Honduras; Country Numeral 50!!

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Next day we were up early, wanted to be on the road by 07:00 as it was another long travel day. Justin had figured out that if we went back to Guatemala, instead of up to Honduras we would save ourselves about 1.5 to 2 hours of driving. So we did 3 countries in one day, all by about 2pm! What was super cool was we stopped at this Artisans village, in Los Palmas to go see a cooperative there. They create everything by hand, from scratch and a non-machine styled factory if you would. Of course all locals are hired, and get paid better than the minimum wage, and work in clean, safe settings and some even bring their babies to work with them.

This cooperative sells to many place in North America; the biggest distributor is Ten Thousand Villages Chain. Several of us fell in love with many pieces and I really wanted to buy these hand painted nesting tables, with 3 local designs on them, and were only $85USD to purchase. But about $150-$175 to ship. Ah, drat. I did find a mirror that I loved, again hand painted so I purchased that as it was small enough I could bring it carry on, plus a few gifts for my 2 youngest nieces. It’s great getting pieces for my nieces and nephews when I can, especially from cooperatives, and local villages as it adds meaning to the items. Everyone was tickled pink by this place and everyone bought something, even Justin got a present for his girlfriend.

Continued on, stopped in some small town for lunch, and then crossed the border, then crossed another border, and finally one more border. Welcome to Honduras! COUNTRY #50 for me! Super excited by that - my goal was to hit 50 by the time I was 50 and I’m a (young) 42. Managed all 7 continents by the time I was 35, so now I think I will aim for 60 countries by the time I’m 50. Could be a challenge - but you know if it’s travel I’m up for it;-)

We arrived into Copan by 4:30 which was better than anticipated; and all stretched our legs, went for a happy hour and headed to the most amazing restaurant called Twisted Tanya. It comes highly recommended in my Lonely Planet guide, and I was super excited when Justin said he had made reservations there as well. Quite often he is guiding YOLO/Basic trips with G, so the demographics are on a much tighter budget so they generally won’t go there. But to give you an idea, it was a 4* maybe even 5* meal for $22 USD per person include soup or salad, entree and desert (everything made from scratch and delicious). Was amazing. And our host was born and raised near Roatan, but had spent several years in NYC so was very fluent and we were treated like gold. Delicious meal - and again I had an incredible salad and hummus and flat bread for my mean, and skipped dessert……. Wanted it fiercely but I am off to do a World Record in Skydiving before the end of the month - and more food means more fall rate which isn’t always a good thing:-)

Copan was basically created for tourists to go to the ruins, so the city is small, but quaint and people again are friendly. they see a lot of tourists here, but they also recognize it brings in a lot of money to the economy and are not jaded by that. Main square of course, lots of dogs running around, and the funniest things I saw was a dog that came running out of a store with a stolen bag of garbage in his mouth. He was high tailing it across the street with his treasure, looking behind him to see if he was caught. I started laughing, and one of the ladies at the fruit stand saw me and was giggling too. The dog got across the street and started digging for gold in there, looking for scraps. There are a lot of stray dogs, but in Honduras at least you can tell they are fed as much as possible by locals as they are not in too rough of shape. Unfortunately there just isn’t money to spay/neuter them hence the cyclical problem of dogs.

This was our longest travel day, so glad it was over, bu so excited I've now been to 50 countries, I will admit. Loved the cooperative, and scenery on the trip was very enjoyable. Tomorrow - the Ruins of Copan!

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Photos

Los Palmas
cooperative, one of the staff hand painting crosses

Los Palmas
Even allowed to bring their children to work - which is great!

Shipment
All this is going to Ten Thousand Villages in Canada to be sold