The impact on the old pirate island of Roatan is more than violent – and probably exactly what every pirate has experienced for hundreds of years: a small conspiratorial community beyond any law against the rest of the world, and a bottle of rum to boot! Today, the world voluntarily comes to the pirate island of Roatan. Unfortunately, they don’t realise how much more pirate than victim they are now. The English pirates once used Roatan as a base for their raids on the Spanish crown colony 50 kilometres to the south. Today we use it as the last wild west before sunrise. The capital of Roatan is named after the B-class pirate Coxen. The “Hole” behind it is the last bastion against the property mania. Blackbeard grabs Gilette and robs whatever the gringo’s greed for a slice of pirate paradise will allow. (more…)

Our 750 kilometre road trip across Honduras begins at two o’clock in the morning near the border in Leon, Nicaragua. I don’t pay much attention to stories. I’m travelling. Searching for the truth. And then write about it. Honduras is the second exception in the almost 80 countries I have travelled to so far. Without exception, every story about Honduras advised against a three-day journey by public bus.

I book a non-stop trip by minivan for $80. At the border to Honduras, the roof luggage is given a rain cover at five in the morning. A well-travelled Yank teaches me better: “If there wasn’t a tarpaulin over the luggage, it would be stolen straight off the roof at traffic lights,” he tells me, while I exchange a few dollars at the usual border dung rate with a man with a ten-centimetre bundle of lempiras. (more…)