HONDURAS 12/28/2010: Americans in Honduras – Dia 9

Los Dos Americanos en Honduras en Dia Nueve
De San Pedro Sula a Gracias

We left San Pedro Sula for Gracias this morning and traversed very rural roads and many small towns for about 4.5 hours, stopping for lunch in Santa Rosa de Copan.

And now we are in Gracias—a small town with a population of about 12,000 in the”urban center.” The town is in the mountains at the base of 25,000 with about half of these people living in the “urban center.” It’s known as the Lempira District.. and at the peak of Montana Celaque it’s about 2,800 feet. It was a two lane road all the way, although there are no lines at all to distinguish these lanes. Frankly, it really doesn’t matter whether there are demarcated lanes or not, since no one really adheres to them.. and over these four hours the most important thing was staying clear of the many many deep potholes, so you’re always swerving into the other lane to avoid the potholes.

I decided to “stroll” the town while Mike chose to relax after the drive (he was the primary driver). Everyone is really friendly; no one speaks any English (not even at the hotel); sidewalks are about two feet off the ground and very narrow, so walking is pretty exasperating. On the narrow “sidewalk” you’re constantly confronted with little outdoor stands extending from the shops, so it’s good exercise going up and down the two foot step..

Not much here in Gracias, although the town seems to think it’s a good tourist destination and several hotels are under construction. It is close to a very large national park, so adventure travelers might decide to use this as a jumping off point, and there are a lot of small colonial towns in the region, even one that was founded by Jews in the 1500s (whose name I do not know)! Tomorrow, en route to Copan, we’ll stop at Campa, which we hear is interesting (generally that means a parque central and a church.. maybe a market).

On my walk through Gracias, I bought a bunch of homemade jams (mango jalapeno, pear rum, and some others that are a bit unidentifiable and unlabeled but smelled great) in a tiny shop where the staff was unbelievably friendly and stuck with me as I asked many questions in my very bad Spanish and had to have them repeat the answers numerous times. Honduran Spanish is fast and clipped.. not as clear as Guatemalan Spanish (or so my feeble ear says).

The shopkeeper told me that a not-to-miss spot is the Agua Termales (hot springs). There are two: one is the municipal one; the other is private. She told me (and I think I understood correctly), that the municipal one is free, more fun, and very beautiful, but also very crowded; the other is very nice, “expensive” (which probably means about one US dollar), but also very safe. Unfortunately, all we can do is look, since we didn’t bring bathing suits.

I located what looks like a nice restaurant for tonight (we’ll see)…

Oh — In our little stop in Santa Rosa de Copan, we had lunch at a place called “Pizza Pizza”.. .where they had a real brick oven .. It was pretty good.

Dinner turned out to be good… a teeny tiny place and we were the only diners! And it turned out that a woman whom I photographed earlier in the day (with a baby — her granddaughter) was at the restaurant because it is her daughter’s place. Very small town. But dinner was good.. like having a home-cooked meal.

OK.. That’s it.. You’ll hear from me tomorrow from Copan Ruinas.

Fern

PS… Apparently the name Gracias is the town’s name because when the Spaniards arrived after being tired after having trekked through the mountains, they said something like “Gracias a Dios hemos llegado a tierra plana” (Thank God we arrived at flat land.)