It's pronounced without the 'h', as comes naturally to any Yorkshireman. The clean English 'h' sound (eg in 'her' and 'him') has no place in standard Spanish, although you do hear it in some parts of Latin America.
Honda is a small town about six hours' bus ride from Bogotá. It doesn't contain any foreigners at all, or at least it didn't until I showed up. None of the hotels inspired any confidence, so I had to settle for a 5-bedroom villa with a private swimming pool. Also I encountered several surprisingly good restaurants. I didn't find any interesting beers, but I did at least manage to get Stella Artois rather than the local common-or-garden lagers.
All this luxury and face-stuffing is costing me thousands and thousands and thousands of Colombian pesos. Fortunately, the Colombian peso is about 5,000 to the pound right now and so it still works out quite nicely. I use cashpoints operated by a local bank called Davivienda because they don't charge any fees. The most you can withdraw in one go is 400,000 pesos, ie eighty quid, and honestly it's hard to get rid of the money no matter how much you eat or drink. This is a vulgar subject on which to dwell, but let's be frank: there's a reason why I've come here rather than spend months meandering around Switzerland or Norway. Exchange rates matter. It's also helpful in terms of personal security, because my pockets never need to contain more than about thirty quid and so I can take a relaxed attitude to the prospect of being mugged.
At the time of writing, the temperature in Bogotá is 19 degrees C, and yet here in Honda it's all the way up at 33 degrees C. The two cities are less than 100 miles apart as the crow flies, but the climate varies due to the difference in altitude: here I'm only 229m above sea level, whereas Bogotá is at 2,625m (and that's before you go up another 500m in the cable car). This close to the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead at midday, and it's hard to find any shade. Fortunately I've been able to cool off in the pool. Thank you for your concern.
It's just a short one today, I'm not staying here long. Back on the road again soon.
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| Honda sits on a very muddy part of the Magdalena, Colombia's principal river. It flows for just short of a thousand miles. |
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| Catedral Nuestra Señora del Rosario |
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| A typical roadside cafe in rural Colombia. The buses stop at places like this so that passengers can refresh themselves. By pure coincidence, it also means the drivers can have a fag... ...and sell off-the-books spare tickets to local randomers for cash. |
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| Private villa and pool. It's tough out here. |
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| Obviously I'm not going to dignify this as an Edd vs Food. The crisps known in the UK as 'Walkers' are called 'Lays' in the USA and Europe. Here they're labelled 'Margarita' as you see, with locally tailored flavours. Some of them are 'onduladas' which effectively means 'crinkle cut'. |
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| Edd vs Food #131 Beef and veg at Cuarenta Puentes (Forty Bridges), Honda. A rare linguistic mix-up when ordering. I was sure I'd asked for chicken. My suspicions were first aroused when they asked me how I wanted it cooked. I didn't quite have the nerve to say "it's chicken, WTF are you talking about?" So instead I just said 'well done please' and then they served the above. It was lush though, so no complaints. |
