Tegucigalpa

The airport at Tegucigalpa was described to me by the Travel Editor at the Independent – a man whose experience of such places is surely unparalleled – as the most dangerous in the world. Not because there are hordes of balaclava-sporting, gun-toting bandits running about, waiting to make off with innocent backpackers’ maestro debit cards, but because the city is ringed by a series of mountain ridges which make the descent into the central airport somewhat treacherous.

Like many sprawling Latin American cities, the poorer districts cling to these steep mountain-sides. On calm nights, the bright lights of the pueblos create a beautiful, shimmering topographic picture. On stormy nights, lightning surrounds the city, striking the peaks and creating flashes of light so bright it seems as though some huge photographically-inclined God is taking his holiday snaps. On the worst nights, however, things become tense. When it rains, it pours; and when it pours, the city begins to fall apart. Sinkholes appear in the roads as the poorly-consolidated earth begins to give way. In the worst cases, whole areas of the city collapse as the ground liquefies and gushes downslope. Exactly this happened in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch roared its way inland from the Caribbean, killing hundreds as one of the more marginal sections of society was washed from the mountainside.

As is the case in many Latin American cities, and across the developing world, the contrast between the rich and the poor is stark. As the beggars and the windscreen-washers sweat the evening out in their corrugated hillside shacks, the affluent turn up the AC as they watch Major League Soccer on ESPN in their gated, razor-wire protected apartments. Needless to say, my accommodation – with a middle-class family in a fairly safe suburb – is at the more comfortable end of the scale. Each morning I eat breakfast in a small courtyard garden adorned with orchids and populated (staggeringly, in a place as polluted as this) by hummingbirds.

I have no real cause to go to the centre of town – I’ve been there twice, and once is enough. It’s not a pretty place, and the streets have none of the smells, sights and sounds that make Delhi or Bangkok intriguing places. Only a few of the cultural curiosities of Latin America remain. The rest, in Tegucigalpa at least, have been usurped and obscured by Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, and countless other US-imports. Indeed, Tegucigalpa’s glistening night-time terrain is now notable for the sheer numbers of the vast, glowing visages of Colonel Sanders that stare down the major boulevards.

Leave the city, and the landscape changes. The colour returns, as do the cobbled streets and the interesting cultural nuances that make travel rewarding. References to western culture become rare, but you come across them here and there. On one road out of the city and into the mountain villages, I was taken aback to come across what could only have been a public lynching. A group of about 15 kids holding sticks were gathered around a man wearing red and blue, who was hanging by the neck from a tree. The children were battering the body ferociously with their weapons. A group of middle-aged adults looked on, chuckling, as if happily guiding their offspring through a brutal rite of passage. I expressed concern to the mother of the family I am staying with. She broke out in a fit of hysterical laughter.

This rite of passage was one of the assailants’ birthday. The unfortunate lynchee was a dummy stuffed with sweets. Traditionally, the piñata is a pot or other container filled with jelly babies, or whatever Hondurans traditionally treat their kids with. The idea is to beat the hell out of it until it empties its load onto the street, to the delight of everyone concerned. These days the vessel takes whatever shape the child in question wants. This child, quite clearly (on reflection), was bashing the sweets out of Spiderman. I passed the mangled effigy on my way back to the city, a sorry looking red and blue heap abandoned by the side of the road. If it had been a lynching, Spiderman would have had no chance. There certainly weren’t any sweets left.