Great Blue Hole, Honduras
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > the world's most dangerous country: violence, a complication of poverty</h1>
Honduras, a mountainous country in Central America, is located between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, bordering Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It has an area of about 112,000 square kilometers and a population of about 9.6 million.
Originally inhabited by Indians, the advent of the Age of Discovery changed all that. In 1502, Columbus landed here, but due to the high wind and waves here, the fleet was almost overturned, so Columbus named the place "Honduras" (meaning "abyss"), which became a proverb.
In the early 16th century, it became a Spanish colony, and Spanish colonists carried out a brutal massacre of Indians here, with more than 500,000 Indians dying of massacres or smallpox.
With the independence of the United States and the gradual decline of the Spanish colonial empire, Honduras successfully gained independence from Spain in 1821, was incorporated into Mexico the following year, and joined the Central American Confederation in 1823, followed by a never-ending coup d'état.
Honduras, which had 139 coups between independence in 1821 and 1978, was one of the most frequent coups in Latin America.
At the end of the 19th century, American capital entered Honduras and turned it into a huge "banana plantation", and over time, Honduras became a country that relied on imports except bananas.
Such a single economic system can not withstand any storms, and the economic crisis caused by the US stock market crash in 1929 swept the world, and the Honduran economy, which only relied on selling bananas, was hit hard, and since then, domestic uprisings have continued. The frequent occurrence of hurricanes has seriously affected their pillar industry: agriculture that depends on the sky.
Hurricane Mitch in 1998 hit Honduras, killing more than 7,000 people and leaving more than 1 million people homeless, but also destroying a large number of agricultural plantations.
Backed by the United States, the world's largest consumer of drugs, Honduras, a small ill-fated country in the Americas, is naturally targeted by Colombia and Mexico.
Government incompetence, official corruption and even collusion with drug lords have left honduras at the bottom of the ladder living in constant straits, making it the most dangerous place in the world.
Honduras has more than half of its population living below the poverty line, with an under-5 mortality rate of 24 per cent and the highest number of tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS among Central American countries. It is no exaggeration to call Honduras a "hell on earth".
Poverty is like a disease, and the biggest complication it causes is violence.
Honduras has always ranked first in the world in terms of murder rate, according to statistics, from 2010 to 2014, Honduras averaged 20 people murdered every day, and murders in public are commonplace, and many people disappear inexplicably.
A Honduran priest once said helplessly:
"Here, there's no difference between killing people and killing chickens."
It is said that in Honduras, it is not a convenience store that is open 24 hours a day, but a funeral home.
The lifelong desire of ordinary Hondurans is to immigrate to the United States. According to statistics, from 2005 to 2017, more than 100,000 people immigrated illegally from Honduras to the United States every year.
Honduran immigrant army
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > one of the world's top ten geological wonders: the Great Blue Cave of Honduras</h1>
There are many blue caves of different sizes and shapes in the world's oceans, the most famous of which is the blue cave located 60 miles east of the city of Belize, the capital of Honduras. This blue hole is known as the "Honduran Blue Hole" or the "Great Blue Hole in Belize".
During the Ice Age 2 million years ago, water froze in the Earth's ice caps and glaciers, and sea levels dropped dramatically. Due to the erosion of fresh water and seawater, this calcareous zone has formed many karst cavities. The Blue Cave of Honduras is one of the huge caves. When the ice and snow melt and the sea level rises, the sea water is poured into the cave, thus forming a strange blue cave phenomenon in the sea.
The Honduras Blue Cave is about 0.4 km in diameter and 145 meters deep, surrounded by strange rocks and sharks, which is not suitable for ordinary divers, but it strongly attracts diving enthusiasts all over the world, and it has become one of the most prestigious diving resorts in the world. There is a saying that "if you do not dive into this blue hole in your life, even if you are a master, you are in vain".
Both the Blue Hole in Honduras and the violence in Honduras seem to confirm the meaning of Columbus's name for it at the time— "bottomless abyss."
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