Travels in Honduras (Copan)

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We boarded a Hedman Alas bus at 5:00am for the five hour trip to Copan. These buses are luxury buses with different classes of service on board. Executive Class Plus is the most expensive class and has the most comfortable seats. They are more comfortable than those on a train or plane, including first class. They recline almost horizontal so that it is very easy to catch up on the sleep that one missed by getting up so early in the morning in order to board this bus. Lucky for us, the bus station was only a few blocks down the street from our hotel. Breakfast was included and the bus made a brief stop at Burger King for some ready made breakfast. While my wife slept, I carried on a conversation with an expat, a retired Air Force sergeant, sitting just across the aisle. Prior to crossing the border separating Guatemala and Honduras, passports and fees are collected by one of the employees for processing. Once this is done, Copan is only about a half hour away. Security is very good on these buses and also at the bus station. A guard rides on board with an assault rifle and other personnel carry handguns.

After arrival at the bus station, we took a tuk tuk to our hotel in the town of Copan. The place reminded me of a border town between the U.S. and Mexico. After settling in at the hotel, we took another tuk tuk to the Copan ruins which are only a couple of kilometers away. At the entrance to the ruins are these colorful parrots which are usually perched in a tree. However, they can be persuaded to come out of the tree by food which is furnished to them in abundance by the tourists.

The Copan ruins are not as spectacular as those at Chichen Itza and Tikal, however the area they cover is quite large. The temples and structures here were not as tall as those in Chichen Itza and Tikal. As in Tikal, we encountered no mosquitoes and there weren't many tourists. However, we did a lot of walking in order to see the ruins at the park and some of it was on terrain that wasn't all that level. As evening approached, we walked back to the entrance and took a tuk tuk back to our hotel. The next day we boarded the bus for a six hour ride to Antigua.

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