Copan, Honduras

Getting out of Guatemala this weekend was quite the hassle. It took about 2 hours just to leave the city limits. Once on the road this bus was possibly the slowest in Guatemala, and after another 3 hours we arrived in Chiquimula. Since it was around 530pm we were planning on staying the night here, but after talking to a guy in a mini shuttle, we decided we could make it to the border to catch another bus to Copan before the buses stoped running at 630. So we piled into this toyota minibus and headed to El Florido (the honduran border) for Q10. About half way to the border the guy says you can get on this other bus and it will be faster. What he didn't tell us is that they would try charging us Q50 to go 20km. After seeing Ryan get upset, the driver said, "don't worry, it will be fine. We'll take you to Copan." We got to the border just as the sun was setting thinking the guy was going to take us to Copan for another 10 or 20 quetzales because it was only 10km, but we were wrong. He said oh we'll take you for Q75 because we are tired and want to go to bed. WTH. I dont think so.

We walked up to the actual border which was a bar across the road and waited for someone to give us a ride. By this time it was dark. After 10 or 15 minutes, a guy gave us a ride in the back of his pickup for 50 lempiras or about Q20. So we arrived in Copan Ruinas and went to find hotel Gemaco. We werent inside the hotel for more than 5 minutes and the lights went out. So the rest of the night, the entire town had no electricity. After stumbling to our room we went to look for a restaurante in the dark. We ate at a steakhouse that had some mariachis playing (i dont know what they call them in honduras but it was good.)

The next morning i went to have some breakfast at the central park and then we headed to the ruins. It was about a 15 minute walk outside of town to the ruins. $15 later we were walking around the ruins of Copan, which was amazing. I highly recommend it. Getting there at 8 in the morning we missed alot of tourists while there were a fair amount of French roaming about, hahaha. After about an hour inside the ruins i decided to lose Ryan and wander around. I found you can get a fair amount of historical information without buying a guide and just nonchalantly following a group around. hahahah. After another a hour we headed back to town in a rickshaw. We then proceeded to take a number of minibuses to get to Chiquimula and finally back to Guatemala. The buses were hot and miserable, but it was worth it.