Tegucigalpa, Honduras – population 3million+. It is not a safe town if you do not have somewhere to be. Political and gang graffiti color many buildings and I am only just beginning to learn what it means. I don’t know hectic traffic and neither do you if you have not been outside the States. Sure, Atlanta can be tough sometimes, but in Teguc, road signs and centerlines are merely suggestions, to be disregarded as gap allows. Our doors are locked, our windows up. Once we enter the Hotel Honduras Maya, we do not leave again until we are ready to leave town. This is just a one night layover because the sun would meet the mountains before we arrived in Gualaco and we cannot let that happen. Not here.
- statue of Jesus the Christ above the city of Tegucigalpa
The hotel was palatial but oddly empty. A room at a place like this in Atlanta would cost $300 to $400 a night but here in Teguc, if you are on the right list you get it for $70. From the courtyard ringed with high walls and razor wire, it was cognitively dissonant to be faced with multiple pools and hot tubs and large patios set with heavy tables and chairs while gunfire echoed from the city. Sitting in the courtyard, this hotel could be in Beirut, Abu Dhabi, anywhere.
- coffee tray at the Hotel Maya in Tegucigalpa
All this said, I know for certain that if we were to meet the people that inhabit this place, we would find the same hard-working and honest folks that we have come to know as Hondurans. Perhaps next time.
- view of a neighborhood in Tegucigalpa
