Honduras

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Tuesday 30/10/12 – Last night the hundreds of dogs that we see on the roadsides must have come to town to growl, bark, fight and chase each other all night long. Not to be outdone by the howling dogs running riot in the streets, the many roosters spent the night joining in the chorus by wailing at the full moon. The dogs here are amazing, but it is a hard place to visit if you are an animal lover. You can barely ride for 5 minutes in Central America without seeing at least one dog that is usually in pretty bad shape. All are really skinny, all have scars, many are limping with broken or past-broken legs, and many have crooked tails or missing an eye or an ear. The only dogs that aren’t obviously mentally or physically scared are the endless amounts of young puppies sitting on the road sides. Despite their often horrific appearance I find them totally inspiring – here are some animals that not only endure incredible hardships and unenviable circumstances, but thrive in their harsh situation. If a dog gets hit by a car and breaks his leg and a few ribs, he still endures by determination and living off the scraps on the street or the rubbish dump. Most are ugly and many are cruel bastards, but their determination to live is truly stirring. With these thoughts I rode out of Copan with a growing entourage of mangy beasts in tow, barking and chasing us out of town. Once we cleared the last building the dogs’ job was done and they turned around totally pleased with themselves and limped back into town. It’s the simple pleasures in life that are the most rewarding – like joining a posse and chasing some gringos on motorbikes out of town.



The Honduran police and military have a terrible reputation for harassing tourists and forcing bribes out of travellers. Today we passed many checkpoints but only got pulled over three times. The Spanish they speak here is very fast and hard to understand, so after a while the police and military got tired of hassling us and, as our papers and gear are perfectly in order, they let us continue. Riding through the remote mountains of Honduras, it’s easy to imagine the hills crawling with military and guerillas. The steep mountain peaks and deep fertile valleys seem like the perfect places to hide out and launch raids or kidnappings on the remote road that winds through the region. It is thoughts like these that manage to consume vast amounts of time whilst riding along alone in your helmet with only thoughts for company. We headed northeast to the large coastal city of La Ceiba. The drivers here are the most chaotic that we have encountered on our trip so far. They are far from bad drivers, but they lean on the horn at every intersection to announce their approach as many drivers seem to ignore any and all road rules. A standard two lane road often varies between four lanes of insane traffic, and one lane of crawling traffic blocked by double parked cars. The city consists of thousands of mini fortresses, all houses have tall thick brick fences topped with broken glass, and huge metal gates crowned with barbed wire. All the door and windows have bars and many of the shops are behind bars where you aren’t allowed in but point at what you want from the street. Prior to arriving we had done some research and so we confidently pulled up to the hotel with the most secure parking lot in town. This was important as we would be leaving the bikes here for about 5 days whilst we chilled on the nearby Bay Islands. The title of ‘the most secure parking lot in town’ was only justified by the lack of any other parking lots in town. We checked in for the night and after much hustling the hotel owner came around to see us. We explained our situation and he kindly let us park and chain the bikes at his house where they were out of sight from the street.





Wednesday 31/10/12 – We triple checked the security of the bikes this morning. We arranged the locks and chains around various parts of bikes, fences, window bars and anything that won’t move. We selected a small amount of clothes and gear to take with us, and then jumped into a taxi to the ferry terminal. The ferry is nick named the ‘vomit-comet’ and took one and a half hours to reach the island of Utila. Kenz barely managed to keep her breakfast down – she was green and swaying by the time we reached Utila. After being greeted by a shirtless local drug addict screaming ‘Welcome to Hell’, we jumped in a tuk-tuk and found a nice beach front hostel complete with hammocks, beach volley ball, private jetty and dive boat.



About 2 hours later we were heading out for 2 afternoon dives where there were plenty of eels, rays and colourful fish on the reef. There was good mix of soft corals, sponges and sea fans. We got back late in the afternoon and many people were organising their Halloween costumes. The place ended up being packed with backpackers, dressed in the most outrageous and raunchy costumes, who partied well into the next morning. At one point Kenz and I were lying in a hammock on the end of the jetty when a shooting star fell and looked like it landed in the bay, I was 100% convinced it landed not far from the jetty but Kenz reckons she never saw it.





Thursday 1/11/12 – We spent the morning overhearing conversations about how epic last night was, or how amazing someone was, or how they can’t believe the other person is still alive after last night. Typical next morning conversation… We spent an uneventful day relaxing and then went for a night dive in the evening. It was Kenz’s first time diving at night and we got lucky seeing two octopi, plenty of bright coloured fish, some crabs, jelly fish and phosphorous plankton.





Friday 2/11/12 – Wednesday 7/11/12 –

The next 5 mornings were spent doing dive courses and the afternoons were spent relaxing around the island. For the first 2 days, Kenz and I did an APNEA Total Freediving course which teaches you how to dive only using a single breath on the surface. It was something I had always wanted to learn, and thankfully I picked it up pretty quickly. APNEA freediving is mostly about learning to control your mind and body to efficiently dive without SCUBA equipment. Unfortunately Kenz had a cold and her sinuses weren’t really interested in allowing her to dive. After the 2 days we were both much more comfortable with the idea of diving using only a mask and fins. I continued onto the advanced course over the next 3 days and managed to get some great results: I did an in-water breath-hold of over 4 minutes, and managed to dive down to 35 metres (the bottom of the bay) from a single surface breath. It’s an interesting feeling reaching 35 metres and running out of breath on the bottom of the bay, your diaphragm starts having contractions – it takes a great deal of will power and determination to stay relaxed and not panic knowing it’s at least another 30 seconds before you’ll reach the surface! I really enjoyed the mental side of freediving, learning to listen to your body and controlling how you respond to the signals your body is sending your brain.



Whilst I was freediving, Kenz decided to do her Advanced Open Water SCUBA certification. She did 6 dives over the 3 days including a deep wreck dive on a large sunken vessel called the Halliburton. Her highlights included the wreck dive where she got to observe the many eels living in the nooks and crannies of the wreck, and a pair of large spotted eagle rays that cruised past her.



There was plenty of other excitement on the island aside from the diving. The local soccer team won their game, and to celebrate they slaughtered a pig on the main road and had a huge barbeque which included playing bad music really loud, letting off fireworks, and heaping burnable (plastic) items on the road and setting them on fire. Perhaps the most excitement came when some local pirates boarded some guy’s boat and stole it. They were going to just shoot the guy and throw him over the side, but he pleaded that he had a sick wife to take care of, so they just tied him up and left him on some remote beach. Luckily a kid saw the pirates take the boat and alerted the military that were already on the island due to a political rally that was taking place. They jumped on a boat and chased the pirates down.





Thursday 8/11/12 – With our dive course completed there was no reason to stay on Utila. Basically the only people that visit the island are either divers, alcoholics or drug addicts – there really is nothing else to do on the island! We got up before the sun rose and road back to La Ceiba on the vomit-comet. It seemed too good to be true when we caught the ferry, didn’t get sea-sick, shared a cab into the city, and found the bikes exactly as we left them. Then the rains came! We wheeled the bikes undercover, packed them up and prepared to leave. Two hours later we had changed the spark plugs, found a (horn) wire that was shorting out, and jump-started my bike after many attempts without spark caused the battery to drain. We then rode 280km in the pissing rain, sometimes so thick it was difficult to see the road. It was a fairly miserable ride, the only excitement was a detour we had to take as a large bridge over a river had collapsed and partly washed away. With the sun rapidly setting above the storm clouds, we pulled into the first hotel we came to in a town called Siguatepeque. It was far more expensive than we liked, but it included free breakfast and 2 security guys with pistols and shotguns who would watch over the bikes





Friday 9/11/12 – My alarm roared to life before the sun rose – just as we had planned. After hitting the snooze button we eventually stumbled downstairs and stuffed ourselves with pancakes and orange juice. The good news was the skies were blue, but our bike gear was still dripping wet. The gear started to smell bad back in California, really bad in Mexico, and like death since Belize. Putting our boots on this morning was like slipping them into a cold wet corpse.



We headed south aiming to make the Nicaraguan border by lunch. It was a fairly uneventful ride despite some dodgy roadworks and a crazy dog that unsuccessfully tried to get squashed by Kenz’s bike. We rode through the Honduran capital city called Tegucigalpa and then got lost in a small but confusing border town. We rode up to a typical Central American border, with the ever present 100-150 trucks lining the road, dirt and rubbish everywhere, and cops/military eyeing everyone carefully. We got swarmed by touts as soon as we rode up; we picked the oldest and most trust-worthy of the bunch who led us around to the many windows and booths that we were required to visit, and earned $5 for his trouble. I learnt an important lesson today – don’t stand downwind of the quarantine officer when he sprays down your bike. I got an eyeful of the chemicals; the only positive was they smelt like lavender. I tried to ignore the huge black sign on the chemical barrel that said ‘EL VENENO’.



Entering Nicaragua was pretty much the same, just without the eyeful of venom. A local truck driver who was also crossing the border noticed the ‘Hooters’ pen we were using to fill out the paperwork. We had pinched it months ago from the Hooters hotel in Las Vegas. With a toothy grin he pointed and said “Me gusta!”, we gave it to him and it immediately went behind his ear where everyone could see it (I think his chest also puffed out a few extra centimetres too). He then got our paperwork over to customs and helped us get through the customs check and vehicle inspection seamlessly. All because he liked our pen.



We left the border by weaving around a huge traffic jam of 18 wheelers, all of who were going nowhere fast. There is little to distinguish Honduras from Nicaragua around the border, it has the same beautiful hills and mountains but perhaps the roads improved slightly. We rode south for an hour to the city of Esteli and found a reputable looking hotel with a drive in courtyard.

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