Tegucigalpa - The Capital City

Christina and I decided to go to Tegucigalpa for Thanksgiving weekend. Tegucigalpa is the capital city and is also the largest with 1.6 million people. The next largest city, San Pedro Sula, is only half that size while Tela has a meager 30,000 people. (For comparison, San Diego city has a population of 1.2 million people.)

On Thursday morning, we packed our bags and headed off to catch the bus. It was 200 lemps ($10.50) each since it was a direct bus. Direct means it goes there without stopping (except every 2 hours they stop at a rest area so you can use the restroom and buy food). The other buses are interurbanos and they stop whenever someone on the road flags them down... about every 2 minutes. The interurbanos are much cheaper but always packed with people and, when traveling long distances, they take way too much time. The ride was uneventful and took about 6 hours. We rode through tropical jungles and grass valleys, over streams and rivers, and finally through the pine forests. The pine tree is the national tree of Honduras. There are always many roadside vendors with fruits, vegetables, honey, and artisan wares for sell. Click on the link to watch a video of the roadside on the highway leaving Tela:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg90kB-6mQE

We arrived in Tegucigalpa at about 4:30pm and were thrust into the crammed, traffic-congested city. Ahh, I always enjoy the hustle and bustle and chaos of big cities... for a few days anyway. As with most major cities, the gap between rich and poor became glaringly obvious. Our bus let us off in one of the more impoverished neighborhoods, Comayaguela. As most of the tourist activities are located near the center of town, we took a taxi there. After the driver let us out, we walked to a few hotels to compare prices and amenities. One hotel, Nuevo Boston, had private bathrooms, 24-hour hot water, and was 185 lemps each ($10) a night. It was a ways from the center though and on a very busy street. We decided to drag out suitcases around a bit more. We finally stumbled upon the Hotel Iberia situated in a quiet alley next to the Iglesia Los Dolores, probabaly the 2nd best church in town after the cathedral. The hotel had some rooms with private bathrooms, hot water from 6-10am, and was only 110 lemps each ($5.80) a night for the private room. The rooms even had blankets and towels! The staff was very friendly also. By the end of our weekend, we both agreed this really was the best hotel in the city (in our price range anyway).Since it was Thanksgiving, we decided to splurge on dinner and went to Pizza Hut (there are no fast food or American restaurants in Tela (happily)). We split a cheese pizza and had the salad bar. It ended up being 120 lemps ($6.30) each, more than our hotel room! In Tela, we would not normally pay more than 50 lemps ($2.50) for dinner and drinks. Afterward we walked around a bit and discovered an establishment with Hondurans performing karaoke. It was just as annoying as Americans doing karaoke. The young man at the table next to us got sick all over the floor and his friends had to help him out the door. How lovely.

We woke up around 7:30am Friday morning and proceeded to take our promised hot showers. Unfortunately, for some reason, the water was freezing that morning. I walked to the post office to mail off the pen pals letters for the kiddies in San Diego. Then we got breakfast (a veggie torta for 25 lemps ($1.30)) and headed off to follow the Lonely Planet travel guide's walking tour of Teguc. Despite the map's best efforts to confuse us, we eventually found each attraction.

We began in the central park and toured the cathedral. It was stunning with high, domed ceilings, many realistic statues (I swear their eyes were real), and an exquisite, floor-to-ceiling, gold-plated altar at the front. I would loved to have taken pictures but it is deemed disrespectful.
We continued on to the National Art Gallery.

We got in for the student price (10 lemps - $.0.50, regular admission is 25 lemps - $1.30) due to our volunteer status. The 2-story museum was built around a quaint garden. The first floor housed various native artifacts (bowls, statues, and tools) and ancient religious paintings. The second floor mostly focused on modern art, some of which was very offbeat and conceptual: a clay dog being hung by a noose, a room where china plates with one symbol painted on each were organized in rows on the floor, a photo series of a pig being butchered, 10 measuring tapes placed in circle with the tapes pulled out and pointing to the ceiling, a pitch-black room with nothing but a hidden speaker producing loud thunderous noises, etc. All very eccentric.The next stop on the map was the Museum of the National Identity. They did not allow photos to be taken inside. Once again we got in for the student price of 25 lemps ($1.30) while regular admission was 50 lemps ($2.60). This was a two-story museum but the bottom floor only housed offices and empty rooms. The upstairs had a very large section dedicated to Honduran history with photos, artifacts, maps, and such. A few rooms were dedicated to modern art. My favorite were two rooms displaying amazing, black and white photographs of Tenochtitlan, Mexico taken by Francisco Mata Rosas. Click on the link to see some of them: http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/matafco/index.html

In order to reach the next destination, La Leona Park, we had to climb up very twisty, narrow streets. Just as I was thinking it was reminiscent of San Francisco, I passed a pulperia (small convenience store) whose name reflected my thought. Once again the drastic discrepancy in wealth was obvious:And there was more art to be found on a garage. This is the first town in Honduras were I have seen proper garages. The park itself was rather small but had colorful, blooming flowers and a great view of the entire city:Click on the link to see a panoramic video of the city:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_kR_X8OJqQ

Proceeding back down the hill, we stopped at a small Honduran military museum adjacent to an even smaller park. The guide let us in for free and showed us some large guns and weapons, busts of famous Hondurans, stacks and stacks of old newspapers, paintings, uniforms, and medals. The museum was okay but the guide was hilarious, and a little creepy, because he kept stopping to comment on how beautiful my toes were and that he wanted to lick them. Yuck!

We continued on over a bridge which led out of downtown and into Colonia Palmira. This is the neighborhood my friend, Kristen, lived while volunteer teaching here last year. It is a relatively nicer and more expensive area. They had a lot more restaurants with menus comparable to nice American restaurants, in both quality of food and price. They even had hummus. I tried to keep it cheap so I ordered a scramble egg, a bagel with cream cheese (they do not have this in Tela and I crave it all the time), and orange juice. Then we split an apple pie a la mode. My total still came to 140 lemps ($7.40)!

We headed back over the bridge to downtown for refreshments and a cheaper dinner. We decided upon the Tobacco Road Inn. They had many nice paintings, statues, and a very large book exchange for travelers. One guy I talked to was from Germany and had been traveling through Central and South America for 10 months now. He was returning to Germany for Christmas and then would be headed off again to continue traveling (independently wealthy apparently). He was with a girl he met in Guatemala and they had come to Honduras together for a few days. She was from Canada and was heading off to a 6-week yoga, meditation, and cleansing retreat in Costa Rica. She had come from Canada with another girl but when they were in Mexico the friend met a guy and decided to stay there until the planned retreat.

On Saturday morning I got up at 7:30am to try my luck with the shower again. I was pleasantly surprised to find hot water come gushing out. It was very nice. We walked down to the National Theatre to see if we might be able to catch a play that weekend but, alas, it was being remodeled and wouldn't reopen until January. Then we found a small cheap restaurant for breakfast. By the way, there is an overwhelming amount of donut places here, like right next to and across from each other. How many donuts can people eat? It reminds me of Starbucks in the states.

Christina wanted to do some Christmas shopping so we decided to head to Valley of the Angels. We took a 10-minute taxi to the bus station. Then a 30-minute bus ride through the pine tree-covered mountains. Valley of the Angels is a small village reminiscent of Copan with cobblestone streets and red-tile roofs. The streets are packed with artisan souvenir shops. I almost always despise shopping (unless maybe it is for books or CD's) so we decided to split up. I walked through some surrounding neighborhoods, went to an art gallery, explored an antique shop/restaurant, went in the church, and then had a refreshment on a terrace with a nice view.At 1:30pm I met up with Christina to get lunch. I had a quesadilla and a baleada for only 16 lemps ($0.85). Then we hopped on the bus headed back to Tegucigalpa.

Once in town, we hopped on another bus to go up the hill to the United Nations park, commonly referred to as El Picacho. Although Christina and I insisted on pronouncing it like the Pokemon character (PI-ca-chu) because we thought it was funny, it is actually pronounced pi-CA-cho. Anyway... we got to the park and told the guard at the entrance we wanted to go to the zoo. He said it was 15 lemps ($0.80) to get in the park and the zoo was just down the road. So we paid and walked to the zoo. As we approached, we noticed a gorgeous view of the entire city and stopped to take a photograph. Then we went to the zoo. Doesn't it look inviting? The ticket man explained that the zoo was closed. He said we could come back tomorrow. We explained that we were leaving tomorrow and begged him (in Spanish) to just let us quickly walk around the zoo. He couldn't be persuaded. We didn't understand why the man at the main gate didn't just tell us it was closed. We walked back to the main gate a bit upset and respectfully requested our money back. I debated with the guard for awhile (all in Spanish) but he wouldn't budge. I even tried showing him our volunteer ID cards. What a rat fink! This was the only reason we had come to the park and now we wasted money on buses and admission. We were both quite miffed.

Since we were in the big city, we decided to take advantage of it and go to a movie. There are no movie theatres in Tela. They were showing 3 movies, all American in English with Spanish subtitles. We decided on a scary one, Saw IV, or as it was titled here, El Juego de Miedo (the game of fear). It was only 30 lemps ($1.50) and the theatre wasn't too bad. We went back to the hotel for an early night.

On Sunday we awoke again at 7:00am to hot showers. We tried to get breakfast but apparently all stores and restaurants open late on Sundays so we had to eat at Wendy's (yuck!). Then we checked out of the hotel and took a 15-minute taxi to the bus stop, checked in our bags, and hopped on the 5-hour bus ride back to Tela. I am beginning to realize I enjoy staring at the views on the bus rides just as much as exploring the places I go.