1 DAY as a Tourist in Honduras (extreme travel)
If we talk about ——, —— are at the lower of the chain. I mean the high ——. We have them in congress. We have them in the presidential house. We have them in high-rank officers, in the ——, and in the police. Those are the —— ones.
Honduras one of the most —— and —— countries in the world. Constantly dealing with major problems related to corruption and extreme —— ——. And on top of this, only a few months ago, Honduras was struck by two major hurricanes, which wiped out entire neighborhoods. Because of all this compounding suffering, thousands have fled the country headed towards the United States for a better life. Throughout this video series, I will travel all throughout Honduras.
Meet the people, and hear their side of the story. Welcome back to Honduras. So, we're in a city in-between San Pedro and Tegucigalpa. Comayagua, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. This clock behind me is actually the oldest clock in the whole of Latin America. So, it's over five hundred years old, and it was actually in Spain for I think sixty or so years before it came to this town.
This area feels pretty safe and secure. However, at our hotel last night, we heard —— on the street outside our hotel. So, that's Honduras in a nutshell. You've got these nice chilled-out places, and then when you least expect it, things can pop off.
We're going to leave this beautiful colonial town here, and we're going to head up into the mountains. We want to see a different side of Honduras today. See who we can meet up in the hills, see a bit of the nature. So, we've just pulled off the main road here, and we've come across something really cool.
Honduras, you might know, it's a huge producer of coffee. In your supermarket, you probably have Honduran coffee. These are coffee beans. So, they bring them from the coffee plantation, they lay them out along the roadside here to let them dry before they go into the rest of the processing.
So, they're taking huge bags of coffee at the back of this truck here and just throwing them on the road. All these bags were full of coffee. Hello. Pleasure And how long are they left on the road? Depending on the sun, probably two hours. So, we've driven one to two hours. We've arrived in this beautiful kind of... Feels like some kind of sanctuary, but it's actually a cocoa plantation.
There's an Argentinian guy who started it. He's got an interesting story. Coffee, and chocolate, and bananas, this country definitely got the delicious treats. So, this is the cocoa fruit here. So, inside of here, there's grains, and that's where you get chocolate from. So, this is the original fruit of chocolate.
So, we're going to break one of these open and have a look inside. - Okay, you can suck. - Eat it? - Yeah, only suck. - Suck. - Not bite it. - Okay.
Wow. I swallowed. Just went down. I swallowed. So, you toast the grain for 35 minutes, and you move it for 30 minutes constantly. So, he were saying in one Hershey's chocolate bar there's only one of these, and the rest is just additives sugar and powdered milk. - This is pasta de cocoa. - Then you put it back in?
- If you want you can eat. - Like this? - Strong. - Very strong? - Yeah, remember, no chocolate, is cocoa, liquid. - Pure?
- Yeah. - Very rich. So, adding the chocolate to milk. Sugar. Show us your moves. - How is it? - Oh, delicious, man.
Your eyes are on fire. So, he's going to make 70% cocoa chocolate right now. - That's a lot. - Okay, 70% cocoa, 30% sugar. - Do you eat commercial chocolate ever? - Yes, sometimes. - Do you like it? - I like it, but I know it's not chocolate, it's not cocoa. - This is the real 70%? - Yeah, you know.
That's completely different from the stuff you buy in the supermarket. It's tasty, but it's completely different. So, you leave this here for four hours, twenty to twenty-four degrees, and it will solidify and turn into a bar of chocolate. Chocolate bar.
- Beautiful. - Beautiful. Artisanal chocolate bar. - Okay. - This guy is crazy! So, we're here with Damian, and he started this beautiful cocoa plantation here. You came from Argentina and then met a beautiful Honduran girl, and then you never left. What's it like living in Honduras as you were a foreigner and Honduras has a reputation to be ——, right? But do you feel okay living out here in the countryside? Is it safe? Honduras is different. A lot of beautiful landscapes.
I live here in Honduras for six years. Here in my farm is safe. We sleep with the open doors of my house. It's different to the cities. - Sorry for my English. - No, no, it's good. In the countryside it's okay, but in the city, you have to be careful, basically.
Yeah, yes, yes. You're very happy in Honduras, and you love it here, and you're going to stay here in the future a long time? Yeah, I love Honduras. I stay here with... I love my job, with my wife from Honduras. We are happy, we are happy here.
So, we've come to this huge dam here, it's in the national park. We had to go through three checkpoints with —— guys with —— again and give our passports and everything. What's the name of this damn, Omare? Central Hidroelétrica Francisco Morazán. You used to work here? I have spent ten years of my life in this place. - Working inside the dam? - Inside the dam.
I'm a mechanical technician, and I work in maintenance, installation, operation. People come here for tourism on the lake and things? Touristic place, people come to visit. The problem with this hydroelectric power plant is that a lot of habitat of animals is fluted. So, there is a big environmental impact. When you build this kind of project, you have to take into consideration the environment and the people.
Sometimes they're just thinking about the money you make with this. There were a lot of villages and people living there. But we need electricity. So, we come down to the thermal pools, and it just happens that the —— are here doing some training, or swimming, or something.
But pretty unique situation here, at the bottom of that huge dam with the —— in hot pools. Good morning. We spent the night in this mountain lodge here. Completely nestled in the mountains here. Drove up these dirt mountain roads and arrived up here, and this is like a wildlife sanctuary. Honduras is an extremely bio-diverse country. Lots of different species of animals and plants.
Very, very, beautiful country. But I have to say, last night at the reception, we were talking about how beautiful and peaceful this place is, and we look out the window and there were two guys just wearing football uniforms with automatic ——. Everywhere you go, you can't really escape the —— presence or the —— presence here. But it is definitely nice to be up in this beautiful nature here.
Apparently, there's jaguars and mountain lions around here as well, so there's so many different kinds of incredible animals. I'm just gonna kind of ask Omare here, who's been showing me around this whole trip, a few questions about him as a local. He's lived overseas. He's been able to compare Europe and other places to here in Honduras.
So, how has the trip been for you, man? Quite intense. What is your view of Honduras, because I think when you're living here, maybe you get desensitized to certain things, but now you've been away, and you've come back. For me, it's like you've got this amazing beautiful world-class nature, obviously very nice people.
- Then there is that other side, right? - The dark side of Honduras. It's kind of shocking, really. For every average Honduran who's never been out, this is the norm. This is it. This is daily life. You get used to seeing so many guards with ——, and you get used to —— police, and you're not shocked, but things that in other countries will be a huge impact on people, and here is like just another day. If we talk about the ——, —— are in the lower of the chain.
I mean the high —— we have them in the congress. We have them in the presidential house. We have them in high-rank officers, in the ——, and in the police. Those are the —— ones. Are you not worried about saying this kind of thing on camera? No, this has been on the news. This is nothing new.
We know it here in Honduras. I mean, how can we hide the fact that the president's brother was taken by USA authorities and is serving life in prison. Tony Hernandez is in the ——, in prison in the USA. - For what? - For —— ——.
We're talking about tons, tons of ——. We're not talking about kilos. We're talking about ties with the Sinaloa ——. Using the —— personnel and resources to smuggle —— through to the USA. So, everybody knows that.
And that's the president that's in power now, his brother? This has been called a ——- state. Declared internationally, this is ——- state. ——, they are not really the —— ones. The problem with Honduras is this nonsense ——, man. We have not declared conflict. We're not fighting because of religion. We're not fighting Salvadorians or Guatemalans. We're fighting ourselves. This is Hondurans doing it to Hondurans.
For power, for money, this is greed. And they go every four years asking for votes, hanging these signs on every corner, and then they just forget about the people, and they stab people in the back. They betrayed their people. They betrayed their country. Like the one we have now in power. Because the system is corrupted, you know. Poverty, no education, no access to health.
Slums controlled by ——, your daughters taken by the —— leaders. People have to leave their houses abandoned because of ——. For example, if we talk about people going in those caravans to the USA. That even caravan is a soft name. This is a forced migration. It's because of that, because of all of this.
It's because of the ——. It's because of corruption. It's because of no health care, no education, no infrastructure. Nobody wants to leave the place that you were born. Nobody wants to leave family behind, places you're familiar with.
Friends and people are willing to go thousands of kilometers on foot and face all kinds of —— on the way just because... Yeah, the American Dream this is no longer an American Dream. Before, it was like, because you want to have a better life, and because you want to...
No, this is forced. These strong feelings, do you think that they're held by many people in this country? Of course, nobody wants to see your brother, your sister, someone else's mother ——, I mean just like that. But how do we fix this? For that, I don't have an answer.
I think education, educate the next generation to be different. How do we teach honesty, man? How do we teach empathy? Gives people a sense of community and work together and have the same goal. How do we teach integrity? That's what we need. We need educated people with ethics.
Not to make money to go shopping in Miami, or go to the Alps and skiing because we have people like that in Honduras and the rest of us starving. —— and poverty, when we talk about this, we talk about the —— rate. But what about living with fear? What about worrying about not being able to put food on the table, man. What about that? One woman will be —— every thirty-six hours. Every thirty-six hours a woman will —— violently.
Pepe Lobo, the last president before this one. So, they took money from the Honduran social security institute. More than 300 million lempiras to finance the campaign of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who now is president.
But then, he was president of the congress, and then they made up companies, non-existent companies with contracts to provide medicine to the hospitals, and then with flour pills. They are baking flour into a pill press and then sold it as well as some medicine? Three thousand people —— because of that. Nobody is in jail paying for that. They accepted that, we know the names of the people, nobody pays for that. Then he became president, once he got in power he changed the rules to control over the congress, to control the supreme court. Change the game rules to be re-elected because he was not allowed to re-elect.
Now, he's been re-elect and who knows where he goes from here. He achieved El Patron goal. He wanted to be president. Now we have it.
Maybe in the future, Netflix is going to do a special about Juan Orlando Hernandez. Can you explain a bit about the El Patron goal just for people that aren't familiar with ——? El Patron is Pablo Escobar Gaviria. He wanted to be president of Colombia. So, you're saying —— people get into politics to have the control. Yeah, of course. So, we've met a nice local lady called Betty. I've heard a lot of people say that being a woman in Honduras is very difficult, and there's lots of inequality and things.
So, would you mind just telling us what it's like being a woman in Honduras and the issues that you face? Okay, nice to meet you, Nick. Being a woman in Honduras... Even when you are born, in your family they're not expecting a girl. They're expecting a boy. They want something to support the family.
And in Honduras the woman, they don't have too much opportunities. Education, work, there is a lot of discrimination. The woman could do the same things as a man at work, but the pay is much, much less. The women are demanded to do much things.
They have to work harder. They work harder get paid less. Yeah. And my friend was telling me that there's like a woman —— every thirty-six hours in Honduras. There's a lot of women —— in their homes, in the streets. We are very vulnerable.
- So, women are viewed as down here. - Down. Nobody knows what happened when these women are ——. When we are ——. It could be my sister, my daughter and we don't know. - No answers, no reason. - There is a lot of impunity about that. - So, we are just numbers. - And so do you feel safe living in this country as a woman?
- No. - Not at all. It isn't, there is too many —— ——, ——, and ——. - You studied in the United States, right? - Yeah And so can you tell me the differences between being a woman in the USA and being a woman in Honduras? It was so different. It's just the way that women are treated there, is equal to men, and they are allowed to dress differently. We in Honduras, if they're with a short, they will think that you're a ——. You cannot dress like that. You cannot express yourself.
Women cannot express, say what they want or what they think. They are shut down, because they'll say it doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't really matter what a woman thinks. What do you think needs to happen for this to change? The woman's, we have to begin the change.
Taking our kids to school to learn different things. - Education. - Education. We need... I didn't want to say the government to take a very serious politics to invest in education and teach equality. The —— is generated because kids at the age of fifteen, sixteen don't have anything to do.
They are not at school. They are not at work. So, they are just maybe taking ——. All of that will generate more ——, so we need to change that and change the minds of all people and take the girls to school. And that is the end of my trip to Honduras. It's a heavy episode, I know, but I wanted the local people to have their say of the country and share what they wanted to share about what the nation of Honduras is facing. Very emotionally, impactful trip.
Again the people are incredible, unrelatable hardships but such warm and hospitable people. I want to give a huge thank you to Omare for showing me around his country, putting himself out there in these situations in order to share the story of Honduras. Omare has a YouTube channel.
He does a lot of bicycles touring in different countries around the world. So, I'll leave the link below if you want to follow him on YouTube. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next video, might be in a couple of weeks. I'm currently organizing that trip now.
Thank you Honduras, for having me. It was extremely heavy, a life-changing trip, that's for certain. If you want to stay up to date with my travels outside of YouTube, you can follow my Instagram here at indigo.traveller with two L.
Take care of each other, and I will see you soon. Thank you for watching. In case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
2021-04-28 07:11
