Gracias
HONDURAS
Thank God the Bus Ride is Over
By LYNDI
Saturday, April 19, 2008
If you are following this blog in order, you’ll know that when we last left our heroes – one quite sick and one a bit more wealthy – they were in Copan Ruinas looking for a ride to Gracias. In many countries, this would be a simple car or bus ride, but in Honduras it turned out to be a long and rather hellish journey.
We caught the 6am bus to Santa Rosa de Copan in what turned out to be a pretty nice bus. Individual seats, no loud music, a little footrest thingy – our day was shaping up to go pretty well. After the one hour ride to Santa Rosa, we transferred to our first chicken bus of the day. As you may already know, these chicken buses are the school buses that America has deemed either too rundown or too unsafe to transport their children – so they sell them to Central America to transport entire families. The driver/owner then decorates it to his liking (usually by plastering the interior with stickers about how if the rapture occurs during our trip, our vehicle will no longer have a driver present, or some other Jesus sticker), paints it some fabulous color(s), and names it after his girlfriend. Our first chicken bus (Nina) was pretty crowded, but after a few people got off, Aaron and I got a seat together, and by the end of the hour and a half ride to La Esperanza, we got a seat all to ourselves. Just two people in one seat – as God intended those seats to be used.
We found an immediate transfer in La Esperanza on another bus going to Gracias. That’s usually sort of rare because there’s no bus schedule, so you usually just have to wait until someone decides to leave for your destination. The first bad sign was when they tried to stuff our bags into the storage facilities underneath the seats. They were crammed with groceries, bike tires, suitcases, and small children (ok – no kids), but they eventually found room in the rear compartment by shoving our bags in and quickly closing the door before anything could fall out. The second bad sign was when we got on the bus and could not even walk up the stairs because it was so crowded. We thought we’d been on busy buses before but this really took the cake. However, at this point, our bags were stowed (and probably trapped), so we just climbed aboard and hung on. I actually really wanted to take a picture of the interior, just so everyone reading this could see how many people can physically fit onto one single bus. However, seeing as how I could barely exhale, much less move my arms, my fine descriptive powers will have to do. So Aaron and I stood in the aisle – we were both facing the right side while someone else stood with their backs to us facing the opposite side. I was wearing a little carry pack across my chest and it continually hit the man seated in front of me the entire time. I apologized for awhile, but he didn´t seem to mind. Then again, if I had been one of the lucky 1/4th of the passengers that crammed in a seat, I wouldn´t mind a silly distraction like that either.
Now at this point, it’s getting warm. 80 people on one little bus sweating and breathing together is not a good combination. Aaron and I were both holding on to the rail that they kindly attached to the ceiling, but it’s high enough where you lose feeling in your arms after awhile. The worst part is that just when you know for absolute certain that no more people will fit on this bus, the darn driver pulls over and lets on a few more. And to top it all off, the bus was so full of people and their stuff, it literally crawled all the way to Gracias. There was really one point where I thought I’d lose it and just be sick all over the bus. But then an angel sitting on the seat next to me offered me 3 inches to sit down on the seat with her (there were already three others in the seat, so this was quite generous). Well, an hour and a half of all this, and we pulled into Gracias. The Spanish colonists originally named it Gracias after searching through all the valleys and hillsides for weeks on end. It’s actually short for the Spanish of “Thank God We Have Finally Found Flat Land”. Just “Gracias” is much easier. It’s another little colonial town – similar to Copan but not as nice. It’s off the tourist track, so it’s just a quiet little town full of friendly Hondurans. They say it’s so safe you can sleep in the park if you wanted to. Well, we didn´t want to, but it was nice to know. We finally found a room at the Finca Bavaria and I gobbled up some Pepto Bismal chewables and then took a siesta (no easy task considering the owner cranked his stereo up to 11 so we could all listen to mariachi music). Aaron walked around a bit and he graciously bought me some orange juice for my queasy stomach. When I woke up, we took a short walk through town and went to eat at a restaurant on the hillside called Guanasco’s.
Now, if we’d been smart (and again, not so cheap – this will be a running theme throughout our travels, I’m sure…) we would have stayed at the hotel attached to Guanasco’s. The view was stunning, and that was the only place we found other white faces and English spoken. The couple sitting next to us was from Colorado and were – get this – biking from Alaska to Patagonia. They’d put their kids through college, sold their businesses, and took off. They’ve been biking for 10 months now and aren’t even halfway there (the woman said sighing). What a trip! Made our bus rides look pretty easy… We only spent one night in Gracias. Had I been feeling better, there’s quite a few great hikes in the area that would have been a lot of fun. However, we’d caught word about a microbrewery a few hours north in middle of nowhere Honduras that we had to get to – fast. You can’t put a microbrewery in the middle of Central America and not expect Aaron and Lyndi to beeline to it.
