Throughout Central America, driving at night is dangerous. If you are planning a driving trip through Mexico and/or Central America, the first recommendation you will get is, “Don’t drive at night.” It isn’t just the potential danger of Mexican highway bandits, and I personally will give you 50-50 odds against the bandits any night. It’s the roads, or more importantly, the holes in the roads.
Common adjectives like “dark” and “unmarked” take on a new texture at night in Honduras (the country of my most plentiful driving experience). On major highways between major cities, there will probably be a few white lines to guide you. Anywhere else there will be nothing, but darkness. It becomes very hard to distinguish the road from the potholes.
I can tell my own story of driving at night. We were traveling from Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula, in my own car. We actually purposely left late, mocking the “don’t drive at night” rule. I thought that since it was “major highway between major cities” we would be ok.
It’s normally a 3.5 hour drive. We left about an hour before the sun went down, and it started raining soon afterward. The two white lines on the road were nearly invisible. We hit extensive highway repair beyond Siguatepeque. First, we passed over about 30 miles of new blacktop. No lines, no lighting, in the rain. I almost got nauseous from trying to keep looking for the black road in the black dark, as it curved and turned up and around the hills.
Then we hit the part they were still working on. Another 40 miles of ripped up road. There were still no lines, and of course, no lights, but there was lots of rebar being used to create the new highway structure (nothing would ever get built in Honduras without rebar). By this time, I had turned the driving over to someone else, so I spent the time thinking about the fun I would have changing a tire in this rain and darkness the first time we nicked some rebar.
We made it! It took us ten hours, but we rolled into SPS at about 1 am (whereby we could stop worrying about the road, and start worrying about the bandits). We drove about 30 MPH most of the way, except for some really heavy rain where we slowed down practically to a halt.
Having shared my own somewhat embarrassing story of flaunting cardinal rules in Honduras, I feel free now to share another story about some friends who, we might say, can tell us what happens if you drive fast after dark in Honduras. I got this story from the passenger who was most seriously concussed by the accident, so I do not vouch for its accuracy. It is presented here strictly as dramatic prose.
I first heard rumors of this accident weeks after it had happened. My friend mentioned that there had been an accident, and that it had been so crazy that she didn’t even tell me about it before.
“Craig was almost killed. He was in the Hospital Escuela in Intensive Care for a week.”
Now that was truly stunning news, that the Hospital Escuela actually has Intensive Care, and that it worked well enough to bring Craig back from the brink of death. Hospital Escuela is the big public hospital in Tegucigalpa, and is positively medieval.
“Wow, how is he now?” I asked.
“He’s fine.”
“He’s fine?”
“He’s fine; he’s home and walking around.”
That was really the last I heard of the accident, that it was serious but everyone was ok. I put it out of my mind, until I got a phone call this weekend. It was Craig, and he was in town so he stopped by to see me.
He looked as spry as ever, a bit heavier and had six weeks of recovery from some shockingly competent Public Hospital facial repair and accompanying haircut. Craig immediately told me the whole story.
Three friends were visiting Cantaranas, a picturesque colonial town about 1 hour from Tegucigalpa. Oh wait, that’s not how it starts. It goes . . .an Australian, a Texan and a Honduran walk into a bar. Hmmm, that’s not right either. Well, there were three of them, they are all friends, and they went in their car to Cantaranas for the afternoon one Sunday. Presumably to visit the nice greenhouses and buy some plants, and indeed Craig assured me that he had cuttings and plants in his hands. They were also drinking beer, and probably chasing country girls who would have had no possible way of knowing any better. All in all, it was a simple outing, nice guys, and some new plants to bring home. And of course, as any sane long-term resident would do, they planned to get home before dark, it was just a day trip.
They started back at 7:30 pm, whoops, just a little late, and dark by then. Before leaving Cantaranas, they picked up two local guys who needed a ride home.
The road from Cantaranas is really not a road at all, it is dirt, 1.5 lanes, and hilly and curvy as well. About ten minutes outside of town, the vehicle went airborne over a small rise, and the front bumper hit first. Some bystanders later stated that the car flipped 4 times (another group of innocent locals who will carry the emotional scars of having witnessed gringos driving SUV’s after dark).
There were four walking wounded, including the Honduran friend, the American, and the two strangers who had gotten a ride, one of whom promptly fell into a culvert and injured himself. The other rider disappeared minutes later and was never heard from. Craig was conscious and managed to get himself out of the car, and avoid the culvert, however he was soon upset to realize that he was missing his hair on the top of his head.
The Honduran, relatively uninjured and obviously good in emergencies, put the top of Craig’s head back on and sat on the ground and held it together, while someone called the Fire Department ambulance. It took 40 minutes for the ambulance to get there (I guess Cantaranas must only be about 40 minutes from Tegus), although Craig said it only felt like about five, but allowed that he might have lost consciousness there for a bit.
He remembers the rest of it though, including the ride to town in the ambulance. The attendants kept talking to him to keep him awake. Craig asked where they were taking him, and the attendant said, “Hospital Escuela.”
“People only go there to die!” Craig shouted.
“Well that’s where we’re going.”
Craig asked them to call ahead and have some O negative blood available. Craig is also obviously composed in emergencies. They pulled up to the Hospital, and were soon met by a neighbor, Juancito, who works at Hospital Escuela, and was able to pull some strings so that Craig didn’t have to sit in line with the Plebeians and instead got moved into the observation room where there were only about 12 other people.
They put in 6 pints of O negative blood that they had ready, and spent the night putting the top of his head back together with 500 stitches. They woke him up the next morning to keep working on his face, which took another three hours. After several more days of the finest public health care Honduras has to offer, including MRI’s and CAT scans, they decided he was pretty much ok, except for some internal damage to his lungs, kidneys and liver, which means he can’t have alcohol for a year. Craig says his chronic back pain that he has suffered for years has been instantly alleviated, either by hand of god or by sudden and violent chiropractic realignment.
So after being grateful that no one was seriously injured except for Craig, and he swears he feels better, we can take away a few important safety points from this:
1.Don’t drive at night in Honduras
2.Don’t take rides from strangers
3.In case of traumatic injury, the Hospital Escuela is usually the right place to go. They have a lot of practice with that heavy stuff, and run a 24 hour staff.
Common adjectives like “dark” and “unmarked” take on a new texture at night in Honduras (the country of my most plentiful driving experience). On major highways between major cities, there will probably be a few white lines to guide you. Anywhere else there will be nothing, but darkness. It becomes very hard to distinguish the road from the potholes.
I can tell my own story of driving at night. We were traveling from Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula, in my own car. We actually purposely left late, mocking the “don’t drive at night” rule. I thought that since it was “major highway between major cities” we would be ok.
It’s normally a 3.5 hour drive. We left about an hour before the sun went down, and it started raining soon afterward. The two white lines on the road were nearly invisible. We hit extensive highway repair beyond Siguatepeque. First, we passed over about 30 miles of new blacktop. No lines, no lighting, in the rain. I almost got nauseous from trying to keep looking for the black road in the black dark, as it curved and turned up and around the hills.
Then we hit the part they were still working on. Another 40 miles of ripped up road. There were still no lines, and of course, no lights, but there was lots of rebar being used to create the new highway structure (nothing would ever get built in Honduras without rebar). By this time, I had turned the driving over to someone else, so I spent the time thinking about the fun I would have changing a tire in this rain and darkness the first time we nicked some rebar.
We made it! It took us ten hours, but we rolled into SPS at about 1 am (whereby we could stop worrying about the road, and start worrying about the bandits). We drove about 30 MPH most of the way, except for some really heavy rain where we slowed down practically to a halt.
Having shared my own somewhat embarrassing story of flaunting cardinal rules in Honduras, I feel free now to share another story about some friends who, we might say, can tell us what happens if you drive fast after dark in Honduras. I got this story from the passenger who was most seriously concussed by the accident, so I do not vouch for its accuracy. It is presented here strictly as dramatic prose.
I first heard rumors of this accident weeks after it had happened. My friend mentioned that there had been an accident, and that it had been so crazy that she didn’t even tell me about it before.
“Craig was almost killed. He was in the Hospital Escuela in Intensive Care for a week.”
Now that was truly stunning news, that the Hospital Escuela actually has Intensive Care, and that it worked well enough to bring Craig back from the brink of death. Hospital Escuela is the big public hospital in Tegucigalpa, and is positively medieval.
“Wow, how is he now?” I asked.
“He’s fine.”
“He’s fine?”
“He’s fine; he’s home and walking around.”
That was really the last I heard of the accident, that it was serious but everyone was ok. I put it out of my mind, until I got a phone call this weekend. It was Craig, and he was in town so he stopped by to see me.
He looked as spry as ever, a bit heavier and had six weeks of recovery from some shockingly competent Public Hospital facial repair and accompanying haircut. Craig immediately told me the whole story.
Three friends were visiting Cantaranas, a picturesque colonial town about 1 hour from Tegucigalpa. Oh wait, that’s not how it starts. It goes . . .an Australian, a Texan and a Honduran walk into a bar. Hmmm, that’s not right either. Well, there were three of them, they are all friends, and they went in their car to Cantaranas for the afternoon one Sunday. Presumably to visit the nice greenhouses and buy some plants, and indeed Craig assured me that he had cuttings and plants in his hands. They were also drinking beer, and probably chasing country girls who would have had no possible way of knowing any better. All in all, it was a simple outing, nice guys, and some new plants to bring home. And of course, as any sane long-term resident would do, they planned to get home before dark, it was just a day trip.
They started back at 7:30 pm, whoops, just a little late, and dark by then. Before leaving Cantaranas, they picked up two local guys who needed a ride home.
The road from Cantaranas is really not a road at all, it is dirt, 1.5 lanes, and hilly and curvy as well. About ten minutes outside of town, the vehicle went airborne over a small rise, and the front bumper hit first. Some bystanders later stated that the car flipped 4 times (another group of innocent locals who will carry the emotional scars of having witnessed gringos driving SUV’s after dark).
There were four walking wounded, including the Honduran friend, the American, and the two strangers who had gotten a ride, one of whom promptly fell into a culvert and injured himself. The other rider disappeared minutes later and was never heard from. Craig was conscious and managed to get himself out of the car, and avoid the culvert, however he was soon upset to realize that he was missing his hair on the top of his head.
The Honduran, relatively uninjured and obviously good in emergencies, put the top of Craig’s head back on and sat on the ground and held it together, while someone called the Fire Department ambulance. It took 40 minutes for the ambulance to get there (I guess Cantaranas must only be about 40 minutes from Tegus), although Craig said it only felt like about five, but allowed that he might have lost consciousness there for a bit.
He remembers the rest of it though, including the ride to town in the ambulance. The attendants kept talking to him to keep him awake. Craig asked where they were taking him, and the attendant said, “Hospital Escuela.”
“People only go there to die!” Craig shouted.
“Well that’s where we’re going.”
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Craig asked them to call ahead and have some O negative blood available. Craig is also obviously composed in emergencies. They pulled up to the Hospital, and were soon met by a neighbor, Juancito, who works at Hospital Escuela, and was able to pull some strings so that Craig didn’t have to sit in line with the Plebeians and instead got moved into the observation room where there were only about 12 other people.
They put in 6 pints of O negative blood that they had ready, and spent the night putting the top of his head back together with 500 stitches. They woke him up the next morning to keep working on his face, which took another three hours. After several more days of the finest public health care Honduras has to offer, including MRI’s and CAT scans, they decided he was pretty much ok, except for some internal damage to his lungs, kidneys and liver, which means he can’t have alcohol for a year. Craig says his chronic back pain that he has suffered for years has been instantly alleviated, either by hand of god or by sudden and violent chiropractic realignment.
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So after being grateful that no one was seriously injured except for Craig, and he swears he feels better, we can take away a few important safety points from this:
1.Don’t drive at night in Honduras
2.Don’t take rides from strangers
3.In case of traumatic injury, the Hospital Escuela is usually the right place to go. They have a lot of practice with that heavy stuff, and run a 24 hour staff.
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