The other transport.
Besides city buses, inter-city buses, cars, and motorcycles, there is a popular, low cost mode of transport: the bicycle.

Tegucigalpa’s steep hills discourage bike use, but in flatter parts of the country-side it is very popular.  La Ceiba‘s abundance of cyclists reminds one of China, especially when factories let out, and dense flocks of bicycles commandeer the sides of the streets.

Bikes are usually the old-and-clunky variety. It is amazing to see the apparent ease with which people use them, pumping along resolutely on rocky, dusty, dirt roads under blazing heat. (Folks do enjoy pedaling during morning and evening hours when motorists have trouble seeing them!). Of course, cyclists use no lights, reflectors, or light-colored or reflective clothing. It is common, especially on mountain grades, to see cyclists “hitching” a ride by resolutely grasping the back of a truck laboring uphill.

I am awed to see what people can do on bikes here: A man transports a wife with a shopping bag and two or three children; a first-grader confidently carries two younger siblings on the bar along the edge of a busy highway; a mother balances her infant; in front of her; a man grasps a computer under one arm, or a long bundle of metal reinforcement rods—ends bouncing vigorously up and down—over his shoulder.  What skill!

I even saw (instead of a delivery van) a Bakery Bike! Along with a sizeable basket on the handle-bars, an extended platform over the back wheel accommodated a large box crammed full of bread. The platform also bristled with wooden dowels densely hung with layers of plastic bags of bread.