Omoa and Tela travel diary

The cities of the Honduran coast The journey to reach Honduras turned out to be anything but easy. Once we left Tikal, on a bus headed for Copan Ruines, we got off at Ruidosa, a small town on the border between Guatemala and Honduras (but still in Guatemala!) and from there we started asking around about how it might be possible to cross the border. Insistent rumours said that the easiest method was to take a colectivo (it's a pickup truck that can carry about ten people, although in reality it carries many more!) and afterwards a taxi. So that's what we did; we climbed into the pickup and trusted the driver to drop us off somewhere near the border. At this phantom place we gave in to the comfort of a taxi that, for an altogether honest sum, finally got us across the frontier with Honduras.

What struck us a great deal was the immense duty-free zone between Guatemala and Honduras: an immense no man's land, kilometres long and carpeted everywhere with pineapple and banana plantations. The taxi left us in the first town beyond the border... as often happens, in this case too the word "town" was a gross exaggeration. It was more than anything a sparse little cluster of houses, with no paved roads and sunk in a sea of mud. No sooner had we set foot on the ground, or rather in the mud, than we were mobbed by the "money changers", often very young kids who wandered around with wads of banknotes in their hands asking if we wanted to change some local currency.

We quickly found out when the next bus to the coast would leave and then we sat down to wait. After about half an hour of waiting, the shape of a bus emerged from the mud, and more than a bus it looked almost like an armoured vehicle, with very wide, specially shaped wheels and decidedly sturdy bodywork. After an initial moment of astonishment, we understood the reasons for such a design: the road to reach "civilisation" turned out to be long, but above all unpaved and rough, littered with potholes, bumps and stream fords.

Our destination was a little seaside town called Omoa, where we had planned to spend a few days enjoying the beach and the sea, since according to our information Honduras has one of the largest coral reefs in the world, second only to Australia's. To reach Omoa, we endured a good three hours of rough road, arriving at our destination exhausted. On our arrival we already knew where to stay, and once off the bus we found a strange pedal vehicle that served as a free taxi to the hostel we had chosen (in reality it was the only option). With no small effort the driver of the "rickshaw" completed his task in a lake of sweat, but in the end we managed to settle in and in a flash we were already ready to head to the beach! Our expectations were high, perhaps too high, and as usual they are made to be disappointed...

that's exactly how it was! The beach had nothing Caribbean about it, it was dark and poorly kept, with works in progress... shameful! Luckily the water seemed clean, but that certainly wasn't enough to satisfy our desires. After this harsh contact with reality, we spent half an hour on the pier, in the company of noisy children trying to catch a few little fish for dinner. We too, with dinner in mind, went back to the hostel to take a shower. Our lodgings were an old wooden building, set in a truly verdant and well-kept garden (perhaps more so than the building itself!).

Maybe also thanks to the complicity of this lovely garden, our dorm was literally infested with colonies of arrogant, ravenous mosquitoes: devastating! Fortunately our suffering was shared by three other unfortunate companions, a Dutch woman, a Swiss woman and an English woman: we were all in the same boat and we were sinking fast. These precarious conditions made us decide to pack up and leave the following day. To console ourselves we went to have a slap-up dinner, entirely fish-based: juicy! Dinner was followed by the usual digestive stroll through the little streets of the town in absolute tranquillity.

The next morning, preceded by our roommates, we abandoned the hostel and with it Omoa, to seek better fortune in Tela.

To reach the city of Tela, the route turned out to be quite convoluted. There was no direct bus and the only solution was to get to San Pedro de Sula (the second Honduran metropolis) and from there take a second bus to Tela. Once we arrived at San Pedro de Sula, after two hours spent on yet another bus, we busied ourselves finding another bus to take us to our final destination. Before leaving the city we spent more than an hour wandering around the very crowded downtown streets in search of a money changer to get us some cash. Once we got the stash we went back to the station to board an overflowing bus headed for Tela. The vehicle was certainly among the most popular, with an interior temperature close to forty degrees, enlivened by gigantic loudspeakers blasting music at full volume.

With another two hours of travel interrupted by a change to a vehicle not clearly identified, we had reached our destination. Tela too certainly didn't present itself as a metropolis but more like a very quiet suburban little town where life passed without too much excitement. Once off the bus we took a taxi to reach a hotel where we'd spend the night; in our pocket we had two names: the first, set in a colonial house, was decidedly nice but turned out to be too expensive, while the second, more spartan, suited our needs. To tell the truth the term "spartan" was perhaps a euphemism: once again it was a room bordering on uninhabitable, with a sheet-metal roof, worn-out beds and a bathroom made from a makeshift partition placed in a corner of the dwelling. The garden then was muddy ground inhabited by a cat and a very aggressive duck.

Here too our first concern was to head to the beach to see whether the situation had improved. Just enough time to drop off our bags and we were already on our way to the beach; in truth the distance separating us from the sea was short, and once again we were deeply disappointed. Our expectations had gone up in smoke: a narrow, dark beach was the scenery surrounding us... if possible even worse than Omoa. With our spirits in pieces we went to explore the town a bit, in the hope of finding something particularly interesting. In this regard we came across an internet café run by an Italian who had moved to live in Tela more than ten years earlier. Our compatriot was called Sergio and he was holding in his arms a stunning black child, his daughter Valentina: adorable.

Sergio bombarded us with information about Honduras, confirming that the city we were in was a sort of "cemetery" where in the evening the only thing to do was sleep. He also confirmed what we feared: the Caribbean Sea in Honduras we would never find except in the Bay Islands. With this awareness in our pocket, after a short stroll around the town (a dead loss!) we went to have dinner in a little local restaurant teeming with kids. From there, the obligatory destination was our smelly bed.