropical green and is known locally as “The Big Green Money-laundering Machine.”
Between the endemic corruption, the characteristics of the Honduran people and perhaps even the steamy tropical climate, there’s not much chance of anything succeeding. (Though, as one frustrated American ex-patriate living in Trujillo said, “It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.”)
Our next destination was the island of Utila, one of the Bay Islands which lie a few miles off the coast of Honduras. We took the bus back along the coast and spent the night in the port city of La Ceiba, where we were to catch a boat out to the island.
Ceiba is not too bad, as far as Central American cities go. It has some modern conveniences to offset the typical inconveniences. But in recent years a cocaine mafia has gained strength, and prostitutes prowl the streets.
The traveller’s hostel where we stayed is run by a 75-year-old Dutchman who came to Honduras as a sailor on a banana boat 40 years ago. He had already traveled all over the world by then. He married a Honduran woman, traveled with her a bit more, then settled down. He has seen a lot of changes.
He confirmed what we had heard about corruption in the country, “100% top to bottom” as he put it. It seems to be a mentality that pervades the culture. He said some German publication did a study and found that Honduras was the third most corrupt country in the world, after Cameroon and Paraguay. Afterwards an article was published in Honduras suggesting that they shouldn’t be content with just the bronze medal.
Consider also that Honduras is the second poorest country in Latin America, after Haiti. The way things are going it is likely to stay that way, in spite of all the international aid that flows in. Most of the money goes into somebody’s pockets.
The island life of Utila was a welcome change. Utila doesn’t feel like part of Honduras, and most of the islanders don’t really consider themselves Hondurans. There are a few Caribbean Blacks, and some Hispanics, who are relatively recent arrivals. But most islanders are white, descendants of English migrants who came from the Cayman Islands in the 1800s, and of at least a few domesticated British pirates who settled on the Bay Islands even earlier.
The Spanish gained control of the islands in 1861 through a treaty with Great Britain (with some arm twisting by the U.S.) even though the islanders themselves preferred to be affiliated with the English, who controlled Belize at the time.
The islanders still consider themselves apart from the Hispanic mainland and are more likely to have connections to the U.S. than to mainland Honduras, particularly to the gulf coast of Louisiana where a lot of the men have worked on oil rigs or cargo boats.
They can speak pretty straight Spanish and English when they need to, but amongst themselves they speak a patois that is unintelligible to outsiders. I was told it was mostly English, but except for a word here and there you wouldn’t know it. A few years ago on the neighboring island of Roatan I was amused to see a sign on the door of a communal outhouse which read “Knock me or shout,” which I took to mean, don’t just barge in.
In recent years Utila has become well known for its scuba diving schools. Evidently it is the cheapest place in the world to get certified. We didn’t go diving, but rented some snorkelling gear. There are shallow coral reefs around the island and with all the brightly colored fish it is like being in a tropical aquarium.
I was last on Utila about six years ago, and if things change as much in the next few years as they have in the last six Utila will soon no longer be the laid back island paradise it has been. Locals are selling out to newcomers willing to pay astounding prices and new houses are being built all over. At least two U.S.-based companies are developing resort communities on previously uninhabited parts of the island. Some lots are selling for more than $100,000.
It may someday become yet another Caribbean resort island overrun with wealthy vacationers and retirees. On the other hand the Honduran government may someday remember that it owns the islands and make all those investors wish they had never heard of Honduras. So far Utila is still a bargain with plenty of $5 a night rooms.
We left the island with some reluctance after about a week and returned to the mainland, dreading the bus rides once again. Our last stop in Honduras was Copán, the site of some Mayan ruins. Copan was occupied between about 400-800 A.D. Other than that I won’t get into the history of the place. I’m not very interested in the old Mayas. Besides I’ve included too many history lessons already.
There is a nice little town about a mile from the ruins which caters to visitors. In recent years, as Central America has become tamer, more affluent tourists have come to Copán, and other places, and prices have risen accordingly. Services aren’t necessarily any better and often tourists are charged double or more what locals pay. I think the Hondurans see it as another form of foreign aid.
Even though Honduras doesn’t officially use U.S. dollars (yet), in areas that attract tourists prices are often given in dollars, and are accepted for purchases. For budget travellers like ourselves that’s a bad sign. Another bad sign is when we see wrinkled white folks in tour buses showing up the same places we go. Time to move on.