We hadn’t planned to spend much time in Honduras…we hadn’t heard great reports but we had heard great reports about Mexico so wanted to keep some weeks at the end of our trip to explore southern Mexico. But after spending so much time inland in Nicaragua we decided we needed some more beach time on the Caribbean again. So we unwillingly spent a horrendous night in Tegucigalpa (the capital)…in a mouldy room and being abused by cab drivers who kept shouting at us “do you know where you are? You’re in Tegucigalpa!! What kind of address is that?” We quickly realised that not one cab driver in Honduras knows anything about the town or city they’re in. We quickly packed our bags the next day and hopped on a bus to Tela on the Caribbean coast. After mouldy and cockroach infested rooms of the last few weeks we decided to treat ourselves to a lovely sea view hotel room. My oh my was it worth it…clean rooms, soap and toilet paper in the bathroom, and (what all travellers dream of) TOWELS!! We were in heaven. We washed up and quickly dug in to a feast of lobster and prawns washed down by a few Port Royal beers. The next day we checked out the beaches which still held the scars of the many hurricanes to visit years before. It was quite obvious we were getting closer to Mexico when it was tortillas and refried beans for breakfast. But it was a relaxing few days and we were happy to be back by the sea. We spent an interesting day visiting the second largest botanical garden in the world followed by an evening of my first Superbowl. That was fun! The next day it was time to move on to visit our first Maya Ruins in the town of Copán Ruinas. Because of bus times in most of Central America (buses seem to stop running between towns at about 4pm), we missed the last bus to Copán…to save time we decided to go to the nearest town so we could move on quickly the next day.
The town is called La Entrada and I quote from the Lonely Planet “something must have gone wrong for you to be stuck in La Entrada”. Yup, that’s all I’ll say about that. We arrived safely to the lovely town of Copán the following morning. The town is quite small, only a half an hour from the Guatemalan border and very clean and pretty. The first thing we noticed about it was that it was missing all the grotesque ‘Coca-Cola’ and ‘Pepsi’ advertising that you see on every single restaurant and bar in the rest of Honduras. We were quite pleased. We spent the afternoon visiting a butterfly sanctuary which wasn’t as boring as you’d think and then off to explore the town. The following morning we set off to the ruins which were also much more exciting than we’d expected. A lot bigger than we thought as well and we came out thinking the Mayans are pretty damn cool. After a viewing of “The King’s Speech” (put on by our hostel) it was early to bed for our 6am shuttle to Antigua, Guatemala the next morning.(pic1: view from our hotel in Tela; pic2: at Copan ruins)
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