Honduras, the whole two days of it!

#7
I am now just over my first month travelling in Central America. On day 33 I visited my fourth country, Honduras.

After nearly four weeks in Guatemala, I decided to break away from lovely Antigua to go to Honduras. I hadn't initially thought/planned on going to Honduras but we decided to head to Copán Ruinas town just over the border with Guatemala for a couple of days. The small town is most famous for the Mayan Ruins, also called Copán. The ruins are famous for detail in the structures that are still present. The other part of Honduras that tourists tend to visit are the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras, it is well known for really good (and cheap) diving. However I have just over five weeks to make it down to Colombia so I decided to stick to heading down to El Salvador after Copán.

We had arranged to get a shuttle from our hostel in Antigua to Copán, collecting us at 4am the morning after we got back from our volcano hike. After a good nights sleep in hostel Matiox, my alarm went off at the sickening time of 3.30am. The bus journey there was pretty easy and there were only six of us on the small shuttle bus. It was pretty hard to sleep though as the roads were so bumpy and there was a lot of erratic overtaking and accidents along the way. We got to the border at about 10am and I was really surprised with how easy the crossing was. We left all our bags on the bus, got our exit stamp from Guatemala then walked a few metres up to Honduras immigration where there was no queue and we got our entry stamp and tourist slip for Honduras after paying $3 USD entry fee or the equivalent in Guatemalan quetzals or our new currency, the Honduran Limpura (L) (too many currencies to keep track of)! We were also able to change our remaining quetzals with one of the many money changers at the border for local currency. We had a rough idea of the rate so made sure we knew what we should be getting back. We were then working on €1 to 25L. Copán Ruinas town was only about ten minutes drive from the border and we got dropped off right at our hostel which I'd booked on hostel world the day before. The six hour shuttle bus journey cost about €14...after a little bit of haggling in Antigua.

When we stopped for breakfast I got chatting to a guy that was on the bus, called Felipe, he knew some of the same people we had been on the volcano hike with in Antigua and was also heading to Copán for a couple of days. The three of us chatted most of the way to Copán. Felipe decided to come stay in the hostel we had booked into as we all had roughly the same plans of what we wanted to do in Copán, the main being the Mayan ruins. We got dropped off at Barekah hostel, the hostel was basic but had big lockers and fans...no AC but it was never too hot in the room. There was also a decent breakfast included in the morning. A dorm room was about €11 for the night. I think there are better hostels in Copán overall.

We spent the day wandering around the small town and had a great lunch in the local market for less than €1.60 which consisted of chicken, rice, avocado, carrots, broccoli and of course tortilla. We also sampled some extremely hot sauce and chilli seeds. We got some local beers in the shop after for less than €0.65 each. Honduras is even cheaper than Guatemala!

Market food

We planned to get up early and head to the ruins ourselves. There were shuttle buses and tours but these were overpriced and seeing as the ruins were only 1.5km away we decided to walk and I brought my guidebook to be the tour guide for the day! Entry to the ruins was 345L (€16). I found the ruins beautiful. The detail in the remaining structures was so impressive considering how old the ruins are (dating from 700AD). We wandered around for a few hours and even got a personal tour from one of the maintenance men working there (again thanks to Felipe's Spanish).

Personal tour from a local worker st the ruins

One of the many macaws being rehabilitated in the ruins

Later that day Felipe and I decided to go to some hot springs about 20km from Copán. The hostel and tour companies were priced at $22 for shuttle and entry (tad bit overpriced considering entry to the hot spring pools was only €2.40. We ended up grabbing a mini bus with the locals that runs like a public bus to and from town. We paid 40L (€1.60) for the thirty minute journey. It was also a great
way to get to know some of the locals who were so friendly chatting away in Spanish and rough
English.

It was 60L (less than €2.40) entry to the hot springs. We opted out of paying an additional 300L (€12) into the Luna Jaguar spa as it was a bit pricey but I have heard it is worth it paying in for a few hours. Our entry gave us use of the two natural swimming pools, one quite hot and the other warm. We were the only people there for the first hour. There are options to camp there and areas to BBQ. There also a hot waterfall behind the pools, flowing into the river. We stumbled across to the waterfall and quickly realised that it was far too hot to even put your toe under. There were some local kids bathing a bit down from the waterfall. After laughing at Felipe and I squealing with the heat of the water they called us down to where they were which was lovely and warm. Felipe started chatting to two of them I'm Spanish. He found out that they were eighteen and lived in the village up the mountain. There was a little girl with them who was staring at my GoPro and was laughing her head off when I took a photo of her and showed it to her, she proceeded to take it and be the photographer for the next few minutes. They told us that the waterfall reached a temperature of 110 degrees Celsius during the
day (we had to clarify if it was indeed celsius)! It drops to about seventy in the evenings. They said that the three of them, including the little girl who must have only been about ten worked in the coffee plantations and they had just finished work. They told us they made 100L (€4) for every gallon of coffee beans picked.

Getting to know the locals 

Natural hot spring waterfall

We hung out at the pools for a while, we had decided to try and hitch back to town as there was only one bus back at 5pm for 100L. As Felipe was fluent in Spanish I felt it would be easier to grab a lift back with some locals and he was happy to abuse this skill/benefit. I wouldn't usually hitch (promise)! However again Felipe got talking to a couple (and the only other people at the pools, they said they were heading back to Copán later that evening and could give us a lift. It turned out that the guy who owned the car was an evangelical pastor in Guatemala but was from Copán. He must have only been in his early forties but told Felipe that for six years he worked with the local villages around Copán providing them with health education and enabling them to help build houses, providing them with water filters and how to implement appropriate hygiene with the increases in water pollution and new diseases becoming more prevalent. He was so interesting and we were overwhelmed when he asked us to join him, his wife and their two friends for dinner. A BBQ his wife had made under one of the shelters by the pool. We sat down to an amazing feed of BBQ'd pork, tortillas, cheese, leeks, sweet peppers with lime and black beans. It tasted amazing! I also had BBQ'd plantain after which was gooey, warm and so sweet that it tasted great just by itself. They chatted about all the typical cuisines and dishes from Copán and Guatemala with Felipe telling us about the local dishes in Bogota and me trying to make Irish stew and bacon and cabbage sounds as exotic as the fried plantain stuffed with rice and cheese that the others were talking about. Unfortunately my Spanish is not good enough to jazz up the sound of Irish stew. We also chatted about football and where we had travelled before. They dropped us back to the hostel later that night and we couldn't thank them enough. Every day I have been taken aback with the genuine warmth and generosity of the local people in the countries I have visited.

The next morning we said goodbye to Felipe as he travelled up to the Bay islands and we grabbed a shuttle to Santa Ana in El Salvador with a lovely German couple we had met in our hostel. This was a slight cop out as we had planned on going the cheaper (and longer) way of using the local chicken buses.  I had thought the best way would be to go the route of:

Copán Ruinas - Santa Rosa de Copán - Neuvo Ocotepeque - El Poy (the border into El Salvador) - San Salvador - Santa Ana. Roughly 12 hours in total but costing about €15.

However some people had mentioned that it was quicker travelling from Copán Ruinas - Santa Rosa de Copán - Chiquimula in Guatemala then back over the border into El Salvador.

As the shuttle was going to be half the price of $40 that it usually was and it was working out only slightly more expensive (and a lot quicker) than the chicken buses we opted to take the 4 hour shuttle. We got the bus at 8am from our hostel and indeed it crossed back over the border from Honduras to Guatemala and down to El Salvador. Three borders and countries in one morning. Again the borders were generally easy. With the C-4 agreement between Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua you can spend up to ninety days in these four countries and generally crossing borders should be straight forward as long as you have your passport date stamped with the 90 days written in the stamp and have not exceeded this. It is however easy to renew this ninety days by passing back in Belize or another bordering country and re-enter for another ninety days. However I was slightly concerned when we reached the El Salvador border, we didn't get our passport stamped and the border security disappeared with my passport for a minute. He came back asking when I had been in Mexico. I told him I was there for two nights last month, he seemed happy enough and passed me back my passport. I didn't ask any more questions. That was it....we were now into El Salvador, the murder capital of the world with a violent history of civil war ending in the 1990's and current gang culture. Despite all this I was looking forward to discovering what El Salvador is really like now.

Next Stop: Santa Ana, El Salvador
Food: Healthy, market food of chicken, rice, beans, avocado, vegetables and tortillas with a fresh juice for €2 in one of the 'comidors'. It feels like you're actually eating in a local woman's kitchen.
Drinks: some local beer called 'Salva Vida'
Bars/restaurants: nil! Only the hostel and the market
Stayed: Hostel Berakah, basic hostel but the dorm was very small.
Lesson 8: Back packing is one of the only times since my childhood where it is socially acceptable to approach a complete stranger and basically ask them to be your friend....a few hours later you're sleeping in bunk beds and planning fun activities to do. It's great!

Jess