January 2002

ihana.com - big trip - diary - honduras - january 2002

 

Circus gets overtaken

Lorry rolls off the corner

Buses can do river crossings too

Thursday 24 - Friday 25 January

After catching the 7am boat back to the mainland, we drove east on terribly potholed roads towards Limon, a nondescript village by the sea. The journey saw the landy claim its largest animal so far when a dawg suicided itself under the front wheels as B admired the view. The locals in Limon were friendly and the owner of the only comedor opened up and gave us a late lunch in her living room while the rest of the family watched an abysmal soap opera on the telly. From the rare glimpses of TV we see, it seems there are at least 10 soaps running at the moment. Made in various countries in latin america and watched avidly by many. All of them are awful, so some things are the same the world over.

Stuck - click to see the full story

Sun goes down on our beach campsite

Time to turn around

wrong route choice...

...equals grounded

too heavy even for a Landy

We planned to drive through the little visited swampy region in the North in a long loop ending up a day or two later at the capital, Tegucigalpa. The road got smoother but smaller, with a fair few river crossings. Further on there were occasional mud holes, one of which we got stuck in, but fortunately help was at hand, click here for the full story. We made good progress as far as Sico where we came across a couple of Toyotas unloading before attempting to cross a huge mud hole. They told us the road was impassable after the village and there were heavy plant machines working to rebuild the road. Not fancying a fruitless long winching session knee deep in mud, we turned around, back towards civilization.

Rescuing a hapless Toyota

Watering the crops

Car wash

Passing the same villages as the day before the locals were equally as friendly, blowing kisses at the landy as it passed by and waving happily as they went about their business. We came across a large Mack truck stranded in a mud hole not far from where we had got it wrong the day before. It was well stuck and not even the landy could budge it, although we easily pulled a Toyota though whilst we waited for the truck guys to try and dig the grounded back end free. A couple of towing efforts later and they hadn't managed it but time had come for us to head off to the capital, so we left them to a long day.

Just before we drove off, a blue toyota arrived, heading in the same direction as us. We ploughed through the mud hole first and left him behind. Stopping a few kilometres down the road for an oncoming blue toyota to get up a muddy hill, the first blue toyota caught us up and rudely parked in front of us despite the fact that we were much faster. As we set off again in convoy we knew that the previous days mud hole where we got stuck was fast approaching so we had hopes of him getting stuck there too so that we could cruise past. Our prayers were answered as he ground to a halt, up to his axles in mud while we chose the better route through and chuckled past.

 

previous entry
next entry

Join our Mailing List      Read Guest Book

all content is copyright © ihana.com 2002