Gracias: The Cobblestoned Town with No Cobblestones

After my bad experiences in El Salvador I needed a change of pace and a small and hassle-free town where I could simply recuperate for a few days.  Gracias seemed to fit this bill perfectly.  The Lonely Planet book describes it as a small, tranquile, cobblestone town that used to be the capital of all Spanish-conquered Central America and where the pace of life along its cobblestone streets rarely moves much faster than walking.  They were right on the last point.  Not much moved faster than walking.  However, the town in no way resembled a former capital, nor were any (?) of its streets cobblestoned (well, maybe two).

With nearly 12 hours spent in transit and at a police station, once I got to Gracias in the dark, the last thing I wanted to do was to look for cheap accommodations on the various no-named streets.  Instead I decided it was high time for a bit of a treat and headed directly to a slightly fancier hotel.  For $14-19 I had a nice room with ultra comfortable beds that were made up every morning, a scalding hot shower, TV, beautiful terrace restaurant and an onsite wireless internet connection. Not a bad place to spend a day doing virtually nothing.

On my agenda for the next morning was to find a replacement alarm clock.  With my iPhone gone and needing to wake up at 5am on the following morning, this was a crucial piece of business.  It proved to be quite the challenge.  I probably did 3 loops around town poking my head into every electronic store and supermarket as well as their local market in the search of either an alarm clock or a watch with an alarm.  Finally, after nearly an hour of roaming the town I stumbled across a guy selling watches on the street and asked him for the smallest and cheapest watch with an alarm clock.  He showed me a honken black plastic watch that apparently had an alarm.  Yet after a few tests, it became evident that the alarm did not function. He then showed me a silver Casio, proclaiming it to be authentic, beautiful and water resistant to 10 meters: all assertions that I found highly doubtful.  However, the alarm worked, albeit very quietly, and I managed to haggle him down to $8.

With my errand completed and the entire town toured by 10am, I had not much to do.  As I’ve mentioned, Gracias was a very small town.  It had a decently sized central square, but there was not much going on there.  Its couple churches had the doors locked.  And there is only so many times that you can walk down the only two cobblestone streets in town.  If you were to walk down every single street of Gracias, it might take you a total of 1.5-2 hours. Since it seemed like it was going to rain, I retired to my fancy hotel, lay down in the hammock and continued reading the book which had doomed my iPhone, yet this time on my laptop.

The rest of the day was spent in similar fashion.  A short excursion somewhere to the outskirts of town, followed by a quick retreat as the rain would begin to fall, followed by yet another siesta either in the hammock or on the terrace.  I continued this cycle until the evening and on the following day packed my bags up and headed out to catch a 5:30 or 6:00am bus to San Pedro de Sula.