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Guards
They are everywhere in Honduras, as a protection from organised crimeOn a tough travel day, I took six different buses totalling 18 hours of driving, crossed the border, saw thousands of gunned guards in Tegucigalpa ready to shoot at someone (wishing it was not me), hitchhiked at night in a forest (yes, I could have chosen a better place and time) to finally arrive at my hostel/micro brewery on the edges of lake Yojoa.
On the following day, I went on a bird watching tour with an old English “birdie” who had been travelling the world since 28 years and decided to settle close to that lake, given its beauty and rich bird life. Imagine a huge lake surrounded by volcanoes, covered by a dense forest, a small boat, yourself and a 65 year old English guy with big glasses and a big white beard who would jump excitingly and say: “Look there, on that tree with the Y shaped top, third branch, a Russet-crowned Motmot, probably male, yes, I recognise him, I saw him six months ago…great…let me write this down…”… and you are still trying to find out which tree with the Y shaped top he is talking about…Apparently we saw 40 different species of birds in about
Lake Yojoa
English birdie pointing at a bird in a Y shaped tree. I am obviously not looking in the right direction... 4 hours…I must have seen ten? Anyway it was a fun experience and I headed back to the micro-brewery to continue the tasting of some fruity beer, something I am better at than spotting birds sitting in Y shaped trees!
From Lake Yojoa, I moved closer to the border with Guatemala and stopped for two nights at the Copan ruins, where one of the most important of all Maya civilizations lived for hundreds of years, prospered then mysteriously crumbled in 900 AD. Given that it was my first encounter with the Maya world, I hired a guide for a day who told me stories about Copan’s mysterious Kings with even more mysterious names such as Mah K’ina Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (Great Sun Lord Quetzal Macaw), Smoke Jaguar, Smoke Monkey and Uaxaclahun Ubak K’awil (18 Rabbit). Remarkable sculptures and hieroglyphs can still be seen in what is sometimes called the “Paris of the Maya world”.
I left Honduras after only three days, not really feeling safe among all those armed people and stories I heard about the Maras (organised crime), to finally arrive at my preferred city in all of Central America: Antigua, Guatemala.
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