Monday, November 9, 2009

At the Honduran border


From the Guatemala highlands, I traveled on to Tikal, then back to Guatemala City where I got a bus to Honduras. There were ruins I wanted to see and I wanted to visit the Bay Islands. The war in Nicaragua was going on as well as Salvador.

At the bus station in Guatemala City the ticket seller refused to sell me a ticket to Salvador. "There's trouble there," he said. So I went to Honduras. My friend, Epigmenio, joined me.

Somewhere along the way a father and his retarded daughter got on. Later soldiers searched the bus. People got on and off. Then we heard the crying. The bus driver stopped and walked all over the bus. The father had abandoned his retarded daughter.

People next to me said this happens all the time. The father had just walked off the bus. We traveled all day, then got dropped off somewhere near the border, a village where we slept on straw mats and ate a chicken someone killed for us. At five in the morning a pick up truck appeared and we rode in the back across the border.

Once in Honduras we walked around and found these cows. I took this picture of Epigmenio with the cows. It was the first moment of peace after a long, difficult ride.

3 comments:

  1. what's scary is how little has changed. from looking at my photos from mexico, taken just two years ago, you would never know how much time has passed. it was so hard for me to look at animals that thin.

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  2. And this was 1979...I want to go again.

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