One Way United

After enjoying two nice, relaxing days at a real family home, I thought I would try being a tourist again just for a weekend. However, rather than easing back into it, I jolted myself back into the lifestyle. I was forced to catch a bus at 4 A.M. because that was the only time that busses went to Copan from Antigua. WHY?????????? Why can´t bus companies adjust to people that are normal? 3:45 is not a normal time to get up! Anyway, I of course did not sleep well. It seems I am cursed when it comes to getting up early. For some reason the days I know I have to wake up at an ungodly hour also seem to be the days when I can not make myself fall asleep. So, after getting maybe an hour´s worth of sleep, I was squeezed into a mini-bus like a sardine. The bus was completely full and I was stuck in the corner where I had no room whatsoever for my giant gringo sized legs. Thus, I twisted my body into all kinds of strange contorted body positions as the van trudged to the Honduras border. Despite my extreme sleepiness,the uncomfortable ride made it impossible to sleep. So we rolled into the town of Copan, the beautiful ruins just a kilometer away waiting for me to explore them, and at that moment all I wanted to do was go to my hotel room and sleeeeeep. Not to mention my right eye decided to torture me and I was forced to take my contact out. My eye was extremely sensitive to light so I had to buy sunglasses so I could keep my eyes open without crying. Since it is difficult putting glasses and sunglasses on at the same time and I did not want to cause my right eye more pain, I had only one option. I had to walk around half blind. Sleeping felt like such a good option but I knew I couldn´t. I came all the way there after forcing myself out of bed at 3:45 and enduring a very uncomfortable ride. By golly, I was going to see those ruins with my one good eye and I was going to enjoy it!

I grabbed my water bottle, poured a couple of tubes of zip-fiz in there (energy drink) and I was off. I walked wearily to the park entrance for 1,2,10 kilometers, whatever it was, bought my ticket, and then I was exploring. At first I was walking around like a sleep-deprived zombie, absent-mindedly taking pictures at whatever resembled a ruin. However, I think the zip-fizz started to kick in and I began gaining consciousness and I ended up thoroughly exploring every last centimeter of the site.

If I had never been to Tikal, I would have probably been enthralled at these beautiful ruins. However, I have been to Tikal, and the architecture at Copan is very similar and I thought the ruins were basically a scaled down version of Tikal. The site of Copan itself is considerably smaller than Tikal (you can probably fit more than 4 Copans into Tikal). The pyramids are also not as impressive or as big as the ones in Tikal. There was also less wildlife. I was dissapointed not to see one monkey as I walked through the forest (at Tikal they were everywhere…if you randomly looked up it seemed there was almost a 50% chance you would spot one). However, comparing Copan to Tikal is unfair since I thought Tikal was one of the coolest things I had seen on my entire trip.

There are basically 3 sections to Copan. The main plaza takes up about half of the site and is very beautiful but there are so many tourists milling about that it is impossible to have it to yourself. The Acropolis area has the most impressive buildings with 2 or 3 good sized pyramids and a cathedral looking structure. My favorite secion of the site, however, I like to call the tranquilo area. Beyond the acropolis section there are beautiful smaller mossy structures that not as many people venture out to see that are surrounded by trees. It is a lot quieter there and feels more mysterious. I liked it a lot and spent a good amount of time there just chilling. One aspect of Copan that I liked better than Tikal was the use of faces in the architecture. There seemed to be stone faces everywhere…very cool.

I somehow lasted almost 4 hours in the park before I decided I had seen and done just about everything there is to do there. I even managed to use all of my camera battery. I walked out of the archaelogical site and found a nature trail to walk on. Since I had absolutely nothing to do until I took a bus the next day, I decided to explore the trail as well. I have no idea how my body still was willing to go on after getting virtually no sleep in the last 30 hours. The zip-fizz is the only explanation (thank you dad!). So, I walked down the trail and although I did not see any jaguars, I still enjoyed it. It was also very educational as there were signs all along the trail talking about the Mayan way of life and such. There were dirt mounds everywhere indicating anceint ruins. At one point I came across a ruin that was completely excavated that used to be a Mayan playing field where they played some kind of sport with an 8 pound ball that was the size of a human head or something (I told you this walk was educational). I also sat and gawked for a while at the HUGE Ceiba tree. In Mayan legend this tree represents the connection of three worlds. The roots that go into the ground represent the underworld, the trunk represents the living world, and the branches represent the heavens as they seem to endlessly reach skyward. I really wish I could have gotten a picture of the Ceiba tree and the playing field but alas, I spent too much camera battery at the ruins. There were also some huge vines that I came across on the trail. I attempted to climb some of them but each time I would pull down a huge stick or something that would narrowly miss falling on my head. After a while I decided that maybe it wasn´t a good idea. After finsihing the 1.5 kilometer trail, I walked for 1,2,10,whatever kilometers back to my hotel. I ended up finding a good pizza place to eat dinner where I watched some good ol´ American college football. I spent a good 2 or 3 hours there as I talked with a girl from Germany and a couple raising a little tri-lingual boy (he counted to 10 for me in English, Spanish, and German). Yep…a 4 year old boy can count to 10 in more languages than I can! By the time I went to bed I had been awake for almost 40 hours straight. Needless to say, I slept good as I did not have to catch a bus until 12:00!

And that was the end of my Honduras adventures. I will hopefully have pictures of the ruins up by tomorrow. Peace out!

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So a lot has gone on since we last gave you guys some news. I’ll try to keep this brief. Our Costa Rican experience ended on a sour note. We got to this town Liberia and were waiting at the bus station to take us to the Nicaraguan border. We set our bags down and were sitting a foot away from them having breakfast. At bus stations you always have people trying to sell us stuff and numerous guys came up to us while we were eating to try and sell us music CD’s (most likely pirated). Very rude indeed but we did our best to just say no and keep eating. But we got up to leave we found that while we’d been distracted by one of these guys someone had made off with my small backpack. Needless to say I was livid. I lost my Bible, my journal, and a book that was a birthday present from Jordan and Amanda, all of which upset me to various degrees. The monumental loss though was my Ipod was also in that bag, and my Ipod is where we’ve been storing all our photos over the trip. Think of that: six months worth of traveling photos lost in a second. I’ll not repeat the words I used here as it might offend someone’s sensibilities. But in general I was just majorly dissappointed in the human race. Such is life. Fortunately we have the site where we’ve been storing pictures and I always put the best ones up, so thank God we didn’t lose them all.

So we went to Nicaragua and took a boat to this island called Ometepe. It’s shaped like a figure 8 and has two volcanos on it. This place was lush with flora and fauna and a total paradise. The first day it rained cats and dogs. So we sat in our hotel and played cards and marveled at the pet deer named Bambi (I’m not kidding). The next days we lounged by the beach and explored the surrounding area. Jordan and Amanda went kayaking in the serene waters one day, but mostly we were just here to relax. Mission accomplished. We also admired the wildlife as just a few yards from our hotel was a large group of howler monkeys. They make a ton of noise I’ll tell you.

Then we took a bus to Managua, the capital. We were only passing through as we wanted to get north quickly. We were standing on the bus waiting to get off and figure things out when the taxi guys came along. These guys clamor for your business and it can be hard to disuade them. Sometimes you have to say no more than ten times before they’ll leave you alone. This time we had two guys offering their ride. One of them shoved the other one right out of the way and started picking up our bags. Does this strike you as sketchy? It did to us, but we went along anyway. So he’s driving like a maniac and I’m praying for my life when he decides to stop for gas. He asks us to pay him now so he can fill up and the price he says makes our jaws drop: a little over $10 a person. I should also mention that initially he had said his fare was a certain amount per kilometer and we were not going that far, so we had a complete turn around here. So were arguing with the driver about how ridiculous that is to only go a mile and he’s getting rather angry over it. He then enlisted the help of some fellow cab drivers to convince us this was a fair asking price. We can’t understand the majority of what people are saying so really we just have a lot of shouthing back and forth. Then our cabby starts to call a cop over to settle this. The cop didn’t seem interested in actually coming over to the car although Jordan and I were ready to fight this out. But then we decided it would be better to just pay the man what he wanted and he would take us where we were going. We realized that it wasn’t a good idea to upset the man as we were in his car and our bags were in his trunk. I had visions of getting out of the car and him just driving off with them and thought it was better to submit in this case. True to form as soon as he had his cash he did a total personality shift and became a friendly joking guy and was saying things like “Look the pretty girls are waving at you!” I found myself hoping that his crazy driving would catch up with him and his engine would fall out.

We finally got to the bus station and were hounded by people to stay at their hotel. This can be useful at times but right then it was just irritating. And it rather irks me to have people shouting “Hey gringo, this way!” We told them politely to buzz off (they didn’t listen) and bought our tickets out of the country for the next day. We ended up staying at a hostel owned by this very sweet little old couple. They were very helpful and we felt secure there. We made our way to a mall and saw the movie Cassanova, which was better than I expected it to be, and then tried to sleep in the blistering heat.

The next day we awoke at 3:30 a.m. (ugh…) and boarded the bus to San Salvador, El Salvador. The bus was airconditioned and very comfortable and the scenery of course gorgeous. We jetted straight through Honduras without stopping. Technically we can all say we’ve been in Honduras for about three hours or so but I don’t think any of us actually walked there.

We’ve made it to San Salvador where I’m currently writing this. Today we will make our way to Suchitoto for a day and tomorrow we’re on to Guatemala. Is all this exhausting? You bet it is, but it’s worth it in the end. Be sure to check our new pictures of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Later.

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