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Published: October 17th 2011
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After leaving the chilled relaxing ways of El Tunco beach it was up early again to catch the bus to Copan, Honduras, entering country number 5 of the trip. The shuttle bus was due in at 6am, and finally got there 7:15am…. We have now become numb to late running buses, and as long as they turn up at some point, we are happy.
This journey to Honduras was to be a strange one, in that even though El Salvador boarders Honduras, we headed back into Guatemala to get to Honduras from there, as it would be quicker? I’m always happy when bus routes are amended to be quicker; however after our border crossing incident mentioned previously, we didn’t really fancy crossing two borders in the matter of hours! Turns out however that the bodge job done on our Passports before worked a treat and we had no hassle what-so-ever…Bonus!
Our only mainland destination in Honduras was Copan Ruinas, to enable us to visit probably the last of the Mayan ruins we would see in Central America. We decided only to stay the night, as we were now on a tight schedule in order to see all the things
we wanted to see in Central America, and therefore there was to be no more ‘wasted days’ for this part of the trip, we are on a mission.
The visit to Copan started off a little shitty in that the Hostel we liked the look of turned out to be full. Luckily for us though, the manager was very helpful, and guided us to another hotel that was the same price as theirs, was run by a friendly small family and was right on the road to the Copan Ruins just 15 mins walk away. Great, the poor start was looking up! That was of course until upon bidding farewell to the manager who had so kindly helped us, I walked face first into a hanging pot that was put right in the centre of the exit door….ouch. To be fair it wasn’t really my head that was bruised, but more my ego, when everyone in the cafe of the hostel saw my little slapstick mishap to which I’m sure I heard more than a few sniggers. But I brushed that off, and we set off for the 8 blocks or so walk with the backpacks. My luck continued,
when one block away from the Hotel, I missed a curb that I was trying to step onto and with main backpack on back, small backpack on front, and holding the bus food bag, I fell arse over tit in what seemed to be in slow motion raising an ill needed chuckle again, this time from my loving fiancée….Thanks Donna. I wasn’t sure I could take much more humiliation for the day, and thankfully we finally made it to the Hotel without any more Mike related disasters!
So, we put down the bags, and set straight off for the Ruins of Copan, by walking down the road that our Hotel was on. Sure to his word, the entrance was about 15 minutes from our Hotel, and it was nice to arrive somewhere and not be aboard a bus! The Mayan ruins here are not to the scale of some of the others that we had seen so far, however the detail that remains on a lot of the structures is pretty well preserved, so it’s one of the best kept of the Mayan sites. After walking round the site for a while and soaking up the amazing history that
was on offer, I hit a bit of a squelchy patch in the mud in Flip-flops where my foot got filthy, and it seemed that my day of bad luck was continuing. That was until I realised that when my Flip-flop flapped back up against the ball of my heal I splattered Donna full on in the face with mud! Hilarity prevailed (for me at least), but it was time for me to turn round and face the music ….. It was then Donna did something I was not expecting…. she started creasing up laughing, it seems Donna realised that I had in-avertedly won my revenge for when I was mocked and laughed at for falling off the curb earlier in the day…things were looking up!
Wildlife was the next thing at the ruins that was a nice surprise, when we came across several, what I thought were Parrott’s, however were actually Macaw’s. The difference? No idea, but either way, these birds are fantastic to the eye. Amazing colours, and really quite large, we couldn’t help but love them, and spent ages trying to get photos of them. Toucans they were not, but they are a very close
second for me.
That evening we attempted to find a restaurant that we had been recommended from a couple of Canadian fellas who were at La Guitarra with us in El Salvador. It was a restaurant that had a major feature that lured us there, and that was that it sold great wine, and did a great Cheese board. It may have only been 6 weeks or so since we had last sipped a vino or two, but Wine is not something we have purchased since being in Central America. This is partly due to the backpacker lifestyle we are leading in that beer is the only beverage that should be consumed if not drinking Coke or Sprit, but also because fiscally it doesn’t bode well when receiving the bill at the end of a meal on our budget! However, tonight was the night we would break all restrictions, and go all out and order ourselves a couple of glasses of Red, and a Cheeseboard of three international cheeses, and I have to say, it was heaven! We even loved the goats cheese that we were convinced we would hate. So Honduras was off to a great start.
Next stop on the itinerary is the Bay Islands, where I plan to try and finish my Open water dive course that was started 3 years ago, and never finished. Therefore……. to the beach again!!
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Wendy Jupp
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Very amusing
Yet another great blog with lovely pictures although when looking at the one of Donna I thought what has she got on her neck and then of course I read on, gald she saw the funny side. Those macaws looked such beautiful colours.