Tehgoos-ed
Friday, January 11th, 2008 Day 67
Tegucigalpa shares much of the similar traits of other Central American capital cities. Crime, pollution and a complete lack of planning. However to be fair it does have a pleasant climate, sort of an eternal spring. It also has a pedestrian street which is so rare in these parts. Besides all that how can you not love the name, Tegucigalpa. Teh-goos-c-gal-pa or simply Tehgoos for short. Put up your hand if you had even heard of this city before? Don’t lie now. Or if you had any idea it was the capital? I did, yep even before planning this trip. I like to brag about this rainman like knowledge of mine, world capitals. Trust me, I could name a few that most haven´t heard of, so if you ever play Trivial Pursuit with me don´t mess with me when Geography comes up. Right so back to us. Honestly the most beautiful thing about the city is getting out of it. The surrounding mountains, beautifully green and cool its here for some hiking that we are headed after a day in the city.
Up early to catch a local bus out of the city and up into the highlands surrounding the city we stopped by a bakery to pick up some breakfast to go and a Nescafe Latte, my new adiction. It`s terrible stuff but they must put something in it that keeps me coming back for more, who knew coffee from a machine could be so good! The bus stop was a gas station in the centre of the city where loud diesel powered chicken buses congregated. The scene was hot, dirty and smelly, getting out of the city couldn´t happen soon enough. While waiting for the bus we met Sean, another Canadian from Ottawa who was also heading to the park for a day of hiking. After an hour of waiting we were finally on our way up the steep roads out of Tehgoos. We got off the bus in a small village just short of the La Tigra National park entrance. After paying out park fee we headed out on a trail that stretched 14km across the park to the other access point. The scenery was incredible as we walked through the cloud forest of La Tigra. Everything was green and damp, it seemed everywhere you turned something was growing. A dead log was covered in moss, vines grew up and around trees and the climate was cool and wet. The climate and forest created a magical scene that was only enhanced when we came across a creek and a 30m waterfall. We were only 25km from Tegucigalpa yet it felt like we were hundreds of kilometers away.
About 5 hours after we started the hike we reached the other park office and thought we could just jump in the next bus back to the city. We asked the lady working the office when the next bus would be and she motioned down the hill to the next village and we thought she said 20 minutes. Ok no problem we thought so we trekked on. In the town we asked where to find the bus into the city and were now told to walk to the next village. I was a bit worried we might miss any bus back since they stop running fairly early and it was almost 4pm now. In the next village I asked a woman in shop about the bus and she explained that we needed to walk out of the valley to the main highway that led back into Tehgoos. This was another hour uphill and when we reached that point a lady with her small child told us the bus should be here around 6pm. So much for doing our hike early and being back in the city for the afternoon.
Finally we arrived back in Tehgoos in the dark and parted ways with our hiking buddy Sean. We were damn hungry by this point, after a day of hking and walking on hot roads. We took a taxi to the pedestrian street and found it empty and most things shut down with bars pulled over the windows. It was only 8pm, but this is life in the a Central American city. Not much happens after dark and the things that do happen you really don´t want to be apart of. The only thing we found open was Pizza Hut, so we grudgingly sat down and had a veggie pizza with some beer. In the morning we were off to Nicaragua, only a few days in Honduras but our hike today through the cloud forest of La Tigra was definitely one of the finest walks of the trip to date. I went to bed that night with a desire to get moving, of getting further south. Looking at the map we have come a long way but looking south we have so much more of the Americas we need to cover.
Michael Coroneos