Day 23: Travelling to Honduras

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We were up relatively early this morning for our big travel day out of Guatemala and into Honduras. We were told by our tour guide, Jacob that the coffee shop up the road does good breakfasts. What we didn't factor in was the fact that all our tour group were, of course, going to go to the same place for breaky too. So when we arrived there wasn't actually much food left and because there was only one girl behind the counter serving everyone, she was a little run off her feet! We finally got a couple of lattes and some banana bread to go and rushed back to our waiting minibus. Rach really liked her coffee and said it was one of the best ones she's ever had!

We bumped along the cobble stone streets and out of Antigua. We hit morning peak hour traffic in the big city of Guatemala City however were heading against the flow so soon made it out. Along the way we saw people cooking up who-knows-what on a little grill on the side of the road, then proceeded to sell their food to the waiting traffic. There was also women walking through the stationary traffic, trying to sell fruits and drinks from baskets on top of their heads. Was quite funny. Soon we were out amongst the twisting and winding roads up into the mountains. We were heading north east and towards the Honduras border.

We arrived at the 'border control' area which consisted of a big car park and a couple of administration buildings. I was surprised that there wasn't more armed security dudes however there were a couple kicking about. We had pre-filled out our customs and immigration forms which were pretty easy to fill out however did not stop a really annoying woman on our tour asking what to write for every question (“what do we put for mode of transport...land, air or by sea?” oh my god, we are in a freaking mini-bus, what do you think!). This went on-and-on for nearly every question and this woman is a bloody principal! We handed our forms and passports to Jacob and he went off to get us all checked in. What was funny was that nobody ever came to count us or to make sure we weren't 'sneaking' anybody across the border. Funny what you get used to in Australia/NZ.

We all made it legally across the border and into Honduras. It wasn't a very long drive after that and we made it into a quant little village called Copan. Such a cute little place with colourful houses again and cobble streets with a nice little town square in the middle. We quickly checked into our hotel and met promptly for the walk to lunch cos we were all starving after the 6 hour bus ride.

Our lunch was really nice, I had a mince beef burrito and Rach opted for the chicken nachos. Our guide talked to us about the optional excursions on offer in Copan and we got to know some of our fellow tour group. After lunch, Rach and I and a couple of the other girls decided on heading to Macaw Mountain. So we jumped into the back of a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled 'taxi'😉 and took off. The road was super bumpy and at one point I thought I was going to be thrown right out!! We arrived 10 mins later and lucky all my teeth hadn't rattled out.

It cost us U$10 to get in, grabbed a map and started our self-guided tour around the park. Macaw Mountain is a bird sanctuary for all sorts of native birdlife and flora. The park itself is a rain forest and as we entered we could hear different birds squarking and singing throughout the park. There was so many different types of birds that I can't really remember all their names however the one that stands out was, of course, the macaw's. We walked through one pen that had these beautiful coloured birds perched above us. Rach doesn't really like birds in groups so hurried through worried that they'll come swooping down on her, hehe.

We came across another pen that had tucans inside. Now these are cute little creatures, with their brightly coloured beaks. I kept looking at them and thinking, now that cannot be natural! We saw others birds like owls (that look scary and freaky), hawks and different types of parrot that kept saying 'hola' to us. As we were walking through, we could hear thunder in the distance and the clouds started to get a little threatening whenever we could see the sky through the rain forest. We got to the final enclosure when the heavens opened and a tropical storm erupted. A park ranger guy came down on his motor bike and told us that we'd have to hurry back as it was dangerous to be out here with all the lightening going on. He did, however, give us an opportunity to have a photo with a macaw perched on our arms and got some ripping photos. When we wriggled our wrist, the macaw would open his wings as if to take flight! Was pretty cool.

We ran back to the gift shop in the pouring rain and got absolutely soaked. There was a waiting tuk-tuk to take us back into town and given these things don't really have sides, Rach got even more wet (I was safely warm and dry in the middle seat, hehe). We got back to our hotel and dried off.

For dinner we wandered back into town and went to this place where the waitresses carried our meals out on their heads! We were still pretty full from lunch so just had appertisers which were massive enough anyway. We called it a day pretty early given we were up so early, grabbed an ice-cream on the way home and headed home to bed.

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