Travel days seemed to be equally as adventurous as any other days in Central America. My bus ride from Antigua to Copan (Honduras) was no exception. I couldn’t think for the life of me why the minibus had to leave so early (430am). Needless to say I wasnt too thrilled about catching a minibus but at $10US it was a hard to deny it was a steal. In my tired state I somehow drew the short straw and had the worst seat in the little 10 seater. In the middle with no leg room (im chopping them off soon) and no head rest, my head bobbed back and forth as it does when you awkwardly sleep on buses. The jolts that wake you at the point where your neck refuses to bend any further added to my frustration. I counted twice that I actually awoke to my head colliding with an elderly Spanish lady in front of me. At around 9am the bus driver pulled over and asked us to get out. He conceded that he didnt have a license and he would have to purchase one before we reached the border. My western mind assumptions allowed me to believe that when you purchase a bus ticket you assume the bus driver is licensed. We were in the middle of nowhere. Where was he going to get this license? Our bags were still in the bus and after he failed to come back after two hours I began to imagine wearing the same t-shirt for the next few months. Thankfully he eventually arrived with a fresh license (cue cereal box jokes) and we were on our way.
Oddly the Guatemala-Honduran border crossing was the most pain free border crossing in this region and after negotiating with money changers, stamping passports and a spending 20 more minutes of the bus we had arrived at Copan.
The small quaint town of Copan was famous for its Mayan ruins a short walk from town. It was also to be my only stop in Honduras as I was quickly running out of time. The ruins themselves were quite spectacular. The stones carvings were much more intricate than other ruins I had visited and the site itself was quite well kept. Interestingly a whole wall had to be replaced as the Copan river had almost wiped out an entire plaza in the ruin structure. When archeologists discovered the site the first task was to move the river back, far away from the wall.
Other activities in Copan included a visit to the local Butterfly farm, a morning spent at their Independence Day parade and copious quantities of rum as an American I met at the hostel had recently purchased a restaurant in town.
After a few days I departed Copan bound for the nation’s capital Tegucigalpa en route to Nicaragua. I thought I would have to spend a night in the capital, something I had been told by travelers to avoid. I did however sit next a very kind Honduran lady on the bus ride that convinced me to travel further south with her family (four teenagers who all spoke English with a thick American accent) to their town of Danli. This was one step closer to the border and after being stared at by nearly everyone in town ( I dont think many of them had seen a white person before), I downed a banana and peanut butter sandwich for dinner and caught an early nights sleep ready for another boarder crossing the next day.
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