Heading into Honduras

Copan Ruinas, Honduras

The night before leaving Guatemala Mik revealed a hidden talent. Equiped with a pair of latex gloves, a brush and a tube dye he very sucessfully managed to dye my hair for me. Brave man hey! Being the poor, unemployed girl that I am, and having ended up with bleached hair last time I entered a salon in South America, I decided to leave roots behind and go au natrelle. So, I am now as close to natural colour as a packet could get me and I have to say it's really quite dark. May take a while to get used to! Mik will be taking appointments upon our return!

Anyways, a few hours later, 3.30am to be precise, we set off for Honduras and the town of Copan Ruinas. This town is just across the border and took us about 7 hours to reach. We had booked seats on a posh bus as the small tourist mini vans had a habit of being targeted by armed robbers! Nice hey.

After our comfy bus ride we found ourselves in the small town of Copan Ruinas, Copan for short. We had come here as just outside of the the town are some Mayan ruins, which, I had been assured, were completely different to those we had just visited in Tikal. Wouldn't want to overload on ruins now would we!! As we walked through the main square in search of a hotel we noticed that all the guys were wearing white stetsons and cowboy boots, shirts undone to the belt. Hummm, if only they hadn't been short slightly rounded Hondurans! Our arrival in Copan coincided with their annual town festival. This entailed everyone heading to the main square of an evening in their best clothes to see what entertainment was being provided. We saw musicians, beauty parades, and small children singing. It all made for a happy atmosphere and we enjoyed our short stay here.

We spent a day visiting the ruins having walked there from town, passing rodeos and cock fights on the way (all part of the town festivities). The ruins at this site are smaller in scale than those at Tikal but more intricate with many hieroglyphs on columns depicting events of the time. The site at the moment is still relatively small in terms of what has been uncovered, however a total of 4509 structures have been found in the area over the years which indicates that up to 20,000 people lived here, a figure only reached again in the 1980's. Quite mad when you think they lay hidden for so many years.

The site was fairly quiet so we had a slow wander round, found a shaded spot for lunch and enjoyed the wildlife we found here. There were scarlet macaws hanging around everywhere and would let you get up quite close.

We only stayed 2 nights but managed to once again pick a hotel which on the second night became overrun with American teenagers on some organised tour. When ready to go out that evening for dinner we opened our door to find that they were all camped out in every spare bit of communal space the hotel had to offer and were saying their prayers. We swiftly closed the door and tried not to snigger too loudly. It's not the praying bit, it's just the way they do it. They like everyone to know about it, it really makes you think that some Americans assume they have to be able to 'do some good' when they come to these 'poor, less developed countries'. Anyway, having composed ourselves we waited for a pause in their prayer and tried to tiptoe through the group as quickly as possible. They left early the next morning. I know this because I was awoken by shouts of "Have you'll handed in your keys?' and "Right lets say a prayer before we set off on our journey" As they were only going as far as the town square I wasn't entirely sure it was necessary.

We jumped on our posh coach again and headed for the Caribbean coast.

Cara