Passing through Hondura: Choluteca, honduras.
I was tracking along the Pacific coast side of Central America so in order to jump to my next destination country of El Salvador I had to cut through a short swath of land owned by the Hondurans. It was possible to make the throughway in about three hours less transportation wait times, but I am really not the type who likes a full days itinerary of anything. Although the town of Choluteca was considered non-touristic, it would provide a chance for me to get my usual break in day of a new country. Getting the switch to a new currency, local interactions, and food choices are a big part of changing countries and I usually like to drop anchor for a day or two at a close to border town in order to get acclimated. I would be returning back to Honduras after El Salvador so it would save me time when I crossed back. The reason for the hop skipping is better understood if you look at a map of Central America. Most things of interest tend to be on one of the two coasts, Pacific or Caribbean. Luckily, the direction I was traveling would only require a “S” curve in order to end up hitting the important sites without having to do much backtracking as well as entering Mexico without having to visit the Yucutan Peninsula which I have already traveled before albeit only the highly touristic parts.
Choluteca was what it was, lacking in tourist things to do, but it was great for the everyday life that most people comment on wanting to see but usually tend to zoom right past. For me, it was a nice hotel which had the well sought after hammocks in a courtyard, a laundry area which was much utilized by me as it was very hot and sunny and my clean laundry dried in about a half an hour, a bank to change some money enough so that I would have a small bank roll when I reentered Honduras, and excellent tortillas (not the heavy corn meal style, but more the thinner almost flour tortilla like style that you buy at the grocery store (Bimbos here).
Honduras as well as El Salvador where I am now is somewhat different between even the neighboring countries like Nicaragua. I guess partially it depends where you are at in the city, but for one example, in Honduras and El Salvador, lunch is the biggest meal of the day while dinner is more moderate snack more than anything. Also, when the sun goes down, things lock up to the point where it is only a few security guards and packs of dogs roaming the streets. It makes it a challenge especially for me now as I am on a diet again and only one big meal a day at night time. Sundays as well can be a challenging task for food gathering especially if you are staying in the Central part of town or by a central market that is only open on weekdays through saturday.
Pictured above are my takeaway of Honduras so far. These are the tortilla ladies that set up shop on most busy corner streets especially the evening time. Those baskes are stacked full of those tasty thin tortillas I love so much. When I saw those I knew I had to buy some fried chicken, avocadoes, and some salty cheese. My spanish is okay and when it comes to normal conversational stuff like buying things/food, I can do it fairly seamlessly. Well. I wanted to buy some tortillas for dinner so I asked the girl how much. She said something that included 2 and 5. Now not knowing the correct verbage for which way the cost went I figured I would just go for a monetary amount. I told her 15L figuring it was 5L for 2. Well, tortillas are a great purchase as it turned out to be get 5 for 2L. Well, I ended up getting two big smiles from the girl and her friend as they started grabbing stacks of tortillas and packed my 40 tortillas in some paper and then into a plastic bag. I started looking for a homeless person to give a stack to, but then I started thinking that it might be an insult as tortillas are so cheap that they are almost free. It would be like handing out pennies to homeless people. Might get them thrown back in your face. So, I took my stack home with me and ate 35 that evening and night and the final 5 for breakfast.
Outside of that, it was a nice place to relax and catch up with chores although there really was not much else to do there.
Tags: 1, Honduras