Posts tagged as “0:travelogue”

by FERENC IVANICSInstead of tropical jungles we've walked more than a hundred miles in pine forests. It wasn't something we had expected. It seems that the Pacific side of Honduras (and Guatemala and Nicaragua as well, for that matter) is dryer, and the Atlantic part is more humid with swampy jungles and sometimes impassable roads, loads of insects and a higher probability of infectious diseases. Tropical storms approach from the Atlantic coast as well. But here, it's fresh, breezy pine forests Not bad.

by FERENC IVANICSWe arrived in Santa Rosa somewhat tired. I was in bad shape, though getting better from my intestine infection, István, my brother was starting to feel bad with similar symptoms. We assume it's inevitable, one have to deal with it. We took a break just before Santa Rosa and I started to thumb a newspaper we had found somewhere. Three homicides that weekend. We weren't really surprised, it's like that here in Central America. But there's something that shock us: newspaper and magazine covers. There's a lot of violent deaths in Central America. Homicides and fatal accidents. Photos

by FERENC IVANICSAt a gas station in Ocotepeque we had a conversation with a casual guy. First we tried to distract his interest in how much money we had with us and if we had a gun, and then we asked him how was the road to Santa Rosa. He said that there are some really tough mountains over there and he didn't want to believe that we would walk to Santa Rosa. We didn't really trust his judgment, but did not ask other locals; it's hard to get objective answers here.The next day we started the Ocotepeque-Santa Rosa stage. The man at the gas station was right. Brutal mountains with cloud crowns started

by FERENC IVANICSOn the last mile in Guatemala we had to make a choice: many miles in El Salvador and a few in Honduras, or many miles in Honduras and none in El Salvaror. We took the second choice. We found out looking at the online maps that Honduras has many high mountains and we will zig-zag around them. We changed our quetzals to Honduran lempiras (there's no official change rate at the border, and if you are a "tourist" then, you know), and we headed for Ocotepeque. While walking mildly uphill we discovered something.There's no such thing in Honduras as waste-management or waste-transport

by FERENC IVANICSTamarind is a really fancy and popular fruit. Kind of. Since Mexico it's been on the shelves of grocery stores as a soft drink. The tree is resistant and grows well in full sun. The fruit or pod is a legume, some five inches long and it has a hard, brown shell. The fruit has a fleshy, juicy pulp. Its flavor is, how to put it, unique. It has a quite strong aroma, tastes acidic and mildly sweet. It's so acid that it's impossible to eat more than a handful at a time without damaging your mouth. But anyways, it's fine and produces a great soft drink.

by FERENC IVANICSNatural rubber is extracted from the sap of rubber trees. When we first saw a rubber tree forest, we immediately recognized it, thanks to the pictures we'd seen in story-books and on TV. But it's not the shape of the leaves They make incisions on the bark of the trees and stick a bucket below. You cannot miss it.We picked a small piece from the sap collected in the buckets: It's thick, yellowish, and really elastic. My brother, István said that its smell reminded him the scent of a recently opened pack of balloons. Yep, it smells like that.