Copan

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We had a bit of a nightmare trying to get to Copan because we didn´t really do our homework. We had to stay in another border town called Chiquimula overnight which was expensive and really hot.

In the morning we took a shuttle to the Honduras border. The border crossing are getting more and more relaxed as we go south. Eventually we reached Copan which is a really nice little town, a bit like Antigua. We booked into a hotel without a name for 3 nights. The place is obviously still being built so everything was nice and new and clean, and we managed to knock her down on the price (if you want to stay there it is the hotel opposite San Jose). Our first day there was a really lazy day just wondering around drinking cheap beer and cocktails. There are five types of lager produced in Honduras, all by the same state owned brewery. And two of them are really nice.

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We had been discussing how we thought that the people in Guatemala are friendlier than those in Honduras, only about 70% of people respond to our greetings, then we realised that if you´re in England virtually no one says hello to you so perhaps we shouldn´t be so harsh. Then a small boy with big eyes and dressed in rags tried to intimidate us into buying a dirty old corn dolly, when we refused politely for the hundreth time he cursed us in Spanish. Bless him.

On the Friday we went to the Copan ruins which was a beautiful Mayan capital and has some of the best preserved artifacts and architecture from the golden age of the Mayan empire. Or something. It was only a 10th of the size of Tikal but there was 10 times more detail on the stonework.

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We also had some fantastic grilled meat at Momos. The restaurant scored very highly in Chesta´s book because there was no vegetarian options, just lots of meat.