Honduras is a seemingly lawless country. There are no police to pull you over for speeding. The only place you are likely to be stopped in rural areas is at military checkpoints. In my experience the military were not threatening although you did not take pictures of military establishments from what I heard.
The legal system operated very differently in Honduras. My father was robbed of payroll money by a professional crook. He would throw things off of trucks as they laboriously wound their way up the mountains. My parents found out who had robbed them and quickly caught the two junior members which had been hired by the professional crook. They were on their way to church with their Bibles and their half of the money.
The professional thief was harder to deal with. He ended up threatening to kill my parents and their plant manager. Respectable members of society told my parents that they should simply kill him. We learned that professional criminals would only stay in jail if you paid to keep them there.
Honduras has much to explore in terms of nature. There are many different species of birds. Where we lived there were pine forests but up in the northern part of the country there were many different species of plants. Lake Yojoa has an incredible diversity around it. One of my father's friends had done research on the lake. We went swimming there and my mother took a long swim only to be told later that there were alligators in the lake. On the way there was a beautiful overlook of the Comayagua valley. Honduras has does not have a central mountain range but rather the mountains are scattered all over. Roads wind in and out of the mountains.
On the way to school everyday we would descend from the mountain we lived on down into the valley of Amarateca where my father had his factory. We then pass through another town and then start climbing up another mountain range where there was a military checkpoint. Cars rarely got stopped there. They military seemed more interested in people riding the buses. As an American I got left alone. At this same point the Hondurans tried to put in a toll booth but did not bother to widen the road and a truck simply took it out one day. We would then descend down into another valley where the capital city was. After going through the city we climbed up another mountain to get to school.
While my brother and sister were still there during the summer vacation we took a trip to Guatemala. The roads did not go straight there but instead went north and then south. It would have been faster to go south and then west into El Salvador but that was not safe. We drove through some beautiful, lush country-side and then stayed the night in the town of Copan where there are Mayan ruins. I remember the colorful birds with their beautiful birdcalls. I was impressed by the size of the structures the Mayans had built without our machinery. My sister took a picture of my brother and I in the root of a huge banyan tree growing on the top of a mound-covered temple.
We crossed the border on a dirt-road. The border-crossing seemed very primitive. You could see the border on the mountain as the rows of corn were not evenly planted on both sides. There was a marker which announced the crossing and a small building where your passport got stamped. My sister was enchanted by people carrying baskets on their heads. I remember noticing a car without its windshield driving by and joking about automatic air-conditioning.
When we got into Honduras I remember driving through Guatemala City which seemed modern enough and then going to Antigua which was the old capital. It had gotten shaken by an earthquake and so the capital had been moved elsewhere but there was still some impressive architecture there and we looked at rugs being sold in the town center. From there we went on to Lake Atitlan. I remember winding down the mountain into the town we stayed there. It is a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. Unfortunately I don't remember much more of this experience though.
On the way back to Honduras we some real drama as we were driving in a rainstorm and a landslide occurred from the gash cut into the hillside to build the road. One of these hit the fan-belt and drove it into the radiator forcing us to stop for the night. We ended up staying with a mechanic and his family sleeping on the floor.
I attended an evangelical school. It was not what I would have chosen as I grew up as a Quaker but my father thought it was the best school academically. Before I went there I was nervous reading student comments that the best thing about the school was the religion. I read the Bible cover to cover down there and read the book The Screwtape Letters. I read a Christian daily study guide with daily lessons. I became concerned about whether my family was saved or not.
I did have doubts though as I realized that each strict religious sect felt that they had the only path to heaven and that everyone else was damned. I figured that they could not all be right and if some were wrong then… I also had trouble believing that all other religions were wrong and that so many people could be deluded. On the way home I changed the words of the songs we sung at school in ways that would have shocked my teachers. My younger brother sang the altered verses along with me.
If you are wondering about the climate I was never cold living in Honduras. We lived at first at 4,000 feet elevation and later at 2,000 feet. I was never hot at night but in the middle of the day the capital city could get hot and at 9:00 in the morning on Thanksgiving weekend San Pedro Sula, which at sea level up near the north coast was already hot.
There is much more I could say about my experience living in Honduras. Since it has been such along time since I have been there it will take me a while to piece together my experiences. I intend to add the story as I remember more. I hope though that this piece has given the reader some insight of what the experience is like.