Antigua, and Rain Delays Play in Honduras

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Antigua is the most popular tourist town in Guatemala, loaded with hole-in-the-wall bars, restaurants and boutiques. Spanish schools and travel agencies line the narrow streets, still containing the original wobbly cobble of the 16th century. On the emailed suggestion of a Danish traveller I met in Argentina last year, I popped in to see a pony-tailed Danish expat named Jesper at his tiny, candle-lit bar-restaurant named Travel Menu. Like many other foreigners, Jesper fell in love with Antigua (and a Guatemalan), settled down, started a family, and opened his dream bar. I asked him about dealing with life in Guatemala. “The key is to be…flexible,” he tells me. Judging by the amount of foreign owned businesses, it appears many Americans and Europeans are. Where there are tourists, there are peddlers, and it didn’t take long before a young local girl entered the bar selling postcards. I dismissed her with a friendly yet firm “no gracios” but it turned out that Jesper’s friend Irene, visiting from Nicaragua, recognized the girl from her previous stay in the town, and, in warm conversation, it emerged that this poor, peasant girl had received a scholarship to study in Spain. It was a much-needed and rare chance to interact with someone behind the cheap souvenirs, and if I had time, I’d probably take some Spanish lessons here like the rest of the gringos to help communication. I had to decline Jesper’s offer to check out the first Jamtigua, a music festival happening the following day, but I left his Travel Menu joint well inspired, and just a little jealous of someone who actually opened up a dream bar in a dream town.

It was a farewell of sorts as my group was splitting, some of us making our way into Honduras, others circling back to Cancun. We picked up a couple of new folks, including an American couple who work for the Centre for Disease Control (handy when dealing with biological warfare, such as the stomach bug/food poisoning that took down half the group over 48 hours), two pert English girls, a venture capitalist from Calgary, and the first person I’ve met with a more confusing nationality than me: Vikash is a Scottish Mauritian. We celebrate our last/first night at Riki’s Bar, and I’m surprised to learn that, despite all the foreigners in town looking to rip it hard on $1 drinks, Antigua pretty much shuts up shop at 1am. So we find another hole in the wall, which locks us inside just as the cops are doing the bribe rounds. A twitchy bartender named Jesus offers us cocaine, but its clear he’s done enough for several people already. On the walk home, the colonial ruins that make Antigua a World Heritage Site were lit up fetchingly. All I could think about was that the town has been destroyed twice by an earthquake, and will probably be destroyed again one day.

Cooperation between Central American countries now means faster borders and less paperwork. As a result, you no longer get any cool additional stamps in your passports when crossing between the seven nations - Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama , El Salvador, Belize and Costa Rica. There’s talk of introducing a common currency, not unlike the euro, but Central America has never been the most politically stable of regions, never mind an economic one. In the meantime, free trade ensures the rich get richer, and the poor get brainwashed with soap operas, just like everywhere else. At the Honduran border, the only guard I could see was asleep under an umbrella. Money changers held thick wads of cash, as the Guatemalan quetzal gave way to the Honduran lempira (named after an Indian tribe that resisted the Spanish conquistadors). And so, farewell to Guatemala, the land of many mountains, and hello to Honduras, another land of many mountains. Honduras is the second largest country in Central America, population around six million, the tongue busting capital city is Tegucigalpa. The country does not have nearly as many indigenous people as Mexico or Guatemala, is not as religious, and prides itself on being somewhat political stable since the 1980’s (although the Nicaraguan civil war did spill over). It proudly refers to itself as a true Banana Republic, in reference to its chief export, and the fact that US fruit companies pretty much ran the country in the early 1900’s. The US also had a sizable military force in the country for decades to “protect its interests”, and secretly funded a civil war in Nicaragua in 1980’s through illegal arms sales to Iran (remember Ollie North?) The U.S, clearly, is not averse to meddling with local politics to ensure there’s no holdups in the fruit, coffee and lately oil production lines. Of course, plenty other countries have become banana republics since, with more corruption and less fruit. First stop in the country was just 15kms from the border, the small town that sits alongside Honduras’s most famous Mayan ruins, Copan. After seeing Chichen Itza and Palenque in Mexico, I was a little “ruined” out, and while the last great city that lay to the south of the Mayan empire is impressive, most tourists stay only stay a day or two and beeline for the Caribbean north coast. But Copan rewarded us with a great guide at the ruins (and someone to jam guitar with later), and magical night swimming in a thermal pool about an hour’s drive into the countryside. I waded across the river where boiling hot spring water merged with freezing cold, soaking in the sunset until it was time for dinner in the main pool. Candles were lit around us, fireflies streaked from tree to tree, we ate while we soaked, and drank a few Imperial beers from the cooler. It was just about the most romantic setting I’ve ever come across, a great place for a new group to get to know each other. Later, we watched a DVD - The Spanish Apartment - a film in French, English and Spanish, set in Barcelona, and hysterically accurate in its portrayal of life in a foreign country. Two Gonzo thumbs up. Tucan also supports an orphanage in Copan, so we pooled some cash to buy supplies and went to meet the kids. Erik and Caroline are in the process of adopting a child themselves, and tell me about the endless red tape and fees needed. “There are so many desperate kids around the world, you’d think governments would make it a little easier,” says Erik. It appears there is a fine line between protecting a child’s interests and old-fashioned extortion. Just ask Madonna. We played with the kids, some abandoned, some born to young mothers unable to care for them. Heartbreaking, rewarding, and more important, I felt, than another visit to a ruin.

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