El Salvador / Honduras - it is not as bad as it seems... its just a crisis

Honduras...

after having a midtrip crisis I left El Salvador for Honduras. What the heck is midtrip crises????

well this means: I was annoyed by everything. Having rice and beans plus discusting cheese and a water/sugar (they say it is coffee but they lie) coffee every morning - enoyed me. Being called a gringo and being stared at stinks. People trying to milk you for money because they only see dollars in you is getting on my nerves... I have been here for 8 month now... I know how it works... so don't try to pull the overprised gringo precio on me!
It doesn't matter where you are... people try to cheat you... or even better.. they lie to you, without a reason. Over here the people seem to not like to say: "sry but i don't know" - so what they do is, they just give you any answer.. and that can be horrible in terms of asking for direccions. It is just frustrating always having to ask at least 5 people, to then combinate the answers to one maybe true one!
No being able to trust in anybody is really stressful and frustrating and led to a mayor down of my spirits. I suddenly hated everything. Also - and that didn't help too much - have I already spent a long time travelling. So after a while it is hard to appreciate another waterfall, another beach, another rainforest, other ruins or another volcano... cause at the end I always compare it to one I have already seen...! At the end it is always the same again!

(which is of course not true...  but in a midtrip crisis... thats hard to see!!!)

... so I was pissed that nothing worked (electricity/water).. that the hostels are shitty and overprized... that the people constantly lie to you and offer things that they never have or can do...well i just was pissed about everything.
So now you know what the midtrip crises feels like ;-)

At the end that is problems that you have to face everyday... but I had always laughed about it and didn't care... well in my midtripcrisis... this all exploded...

So i decided to change my focus and concentrate less on the sights...and more on the people again. I had decided that before but lost my focus.

now that all this is off my mind...here the story to the last weeks:

We decided to leave El Salvador at a boarder in the east to Honduras. Well after hitchhike the whole morning ... we arrived at the most outcast boarder in the mountains.
A small building at the side of a dirtroad... WITH loads of military! we had already imagined something like this because there was no car passing us for hours...and the car that finally carried us to the boarder was full with locals and we had to stand on the bumper with our backpacks on and hold on to the car rim!!!

The only problem at the boarder: the El Salvadorian government had decided to close this boarder for foreigners... well the El Salvadorian government forget to tell us!!! and now we were already there... 50 m away from honduras!
We discussed with the military for more than half an hour... trying to brieb them... trying to joke with them... trying to run the boarder... but nothing worked! so finally we gave up. Eventhough I really liked our attemps.

here are some examples:
"so why don't you look just 5 minutes in this direction and after this time we and our stuff will be gone... your boss will never hear about it!" or "what happens if we are gone and you have 5 dollars more in you pocket?" or "why don't you call the highest chief and ask him if we can cross... i am sure he will let us! answer: that is the president .. we: well how about we call the president and ask him about this... I am sure he will let us pass"
well nothing worked on this hard asses! that is another funny thing: everybody is corrupt, at all times! accept when we want to cross the boarder in the stupid mountains, where nobody in the world ever will go, where nobody will have heard about us, where there will be no problem... there they aren't corrupt!!!!!
life is just not the way you want it sometimes... so at the end we gave up and turned around... ohh did i mention that we were in freakin nowhere?
yeah... so we waited with the military for some hours until a car passed the mountain and was able to carry us back!... well he was forced to..by the military :-)
from there we took another ride and two buses more to reach the other boarder crossing, that was open to tourists.

Of course this took all day. And the day ends in Central America at 5 o clock. There are no buses... so you will be stuck without that. Hitchhiking after this hour is difficult too because it is getting dark and people are scared to give you a ride!
So we arrived at 6 at the boarder... crossed it ... and got stuck there because no buses and no rides... ähhh and to this came a hugh pouring rain! So we had to find a hotel. The corrupted police, asking for money would have given us a ride to an hotel but we declined.
Then we finally resigned and we let the lying-, money- sucking boarder people bring us to a hotel nearby. Highly overprized we stayed at a absolutly horrible place. A room... two discusting prostitut used beds and horrbile open bathrooms made me pitch my hammock in the room cause the beds i didn't want to touch! Of course the ceiling was damaged so that the rain entered at parts! and to all of this ...it was hot...
well what else could have gone wrong that day??? ahh yeah... I think a have fleas since that day!

But from there we went to Tegucigalpa and stayed there for a night. Meeting a really nice couchsurfer who invited us to lunch and getting our clothes washed ... finally after...lets say, a month without washing ;-)

from there we got the offer to visit another couchsurfer who owns a hotel, a little outside tegucigalpa. and since I don't care too much about sights anymore I love to meet all the people. so we went! Of course there were no buses going after 5 and we had after 5 ... oh and did i mention that it started to rain? strong?
looked like it would be another bad day... but a taxidriver gave us a ride and brought us to the highway where he stopped a bus ... so that we still could reach our destination... or at least we thought we could.
In the bus... oh yeah i forgot to mention that: when there are drunk people... and there are a lot of drunk people... totaly wasted everyday (because there is nothing else to do) - then they will always come to talk to you... It doesn't matter what you do... when they are drunk then they want to practice there english or they want to talk to you about that they lived in the US                  ...the only picture I took in Tegus...                     

 and got deported and bla bla bla!!! there is no way you can hide from that! so in the bus of course there were 2 drunk guys i had to talk to for an hour... and no hiding spot... damn.
Well we arrived... and the hotel was still 1.5 km away from the street... in the night... and no taxis! and pouring rain!

well to cut a long pre story short ;-) somehow we arrived at Hotel valuz!

Hotel Valuz
Jorge is the owner of this amazing place. He is a couchsurfer and welcomed us imediately friendly. he has travelled a lot and carried home the things he encountered in these different cultures. The house is amazing. I has a german "fachwerkhaus" style, which he created himself. Inside are "Holztruhen", Teppiche, deutsches Geschirr, hats, clothes, beer from all over the planet, cups from everywhere, pictures, instruments... well just everything.
And the style of the inside furniture and arrangement is just so warm and interesting that you immediately feel comfortable. It looks a little bit like a german or austrian house from the inside... the architecure is all made up by himself but he had the german houses in mind, when he constructed this. And as I said souvenirs from all over the world. All south america, all central and north america, Iceland, England, Scotland, all europe... it is amazing. Inlcuding a photograph of "Che" at the wall where we slept... an original... because "che" came to the wedding of his grandparents or something... Well his familiy were friends with "Che"   
Oh and he speaks real good german. And he can cooks amazingly too. With him I had the best meals in the whole trip (in 8month!!!!)... so i was pretty psyched about it... that finally i was on the good track again.

Jorge knows about 30 different soup recipies and all are his own creation!!!!!!
he names the dishes after the situation or the people when he created it the first time and then he writes it down and keeps it that way. So interesting.
He also has a volkswagen Bus in front of the house... hahaha so an overall winner!
well the only problem is that he is not in the lonely planet... so not many people get to his place.(afterall this is still a hotel... just because we are Couchsurfers we can stay there for free).. if not to say almost nobody. If the lonely planet would know all these detailes about this place (i mean just the picture of Che) it would flourish a lot more. So I will try to promote him... maybe write to LP... because they need to know about him... and Jorge deserves success with his, once in a lifetime hotel / experience!

The funny thing is... since we had such good experiences in Guatemala with this bus... it was a sure thing that this thing would break down on us too... so we were allowed to drive around with it ... as well as we were allowed to ride the horses there and one day ...it broke down hahaha:

I have seen this picture before ;-)

the hike//ride

From there I went with his cousin to Gracias. At the end of the 4 hour drive they offered me to stay with them. They had a really nice artist bar... so i could pitch my hammock in the yard at night when they closed the bar.

To give something back I decided to help them by serving the food and the drinks to the people. That was my first time doing this.. so it was a lot of fun. They also taught me some drawing techniques so I started drawing... and kept it up till now...

                                                           my new way of keeping a diary

Now that is Copan Ruins at the boarder to Guatemala. I stay with another Couchsurfer here ... but that will be it for now... i feel like i have written a book in the past hour ;-)

gez. matthis