Honduras Travels

The Factory

San Pedro Sula is known as the AIDS capital of Central America. It’s not the type of place I normally visit. There are gangs and drugs. It’s a big city with lots of poor people.

Today, is a sunny Sunday and people crowd the shaded areas of the central park people-watching. Every square-inch of shade is taken so I stroll.

People chat while sipping on plastic bags of fruit licuados through limp straws. Ice cream cones melt rapidly making knuckles sticky. A man selling plastic snakes has one of his snakes nibble at a passing pretty girl. He smiles like it is some brilliant strategy that should be documented in the annals of flirting: “Hey baby. I sell plastic snakes for a living. Wanna go out?”

If you like riddles, you will love Honduras. Is it in Latin America or the Caribbean? Is it just another banana republic or something more sophisticated?

Obviously foreign elements, such as the exotic tropical flowers, blend with elements so familiar that you could be in Woking. The driver who meets me at San Pedro Sula airport speaks Spanish, but there is a poster of David Beckham on the road into the city. A horse-drawn cart pulls out of a Pizza Hut. An olive-skinned bride emerges from the back of a black London taxi. The McDonald’s in the main square is so close to the cathedral that you must be able to smell the barbecue sauce mingling with the incense and vice versa. Complete strangers throw enormous smiles at me just because I am wearing a Barmy Army T-shirt. I am going to enjoy myself.

There is no passage between El Progresso, Tela, and La Ceiba due to the damage caused by the rivers Guaymón and Leán.