Antigua to Honduras and my first earthquake!

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The last few days around Antigua have been very nice. The town is very colonial and has a unique charm to it. It definitely did not disappoint and I see the appeal for many of the ex-pats that have made Antigua home. We had some good food here and our last night consisted of a couple of bottles of wine shared between Cole, Jenaye, Amy and I. The wine was from Argentina and Chile. One bottle was Q20 (about $2.50) and was very drinkable - the other bottle was Q29 (less than $4) and was very excellent, it had a woody flavor which I really enjoy in a bottle of wine. At 7am Mom, Dad, Cole, and Jenaye headed for the airport for their noon flight, apparently traffic from Antigua to Guatemala City is pretty bad in the morning. They have a long travel day landing around 10:30 pm and then heading to Menomonie. I hope all goes well with their return travels. Amy and I set-up a mini-bus trip from Antigua to Copan, Honduras - the cost was $20 per person, a reasonable fare for an expected 5 hour journey. We were going to try to take a bus, but we were told we could only get a bus from Guatemala City and even then we would probably have to wait a day once we were there to actually get on a bus. This information came from the bus station not the people we bought our $20 ticket from so it may be reliable.

Around noon today I experienced my first earthquake! As I understand through the locals and the radio, the epicenter was in Santa Rosa Guatemala, about 80 kilometers south of Antigua. It measured 4.8 in Santa Rosa. Unfortuneatly three people died from the earthquake. Amy has been in quakes before and she said this one felt different than others. The best I can explain is that the ground felt like it was floating and moving on a pendulum. We were waiting for our bus to Honduras to arrive and were in our Hostel at the time it happened. About 20 minutes later we felt the second shake. We're told there was a third but I never felt that one.

Our bus trip to Honduras took 7.5 hours - 2.5 hours longer than we had expected. Most of the hang up was about half way through the trip there was an apparent accident and we were stuck in traffic for about an hour. We never saw the accident when we cleared the traffic. Besides that, the road is very hilly and relatively windy and several 18 wheelers slowed down the trip considerably. The views were tremendous throughout the ride. Our departure from Guatemala cost Q10 (about $1.25) per person and our arrival in Honduras cost Q25 or just over $3. We found a hostel within a block of where we were dropped off and the ViaVia Cafe in town was a great spot to recharge our batteries.

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Photos

Main Street to the Market
This is the main cobble stone street heading to the market in Antigua. The market is amazing!

Old Architecture
Another conolonial building in Antigua

Arch
The antigua Arch.