7.30 am. The army trucks rolled up into the square. Troops of fully-armoured riot police offloaded and took station. As I looked on, I could feel the uncomfortable dampness of my sweaty t-shirt against my back – but maybe that was more a result of the 30 degree heat that never relented.
I’d arrived in Honduras during the military coup of President Zelaya, so the country’s second city and financial capital, San Pedro Sula, was on high alert. The previous night had borne a 6pm curfew to stem potential gang violence. In any case, I was sure that I’d read that San Pedro had the second highest murder rate in the world. So, if anything, the presence of the riot police made me feel more secure.
Not that first impressions backed my preconceptions, mind you. Despite the armed guards outside every bank and the 8ft jail bars around every home, the overwhelming feel of the city was not of danger, simply ‘American’; but a laid-back, Caribbean kind of American. In fact, the whole country seemed to delight in megahighways and fast food joints, and every town and corner shop was ‘sponsored’ by both Coca Cola and Pepsi!
Yet that’s part of the reason I was there: to enjoy and explore the ‘differentness’ Honduras had to offer. To me, stretching outside your comfort zone to embrace and relish contrast makes for the real thrill of travel.
Indeed, taking an impulsive bus ride to a town I’d never heard of, missing the ‘stop’ and ending up in a Grand-Theft-Auto-esque run-down beachside city in the shadow of night is something I’d dread at home, but enjoy (with hindsight) when abroad!
Equally, local food is something to indulge in. I still miss balaeadas – the Honduran flour tortilla, refried bean and scrambled egg snack that made a cheap and tasty meal, and the crimson-coloured banana soft drinks that suggested Latin American food-colouring regulations are nowhere near as strict as ours.
Such variety of life was no more evident than in the Mesoamerican cloud forest in which I was on a biodiversity research expedition – the main focus of my trip. Here, stick insects the length of your arm, transparent frogs and finger-length crickets that made a finger-lickin’ treat were among the natural highlights. And I shall always remember the night hikes on which every step yielded a novel invertebrate or amphibian that looked stolen from a sci-fi movie! In contrast, collecting and measuring over 1200 leaves and rolling balls of horse excrement constituted the mundane, but necessary reality of biological research.
Accessing data in the remote field is a physical challenge in itself. We climbed up near vertical canyons, scrambled along river beds like kids in the Wacky Warehouse, and got drenched by tropical ‘power shower’ downpour. All on a diet of cabbage soup, rice and kidney beans that hungered us to the extent of naming the best-looking quartet of mangy feral chickens around camp the ‘edible four’. Perhaps local food isn’t something to indulge in after all!
But as I swung in my hammock in the remote forest camp, enjoying nature’s music accompanied by a babbling, thriving stream, I realised that the planet we all share is so valuable and so fascinating. Whether that be the contrasting anthropogenic infrastructure and culture that can add so much to our travels, or the natural splendour we too often take for granted, we should admire the variety of life rather than fight over it.
