HONDURAS 2010: Americans in Honduras: Postscript from Oakland – January 2, 2011

Happy New Year..

We’re back — arrived at midnight last night. It’s Sunday now. In fact I’m already in the office.. .

Trying to sort out mail and messages, and generally just get back in swing! Yesterday (gosh it was less than 24 hours ago, now), our departure was complicated, but successful. The drive from Copan Ruinas to San Pedro Sula Airport (really just about 110 miles) is supposed to take about 3.5 hours. However due to a few recent mud slides and rocks on the road, we knew it would take longer. It took us about 5 hours door to door.. with just a few interesting incidents.

First, we managed to take the wrong road out of Copan; not sure how that happened, but we lost about 30 minutes on that one. Second, there are NO signs anywhere on the road to indicate that you’re really heading to San Pedro Sula or to anywhere else. Signage (wayfinding) is a real need in Honduras, except for the fact that I suppose most people on the road know where they are going, and there really aren’t too many tourists, and those that are there are usually with hired drivers or on buses… (Speaking of tourists, we never ran into another American in two weeks; we did meet Canadians, Brits, and we heard German once or twice.)

So, without signs, we were at a bit of a loss, somehow more than on other days… not sure why. We knew from our map that there was one town we needed to watch out for – Entrada – where there is a fork in the road and we needed to head left for San Pedro.. if we went to the right we’d be headed to Santa Rosa and Gracias where we had been a few days before. For nearly 100 kilometers (60 miles) we looked for a sign to Entrada, without luck.. But about 40 kilometers before Entrada (although we didn’t know it at the time), we panicked… There on the road was the very first sign we saw all day.. and it was for Santa Rosa and Gracias (the opposite direction from what we needed).. and there was no turn-off, so the sign was saying to go straight ahead for Santa Rosa and Gracias… We really didn’t know where we were… But– Trusty iPhone.. I had that compass app.. and we could see that the road was headed NE which was what we wanted…

Secure in the knowledge that the iPhone App must be correct we barreled on. Eventually we got to Entrada (still without any sign) and we headed left (no sign telling us that was the direction to San Pedro, the second largest city in Honduras)… We did fine after that, until we tried to locate the airport.. again no signs. We stopped a few people and they all said to go straight and then turn right.. which we did.. We then hit a “T” and had to decide which way to go. We opted right.. and should have realized when in doubt.. go left! Then Mike decided he was starving and airport food is so bad.. Everything was closed on the roadside, (it was New Years Day) so we thought maybe we’d spot a hotel with a restaurant, after all, we were headed to the Airport!. We finally saw a motel-style place (that actually looked pretty nice) with a big sign that said it was a hotel, so we turned into the driveway. We were met by about four guys with what appeared to be sub-machine guns, or some kind of rapid fire weapons. We asked if there was a restaurant… (in retrospect, can’t believe we asked).. Anyway they signaled for us to go straight toward the main building (after all, we had become used to hotels having guards — but generally only one rather friendly looking one.) We proceeded and were greeted by two more guards, who then said they had no restaurant. At that moment we surveyed the situation.. every room had an attached garage (all the garage doors were open, and there were no cars at that moment).. And then we spotted a guard tower with sandbags and two other guards “on the lookout”… We quickly and quietly took the turnabout and headed out… really glad they DIDN’T have a restaurant. What would we have done then? I’m pretty certain this place was probably either a hangout for narco gang leaders or some other seedy group.

OK.. we decided eating at the airport now made a lot of sense.. .. when we came upon a “toll road”.. costing about 20 cents.. paid up and asked again about the airport, since no signs yet. We were told at the toll booth.. we were almost there.. and to go straight… We did that, but then realized we had gone too far.. asked again and had to retrace steps.. again no signs. Eventually after asking several more people we made our way, and lo and behold about 1 kilometer before the airport.. after having made several turns (based on what people told us to do) we made it…

Boarded at about 4:30 Honduras time and arrived in SF at midnight. All is well.

Fern

P.S. Thank you for your comments and notes regarding this little travelogue. It’s great to get feedback.
By the way, I should clarify my comments regarding whether or not Zelaya was successful in his efforts when president. As I said, I think he had a lot of good ideas and tried to implement many progressive programs, but his time was short and it is not clear how many actually got implemented before the coup. It is now about 18 months since his departure and I think people are frustrated so they mostly talk of the current situation, not what might have been. I think people we spoke with were pretty straight with us, as we never brought up politics until we had talked with them several times about other things. And after we talked about what we did and our travels.

OK.. that’s it, I promise. I’m back and grateful for hot showers and electricity. When we walked in the house last night and turned on lights everything seemed so bright! .. after three days with candlelight in Copan!