In Honduras

Yes, we survived our three thirty am wake up call and our van arrived on time to take us to Copan. We drove past Guatemala City in the dark and were glad we weren´t going in, because that could add a lot of time to a trip. We think that every truck in Guatemala was on the highway though, and our driver had few qualms about passing six or seven of them at at time. Looks like we were on the main road to the Caribbean side port town so the trucks were hauling lots of freight, and of course there´s no railway.

I actually slept for part of the journey early on because I had the back seat to myself and could lean up against the luggage stored on the rest of it. I woke up after daylight and enjoyed the amazing scenery on the way. I also had a lovely conversation about travel (what else?) with the two german men who I noticed were wearing matching rings. And if that weren´t enough, one of them went to sleep in the other´s lap. Very sweet. I hope we run into them again - they´ve have traveled a lot too and I´m sure could give us a few ideas.

Border formalities were pretty simple. Our driver rushed us off our van to beat the fancy Hedman Alas pullman bus that was just ahead of us. We did it too. First we had to check out of Guatemala which cost us 10 quetzals each (about $1.50), and then we had to enter Honduras which cost 25 quetzals each. AFter that we negotiated to change all the rest of our quetzals into Honduran Lempira which is about double Quetzals. The prices seem similar to Guatemala too - a drink which might cost 10 Q costs 20 L, so it will be easy to convert. When we get to El Salvador we get to deal in dollars, and then in Nicaragua we will switch to Cordobas. Hmmm - maybe these guides need to have a little chat with the European Union.

We emailed the hotel we are staying in to request a reservation - word is that they had a power outage yesterday so didn´t see any mail. That reminds us of the last time we were here when they were rationing power. Copan where we are now, had no power from midnight to 6 am then, which meant the fans were not much good to us. However, this is a different season and I think the evenings will be a little cooler.

Our room is quite colourful. We have red tiled floors, blue bedspreads, the walls are yellow orange till about a foot from the ceiling where there is a strip of Aqua blue and then the ceiling is pink. Think we´ll rest comfortably with all those colours competing?

Today we just wandered around town a little. We had a coffee first and a really nice biscuit - two shortbreak like cookies sandwiching some Dulce de Leche caramel. Yum. We got to town earlier than expected so we even decided to have a nap before going out after the coffee. Then we did a little wandering, got some money from the bank machine (we were worried about that after our experience in Monterrico where there was no ATM that would take our card. Lunch was at a very local place where we had pupusas, which are a Salvadorean specialty. They are tortillas stuffed with a choice of fillings, including squash and flowers. We did not go so exotic and had chicken and bean fillings although Geordie did have some chicharron with his beans - that´s crispy pig fat I think. It tasted nice and porky.

We are going to head to the Ruins Museum tomorrow. It is new and was not here when we visited last. The guide books suggest visiting it first. We may do things a day at a time. Today we looked at the little local museum. Tomorrow the big museum, next day the ruins themselves, if we can keep ourselves out of them since we will be right there after the museum visit. There is another ruin site not too far away and there is also a bird park with lots of macaws and other exotic birds flying around, and a butterfly farm too, so we have lots to do.

Now it´s time for another nap. We are still coughing away - the poor people on the bus had to listen to both of us hack. I don´t know whether they could hear my wheezing while I was sleeping. That´s a phenomenon I´ve never experienced before - it seems to keep Geordie awake as well as me. He has good hearing. We will start being better with ourselves and drink more water (thanks Kerri), and we are guzzling cough syrup, taking flu medications. We have everything one could need. Even a powder which dissolves in hot water, tastes of lemon and has paracetamol in it - which should help one sleep.