Copán Ruins and La Cieba, Honduras

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Well, I'm in a funky hotel here in La Cieba, Honduras waiting to catch the boat to the Island of Utila tomorrow morning. It's really hot and humid here, which I'm not used to lately. I don't have guide book for this town, so I'm winging it and thus the funky hotel. It's only one night. I hear that computer costs are sky high on the island which is an hour ferry ride from here, so you'll probably have to wait until I get back to a computer back on the mainland to hear how the diving went.

Yesterday I went to the Copan Ruins just on this side of the Honduran border. The ruins were nice, but small. They aren't Mayan but similar enough for me. The sight was small but impressive with some very well preserved stone carvings. Next time I come I'll have to go to the ruins at Tikal which I hear is massive.

It's funny the things you notice when you cross a border. Honduras is much cleaner and modernized. The people here seem a bit better off. The long distance buses are real luxury buses, not chicken buses. Prices are a lot higher here too. It just goes to show what over 30 years of civil war can do to a country like Guatemala. Still I think I like Guatemala better, the people are much more colorful looking and they have a much warmer feel about them.
Anyway, the people are very different from Guatemalan. I'm having a hard time understanding the Spanish here... they talk too fast and they have a different accent that totally throws me off. What makes the people interesting here is that there are a lot of black people here. They are the Garifuna people with their own African based language that are decendants of freed or shipwrecked slaves. I hear that once I get to the Island that they speak English with a broad Carribean accent. What a change from the cold, rainy mountians of the Guatemalan highlands!

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