chicken bus

Had the biggest heart-in-the-mouth moment so far on my journey from the Caribbean coast into Honduras' cowboy heartland. Took the chicken bus (so-called because of its reputation for transporting the locals' livestock) across an unpaved country road. It's been raining here quite a lot - I think I may already have mentioned that - and the road, already badly potholed, was in a very bad state in some places. At one point, the road support seemed to have practically been washed away by a creek. We got over that, but couldn't get up the hill on the other side. For one moment I thought we were about to career back into the water. Somehow the vehicle managed to stay put.

The conductor took control: "All the men out now to push." I didn't need any encouragement to get out as quickly as possible. All the women and children then disembarked to make the load lighter. The local guys gathered right behind the truck where the mud was thinnest - maybe to preserve the shine of their shoes. I went right to the rear right-hand side (ie out of the way if the vehicle slipped backwards) where the mud was thickest - definitely to preserve my continued existence on this planet. Then we pushed as hard as we could. Thankfully we pushed it out of the bog and up the hill.

Here are the bus guys cleaning their pride and joy before she continued to the capital:

And here are my shoes (I am ashamed to say they remain festering in a plastic bag in my hotel room):

to make matters worse, there was a teachers' conference in the cowboy town where i stopped. No hotels had room - apart from one. It is the type with naked lightbulbs and marks on flaky painted walls. It also had a 9.30 curfew and none of the guests were supposed to drink - even outside the hotel. I was very rebellious and had a bottle of beer to wash down my steak supper.

i am now in the capital, Tegucigalpa, a chaotic, massively crowded city typical of Central America with shantytowns perched up the surrounding hillsides, street hawkers lining every available space of the pavement and black bus smog choking the streets. Which is nice when you spend most of the day as I did hanging around bus stations (to check the timetables and prices just to clarify).

hasta pronto.