First, we went to the Rutas Orientales Bus Station to buy a bus ticket to Chiquimula which is another city in Guatemala. It is the capital of the department of Chiquimula and the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. It is located some 174 kilometres from Guatemala City and within Guatemala known as "La perla del oriente" (the Pearl of the East).
In 1851 during the Battle of La Arada the Guatemalan military won over El Salvador and Honduras military forces, which is why Chiquimula was named "Ciudad Procer" Hero City.
We waded through the bus ticket touts trying to get on a bus leaving immediately and quickly bought a ticket for Q4.85 each for the bus leaving at 10:30 hrs. in the efficient ticket office.
We then had breakfast and loitered about the Hotel España until 10:00 hrs. As we boarded the bus another one reversed into it and smashed the windscreen. However, the glass stayed in place and was quickly patched up with a couple of stickers.
We were sitting right at the front so we could see the dodgy driving at first hand. The road was good and the terrain relatively flat and we got to Chiquimula in three hours, which was one hour less than we expected.
We got off the bus and pushed our way through the busy market in the town square, with it’s low canopies, and booked into the Hotel Dario at Q10 Guatemalan Quetzals for a double room. We washed some clothes and sat in the pleasant hotel garden in the sun.
We popped out and bought two tins of Gallo beer, much to the consternation of the woman in the hotel who told us that they sold them here. We bought a few more with half an orange to squeeze into them and sat watching a young lad doing the gardening.
As the sun began to set we were joined by another American “of Irish Descent”, who rabbited (talked) on for ages about his travels in Honduras. He said he was retired but was farming in Canada and came down here every year to escape the winter. He went from -30°c in Canada to +30°c in Central America.
We had supper in a dark barn-like edifice across the road from the hotel, run by a well-built lady who the Yank said always tried to seduce him. We were served by an elderly woman who cackled a lot and seemed delighted that we were patronising her humble establishment.
A police corporal sat at the next table; all the best people eat here! We had beefsteak and fried bananas while one of the resident youths paraded around with a white rat on his shoulder.
In the evening we sat in the central park where music, predominantly Madonna records, blared from the Public Address System on the bandstand. The local youths loitered around sporting their fashion gear as we sat drinking Gallo cerveza from a tin.
Back at our hotel our room was like an oven, the walls having acted like storage heaters in the heat of the day. I got another can of Gallo beer which was a treat served with a squeeze of orange juice and a pinch of salt, and we sat outside.
Francis the Yank appeared and rambled on for three hours about Honduras. As well as his own experiences he told us that Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea.
Honduran society is predominantly Mestizo although Honduras was home to several important Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya, before the Spanish Colonization in the sixteenth century. The Spanish introduced Roman Catholicism and the now predominant Spanish language, along with numerous customs that have blended with the indigenous culture.
Honduras became independent in 1821 and has since been a republic, although it has consistently endured much social strife and political instability and remains one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. In 1960, the northern part of what was the Mosquito Coast was transferred from Nicaragua to Honduras by the International Court of Justice.
The literal meaning of the term "Honduras" is "depths" in Spanish. The name could either refer to the bay of Trujillo as an anchorage, fondura in the Leonese dialect of Spain, or to Columbus's alleged quote that "Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de esas Honduras" ("Thank God we have departed from those depths").
Francis took every opportunity to speak English as hardly anyone in Chiquimula does. Declan fled into out room and we were joined by a Guatemalan Civil Engineer who wanted to practice his English.
Sadly, he could hardly get a word in edgeways while Francis was off on one of his monologues, and this one lasted until midnight! It was still extremely warm when I went to bed.
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