Tegucigalpa

Well the stories people had told me about Honduras and Tegucigalpa had made me fear the place so much that I felt it was certain I'd get mugged or murdered as soon as I arrived. But it just wasn't like that. At all. I never felt threatened the whole time. I saw poverty but nothing more than I'd seen in any other Central American country. Nicaragua was as poor if not poorer and you only get more problems where you get poorer people. 

I also felt the city was quite pretty in  places you could see the influence left by the Spanish Conquistadors, with the pleasant squares with gardens and grand buildings. 

City view

Los Delores church, to the right is an amazing market with cheap food and selling all sorts of things

The old presidential palace 

It's not!

An old tree with its roots growing above ground 

Inner city living with a riverside view, as Foxtons might try and sell it to you. Just an example of some extreme poverty, but this is in no way unique to Tegucigalpa, in every other city I've seen in Central America. 

Chocolate River....

Some interesting graffiti art

A Collectivo (shared taxi). There's not really any public transport so the way people get about is by sharing a taxi, it costs about 15 limpira (50 cents)for each journey and the taxis go on a set route, so you need to know where you are going!

More graffiti art

There are a lot of guns everywhere. This was just a shoe shop protected by a guy with a huge shot gun. This isn't unique to Honduras tho, it's everywhere in Central America, it's more of a deterrent if anything

A lot of military police too in the centre. I never saw any issues though. If you think about it though you see a lot of police with guns in every country, even England.

On the hill in the background are some of the slums. I visited places like this in Matagalpa. It's shocking to see how people live and then close to it is so much wealth. People say the poverty from these slums is what has caused the issues with gangs. So then remove the poverty and make people happy?

Not quite sure what happened here but the car was basically left abandoned in the street. Until I realized there was someone inside when I looked in, tha gave me a jump! I guess the Aa takes a bit longer to reach Honduras.

A lovely sunrise over the city. We were walking down from one of the nicest oldest areas in the city

A lovely park overlooking the city. The Spanish built , in every town in central and south anerica (I expect) a beautiful park, cathedral and some buildings to show off their architectural style.

Example of nice Spanish architecture 

I'm not saying the city doesn't have its problems though. The hostel we were staying in told us we had to be back before 11pm because so many tourists around the neighborhood in central had been mugged and they didn't want to open the gates late at night and let bad people in. Well all I can say is on two occasions we came back and there were some men in the square by the church and it looked like we were being approached by them. But nothing happened. We always made sure we had a good taxi (talk to cab driver, make sure you like them), rang the hostel before we arrived so they would open the gate. We took precautions. However we also walked the streets fairly late at night, without problems. Also I only ever took out with me what was necessary. Never too much money and I often left my phone at home, just invase of anything happening! We also got Taxi's wherever we could late at night. Basically I was always on high alert, but only because people scared me into thinking like that. In reality everything was fine. It is better to avoid getting into issues there though as the police won't do much. I think you could say the same anywhere right? 

People told me stories of how the gangs sometimes rob whole buses, taxi's pay a tax to the gangs so they can operate. One guy told me some gangsters in a Collectivo taxi had taken him to a bank and made him withdraw money. I'm not saying these stories aren't true, but I didn't see it and I can't prove it. Tegucigalpa just seems like any other city , with problems but not too much to worry about if you are careful.

I would also say Tegucigalpa has a great creative and artist network. I saw a lot of art in the centre, music and culture. It's also got a very cool bar called Cien Anos, where I had a couple of good nights out.

The only reason I can think for it having such a bad reputation is is the media. They just run stories about gangs, death, violence and drugs, and also the inherent corruption in the government. Why? Because this sort of narrative perhaps plays to the international community to get money and help? I don't get what the purpose of scaring people is? I do however get why it's easier to keep the poor poor, uneducated and uninterested in politics because it's easier to control them and stay in power. So basically people told me during an election campaign the party trying to get elected will go to a village and build someone a house. This then makes all the people of that village a supporter but without really changing anything for them in general. 

Also a less well educated country will allow the politicians to get away with more. For example on Friday night I was in Tegucigalpa we ended up in a protest against the current president. Basically what he did was steal all the money from the social security by creating fake companies he tendered contracts to, who did nothing but passed the money to him. This can't actually be proved unless he investigates, which he won't. So people protested against him saying: "Cual es la ruta. Sacar al hijo de puta!"...basically what's the route we need to take now? Get the son of a bitch out of power!

Fortunately there is a burgeoning smart student population who stand up to corruption like this and march against it.