Fifteen hours later we arrived in Tegucigalpa, three brutal hours longer than expected. It was dark, we were tired, and we jumped in the first cab we found. You are supposed to agree on a price before getting in the cab but we were too exhausted and forgot this key rule. When we arrived at the hotel Mia asked the cab driver how much it was. He gave an outrageously high price. Mia said it was too much and retaliated with an outrageously low price. They entered a staring contest. Then the cab driver exploded with a shower of rapid-fire Spanish, but Mia already had her force field up. She came up with a number between the extremes, shoved the bills in the cabbie´s hand, and walked away without another word.
After checking into our hotel we were starving and decided to walk around the neighborhood to find a place to eat. But we soon realized that downtown Tegucigalpa is really sketchy at night. People were vigorously digging through the trash for anything of value and eying us like a pot of gold. All the store fronts had been boarded up with sliding metal doors for the night. The only safe haven we could see was Pizza Hut. Or the McDonalds next door. Or the Dunken Donuts, Little Caesar´s Pizza, or Burger King. We chose Pizza Hut.
The next morning we tried desperately to find a non-U.S. fast food chain to have breakfast. We walked and walked until we found Café Paris, which served the typical Central American breakfast of beans, scrambled eggs, fried plantain, a chunk of salty cheese, and a side of tortillas. Sounds delicious right? Halfway through the breakfast we both felt sick and had to return to the hotel to lie down and use the bathroom. Chris even had the pre-puke sweaty mouth, but managed to keep it down.
At this point we were done with Honduras and with Tegucigalpa in particular. But we still had a half day to waste before our bus to Nicaragua. We wanted to go somewhere where we could just chill in a comfortable and safe space, where we understood what was going on, where everything we could possibly need was at our fingertips, somewhere that had clean bathrooms and clean air, somewhere like… The Mall.
We took a cab to the Multiplaza Mall (first being sure to ask the hotel how much the trip should cost and then negotiating for that fare before getting in the cab). When we entered the mall we could immediately feel the stress roll off our shoulders…we were in America again. We walked around for hours without having to dodge people, holes in the sidewalk, piles of dog poo, or speeding traffic that yields to no one. We sat in a coffee shop enjoying the absence of honking horns and black diesel exhaust. We used the bathrooms. We browsed an English language bookstore. Although we didn’t end up seeing the Michael Jackson film “This is It,” it was comforting just knowing that we could if we wanted to. Something about the mall inevitably gives us headaches, so once we reached that point we took a deep breath and re-entered Honduras.
The one highlight of Tegucigalpa was dinner, drinks, and conversation with two CouchSurfer hosts who rescued us from sketchy downtown and took us to a great local restaurant hidden among a jungle of fast food chains. We talked about the political situation in Honduras, which local people didn’t seem too worried about. Life carried on as usual (besides a few bomb threats in public places). The only sign that there was anything out of the ordinary was the tremendous amount of troops blocking off all roads to the Brazilian embassy. But even the guards were friendly and smiled when we (accidentally) walked by.
When our new friends dropped us back at our hotel at 9:30 pm, the two sets of gates were locked and all the lobby lights were off except for a single flashlight coming towards us. The hotel owner, with a huge pistol sticking out of his waistband, shined the light in our eyes and looked both ways down the street before quickly unlocking the gate and ushering us in. Sketchy.
The series of buses from Tegucigalpa to the Nicaraguan border were surprisingly easy, cheap, and fast.. Immediately upon boarding a bus on the Nicaraguan side the mood felt lighter and friendlier than Honduras. We received unsolicited smiles and honest prices. We had made it through the worst part of our journey and things were looking better.
Bus Terminal in Nicaragua
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