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Published: July 25th 2006
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Intro to Gracias
Gracias is a small, attractive mountain town 47 kilometers southeast of Santa Rosa de Copan. A colonial Spanish town, it still retains its Spanish character, with cobblestone streets and colonial churches and buildings. Gracias is quiet, slow and peaceful, and it feels like it hasn't changed in centuries. Gracias was founded in 1526 by Spanish Captain Juan de Chavez; its original name was Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God). The Audiencia de los Confines, the governing council for all of Central America, was established here on April 6, 1544; the buildings that the council occupied are still here. The town was important and grew for several years, but it was eventually eclipsed in importance by Antigua (Guatemala) and Comayagua. The area around Gracias is mountainous and beautiful. Much of it is forested. The town makes a good base for exploring Parque Nacional Celaque. While you're here, don't miss a trip to the hot springs.
Our Experience
Um... well for starters, in our opinion, Gracias is NOT an "attractive mountain town" as our guidebook claims. In fact, attractive is one of the last words I would use to describe the place. We arrived around 5PM in the afternoon/evening and made our way to a cheap hotel our guidebook recommended. Gracias, although indeed somewhat quaint and colonial, was not enjoyable. Part of our dislike must have been due to the somewhat grey weather accompanied by somewhat muddy streets. In addition to the overall dreariness of the place, Gracias' streets were completely cluttered with litter.
Joe and I haven't made mention of the litter problem in Central America, but suffice to say it is a serious issue down here. Everyone from grandparents to toddlers litters without regard, and to the unaccustomed eye it can be downright filthy sometimes. Gracias, however, takes the cake when it comes to litter. It was absolutely awful to the point of distraction. Even I snapped and admitted that the trash was too much.
Our hotel wasn't much better. The places we've been staying (thus far) have been surprisingly nice and well-kept. This hotel, on a small
coffee finca, was not. The smallest problem was we wished we had a fan... and the biggest problem was the termite infestation in the bathroom. I think I'll just leave it at that. (Sorry no pictures.)
Joe's Note: Ok. I, of course, had to look and see how bad the termites were because I could not leave well enough alone. I wish I hadn't. They were actively infesting the entire door frame of the small bathroom. When I say actively infesting, I mean there they were, crawling around in numbers that made me cringe. Just the door frame though. That was the bright spot. Lila made it through that night without seeing a single bug in there. Lila > Joe.
We walked around town which happened to be in the middle of some sort of small carnival/festival deal (complete with Ferris wheel and other small rides). After watching the fair, we had supper at a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the town. The town looked much better from above! After dinner we hiked up a small hill to a castillo overlooking the entire valley and mountains beyond. The town looked really good from up there! After that, we
walked back to our hotel and (somehow) made it though the night.
The next morning we decided to get out of town fast... our guidebook told us that to head east (the direction we wanted to go) there were four buses a 6AM, 8:30AM, 11AM and 1:30PM respectively. Initially we decided to try and catch the 6AM bus, but that didn't so much happen so we decided to try for the 8:30AM bus. As we were leaving our hotel, some other tourists informed us that they had just been at the bus station and the only bus heading east left at 5AM!!! (Omigosh! So glad we didn't get up and check out of our hotel at 5:30 for the 6AM bus!!!) Well, we decided to check things out for ourselves at the terminal and the "bus dude" informed us that another bus would leave at 11AM. And, then he made some motion towards downtown and said something I couldn't quite understand. Joe and I took that to mean go downtown and look for a bus/ride and since we had some time to kill before the 11AM bus left we decided to walk downtown. On our way, a man with
a pickup truck (loaded with stuff) asked us where we were going. I told him and he said "hop on." So we did. And, so did a cab full of passengers, half a truck bed of cargo, and 7 other people (including us) in the back. It was a tight squeeze sitting atop our packs amid a bunch of legs and it wasn't exactly comfortable bouncing up and down an unpaved road in a crammed truck bed, but we managed! Most importantly, we were able to leave Gracias and get our our way to Tegucigalpa!!!
Joe's Note: We more or less hitchhiked. It was great.
We rode in the truck bed for about 1.5 hours until we reached the small hamlet of San Juan. Thankfully, it did not rain! Unfortunately, Joe has a bruise on his back from that adventure. From San Juan, we caught an old US school bus to La Esperanza. Our school bus driver was nice enough to take us directly to the main bus station where we caught a large, greyhound-esque bus to Tegucigalpa. It was a quite a day, but considering the ground we needed to cover (and the terrain we had to conquer) it was pretty much a success.
Up Next...
Tegucigalpa (called Te-goose for short), the capital of Honduras!
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