So, here we go with spring break.
Day 1 – Travel to Las Ruinas de Copán. So, our bus left out of San Salvador at 7 am, and we booked our seats the day before. We get to the bus station, and it’s pretty well-guarded. All our luggage was checked, we got scanned and our carry-on bags got searched and wanded to check for weapons. We get to the bus, and it’s very nice. Much nicer than the busses we rode in Spain, and definitely better than those in the States. It came with food service, air-conditioning, and a stewardess was working. Very interesting, to say the least; they call these bus companies lujo—luxury—as opposed to the regular buses. Anyway, we get to our stop at around noon, if I’m not incorrect, and from there we knew we had to take some sort of transportation up to the ruins. I asked our bus driver when we got off, he pointed us in the right direction, and we wandered over to this bus stop. A school bus came up with Ruinas on the front, and we got on. You could definitely call this a chicken bus, as I almost put my backpack down on a couple chickens, who promptly sat next to me. The bus ride, much to my surprise, lasted about an hour and a half—I expected about 30 mins max. We get to the city, find the hostel/hotel place we were looking for, turns out to be somewhat nice, and then we go for food. While we’re getting some good eats, the owner informs us that the ruins close at 4 pm; I look down at my watch and see 3:55. Well then, new plan. We talked to one of the owners for a while, and she gave us some ideas of what we could do that evening. Two ideas piqued our interest: renting a driver (a man with a pick-up truck and a cooler) to take us out to the natural hot springs, or walk up this hill to get a beautiful sun-set view over the city and the mountains. Given our options and the desire to take it easy, we decided to stay all day the next day and then head east on the following morning. A man next door informed us that there was a company with direct buses to our destination, La Ceiba, and the company was actually on our way to the sunset spot, which we did that night. We bought our tickets for the 5:15 am bus on Monday morning and headed up to this hotel with a view to get a couple drinks.
We get up there and order some beers. While talking with this woman, who appeared to be the owner, I realized she used a typically-Castilian construction and had a very Castilian accent. So, I asked her where she was from in Spain, and she responded el norte. Well, I lived in the north, so where? Algorta. Wow, I was incredulous. She was from the main suburb outside Bilbao, and I had a bunch of friends who lived in Algorta. Basically, I was left speechless, seeing that someone working in a hotel in middle-of-nowhere Honduras was from that little city. Two of the few Spanish people I’ve met on my trip here have been from near where I lived last semester, which is highly uncommon. Anyway, we had a couple drinks and then went back down to the city to grab some grub and head to sleep. Found the pizza place run by this old US sailor, as mentioned in our guide book as very good with local veggies, got a quite bite, and headed to bed. It was a long day, and the next day was bound to be exciting.
Day 2 – Well, it was Roe’s birthday that day, which really highlighted most of what we did. It was her 21st, so she wanted it to be special, and we made it that way, first thing: sang happy birthday to wake her up. We planned on going to the ruins in the morning, only after our community breakfast. Patricio’s friends gave him the idea of taking a bowl and a couple of spoons so that every morning the group could buy a box of cereal and a thing of milk and make things cheap and easy that way. So, we did that and headed off to the ruins. Entry fee was kinda expensive, $15 (much more than expected), so we decided not to get a guide, which was a disappointment to me; but gives me more drive to go research the ruins by myself. Anyway, we went back to the hotel for a good lunch (they had relatively cheap and very creative food), and for the hour that remained before we had to leave, I got a hold of the company in La Ceiba (or the jungle outside of it) that we were gonna use for outdoor activities. Talked to them, heard some good news, and then came back and we left to the hot springs. Basically, an owner from the first restaurant when we grabbed our initial lunch gave us this idea of hiring out a man with his pickup truck and going out to the hot springs. So, we took some drinks, some food, and headed out for about an hour to this natural hot spring. Well, upon arrival, we realized that the state had constructed two pools and funneled hot water in there, but we went straight to the source as well. This river was cold, for the most part, except for where the waterfall fell down on it. The waterfall was scalding hot, like if you came too close or the wrong current you would get burned, and so a little downstream we sat in there, at the temperature of a hot tub. Wow was it nice. We also celebrated Roe’s birthday a little more there, and Beth went out of her way to buy a cake substitute, which were five little cupcake things. But, as she was lighting the candles, a stray dog came up and ate them all, in one bite. I have to say it was quite hilarious. So, darkness set in, and we were forced to go back. The ride back was one of the most fun truck rides I’ve ever had: basically we had a dance party and had so much fun. Roe busted out her portable speakers with her iPod, and we went to town. There was really no one else around, going through the countryside, with bright stars above our heads. We shared some beers, tried to light a cigar (mainly unsuccessfully in the wind), and enjoy the company. When we came back to the hotel, there was a little festivity already going. Evidently every night they had club music going, and this night they had this couple (the woman from Canada and the man from Argentina) there who made jewelry. One of the coolest jewelry things I’ve seen in a while: they had coins from all over the world, cut out to show the most salient points, and made into necklaces. State quarters, coins from Latin America and Europe and Africa, just immaculate work. So much more meaningful than most of the jewelry being made, especially because I could find a Spain coin. We were hanging out with them for a while, and then after they discovered it was Roe’s birthday, they invited us back to their room to share some music. They were a very cool couple, just traveling around Central and South America selling their jewelry of all types, and the guy played us some awesome music on this little 10-stringed mandolin-type string instrument. He was very good, and it was a great ending to the night and to Roe’s birthday.
Day 3 – We had a 5:15 am bus across the country to get to La Ceiba and Roatan. We decided to head to Roatan that day to chill in the afternoon and for the next two days. Unlike what I had assumed, we had a two-hour layover on this bus company in San Pedro Sula (we’ll talk about this delightful city later), and got to the dock outside Ceiba to catch the ferry. We got there early and were forced to wait for the 4:30 ferry (it only runs twice per day each way, as it’s about an hour and a half journey). Get to the island, take a cab to West End, where we hoped to find a cheap hostel, and the one we were imagining had vacancy. Nice, saved us some work of wandering around trying to find these places at night. Found some food, and I headed to bed early, as it had been a long and nauseating day on the bus and a long night beforehand.
Day 4 – Woke up very relaxed, and I headed out for a walk in the morning. We discussed the night beforehand that perhaps we wanted to find a cheap room with a kitchen, so we could cook (and save money from the high living costs on the island). It was very peaceful in the morning, with the sandy streets and beaches empty. Patricio joined me for part of it, too, as we looked unsuccessfully for another place. Just decided to stay with the one we had, and we found out there was a community kitchen if we wanted it at our hotel. Nice.
Patricio and I decided we would go snorkeling that morning/afternoon, while the other three (Roe, Beth, and Colin) went to West Bay. We were told by multiple people that you stay in West End where it’s cheap and go to West Bay for the beach. Also, Roatan is a diving island at heart. There are reefs right in the bays where you can just swim out and see with snorkel gear, and it could be the cheapest place in the world to get licensed for SCUBA diving. The reef was beautiful, and it was the second time I’ve seen stuff like that, after Belize. We saw some very cool fish and reef formations. It still boggles my mind how the fish are totally unfazed by our presence, and I still remember all that grade school knowledge of symbiotic relationships being applied in nature. Just incredible how the coral and the fish interact. Also, there was this little sunken exploration submarine, which was really different to swim around and view from that angle. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, chatted with some cool travelers in our hotel—one guy from Holland, a woman from the south of Spain (Cadiz), two from Virginia who had quit their jobs and just went traveling, among others. Just some very interesting souls. That night, we decided to find some good food, so Colin and Roe chose this Thai place. We went in, and I looked at the wine list, very French, hmm. Eau d’vie, as well. The owner, it turns out, was French, serving Thai and Vietnamese food on a Honduran island. Afterwards, we ended up in a café owned by an Italian family from the Piedmont, in which a Latin band was playing. Strange island, to say the least. My red curry for dinner was delightful, amazing, to say the least. Really needed that meal. Afterwards, my Illy espresso was a nice cap to the meal, since the Frenchman had no dessert wines (was a shame).
Day 5 – Another relaxing day. Patricio and I went to West Bay to look for our mutual friend who was there with her family. We couldn’t find her, but we did some exploring too. The island was a strange place, especially this part. At times, you feel like you’re in a beautiful resort in the States or Caribbean, and then you walk a little more and end up in undeveloped Honduras. This beach, though, was very nice. Roe, Colin, and Beth complained that there were too many people the day before, but that was really just from the cruise ship that let people out that day. For us, the beach was mainly empty. White sands, VERY clear water, great sun. Just a wonderful place to hang out, frankly. We stayed there for a while and then went back to meet with the others. Our idea for a day cruise fell through, so we ended up chilling out again and found a guy to take us for a sunset ride. He took us to some cool parts of the island, he was a very interesting man, too. He took us back to this little cove
Day 6 – We left the island early morning, headed out to La Ceiba. We got to this company, the Jungle River’s lodge downtown to try to figure out our plans. We scheduled our tours that we would do and figured out the bus schedules. We were planning on spending two nights in their jungle lodge (free night for each tour), but as it turned out we had to spend the second night in San Pedro Sula to catch the only bus of the day back to Salvador, a 7 am. That meant we had to take the 6 pm bus to Sula from la Ceiba, quite a shame. So, we planned on going rafting that afternoon, and then we were all going to do the canopy tour the next morning. Canopy tours are all over Central America in the jungles, and they are basically multiple zip lines through the rainforest. Cool idea, but I chose instead to do a guided hike to a large waterfall, which was actually one of my goals before going there.
The jungle there is the Pico Bonito National Park, and so we headed out there to their lodge for the afternoon rafting. On the road through the park, we saw the waterfall to which I would hike the next day, and it came out high on this cliff. Just like a movie. We get to the lodge, and it’s frankly amazing. Very rustic, reminiscent of Belize, but with so much cooler stuff. It had a partially-natural (they filled in parts of it) rock pool in front, filled with river water, and on the other side of it was the river down which we would raft. The river was filled with giant boulders, and we could look out into the forest. Just incredible—look at the pictures for a reference.
So, the rafting started with a little hike up the river with our tour guides. There were three other people on the tour, and we were in two boats (the four of us were together, Colin, Roe, Patricio, and me). First, though, this little hike. We first crossed the river, swimming against the current. Then we alternated between swimming against the current furiously, climbing up these boulders, and jumping off into the water. Finally, we coasted down the river through the rapids to where we had to start. Wow, what fun, and yes, it was safe. We had our life jackets and helmets on the whole time, parents (if they’re still reading here ☺). The guides knew where to go and where to jump, and we all made it just fine. The rafting part was so much fun too, as our guide gave all the commands in Spanish and made us feel like a team. I almost fell out at one point, and as Patricio predicted, he, with the most experience, fell out. There were some calm points in which we could just admire the beautiful scenery, and of course at other times we had to paddle furiously or get down in the boat to not fall out.
That night, we had a great dinner cooked by a Colombian couple who had been staying there for a while. In preparation for the dinner (a soup of sorts), there was the slaughter of a chicken out on a rock in front of the cabins. Haha, great stuff. We just chilled outside, under the stars, eating great food on these rocks, surrounded by torches. The entire place was outfitted with candles at night, instead of electricity (tho they did have it).
Day 7 - It turned out that the other rafting guide (not ours) was going to be my hiking guide, and there were no other participants. So, I got a personal tour and got to chat with him a lot, in Spanish. There really aren’t words to describe much of what we did and saw and experienced, but I can give you a rough sketch. We started by him searching out some cool plants and roots that they use for certain things. One to relieve symptoms of cold/flu, stomach problems, a natural soap. We crossed the river, and started hiking up this mountain in the jungle to the foot of the falls. It was strenuous, yes, but not terribly. The pace wasn’t horrible. But some of the climbing was kinda technical, so you had to be careful about where you put your feet and how to get yourself around logs and rocks and roots. When we got closer, I took my shoes off to climb over these rocks covered by moss and very slippery, caused by the mist from the falls. My guide did the whole thing barefoot, and he only carried rope, a machete, and a waterproof bag (which was really only for me). At the top, he asked me if I wanted to go down under the falls (look at the pictures). Of course, I respond; so normally what happened was that he’d go first, so I could watch his path. But, he just told me to head down the left, and so I climbed down there myself and chilled on the rocks under this huge waterfall. Meanwhile, he took pictures of me, as I asked him to do. We took a different route down, and he showed me some cool jungle things. There is a specific type of vine that kills trees. Wow, kinda nasty I thought, before he continued to tell me that this vine only kills trees that are in the process of dying and would pollute the soil and kill everything else if they were just allowed to die and fall. We saw a huge ant population, with leaf-cutters going far in all directions. He said the queen of that colony is the size of a mouse, and she was about 2-3 meters underground. He said they use termites to spread on their skin as a natural bus repellent, they burn the old termite houses to use like we use citronella candles, and you can also boil it for respiratory problems, I believe. There was a plant, he said, that if you touch its “blood” of sorts, this white substance, it will burn your skin—he actually compared it to battery acid. However, if you’re ever lacerated very badly, you can drop it onto the cut, and it will burn it closed. Just incredible what nature can do. That hike was all about the wonders of nature for me. It can be said I’ve fallen in love with it. I could do without the massive bug bites still on my ankles, but that’s a small price to pay for what I experienced.
Anyway, we headed into Ceiba that afternoon to catch the bus to Sula.
What a bus ride we had. Well, the bus broke down for an hour in the dark along the side of the road. However, to my surprise and gladness, the bus company evidently has a plain-clothes vigilante on every bus, so he was guarding us when we were stopped. However, the delay meant we got into Sula VERY late. This city is described by the guidebooks as somewhere you don’t walk at night. You take a cab wherever you’re going. However, all our hotel options from the book would’ve been closed at 11:30 when we got in, so two bus employees were nice enough to walk us around the block towards this hotel they knew of, which turned out to be closed. Damn it, so we returned to the bus station, and there were no cabs to be found. At all. The bus employees were not allowed to walk with us any more, but they give us directions to the Holiday Inn, which was 7 blocks away (and which we could see; it was a highrise). They looked down the street, and deemed it safe for us to walk, so we headed off, slightly to mildly freaked out. Along the way, Patricio got hit on by some prostitutes, and this man approached us quite quickly, but turned out to be harmless. Get to the hotel, and damn, it’s nice. Go to the desk, ask this very nice man, and…no rooms. At all. Wait, he says—“Give me a business card, any business card.” The only one I could find was from the Jungle Lodge, and with that he was able to give us an executive “suite” (just two double beds really), for 30 bucks cheaper. It turned out to be 30 bucks per person, in the end, but this guy even tried to call other hotels, which either had no rooms or didn’t answer. Well, the room was very nice, and we stayed there for about 6 hours.
Day 8 – Left in the morning, before 6, and there was a free buffet breakfast in the morning. Roe and I, who checked out (Kenneth, who was still there the next morning, said only two of us could be seen in the morning, which we happily agreed to), got two big Styrofoam boxes of food to go. Nice. When we thanked Kenneth profusely for what he did for us, he said it was really no problem (but he could’ve lost his job for us, frankly), and he did it because he had been in our situation before. Sometimes you just run into amazing people traveling. Finally got home at 3 pm to Casa Romero, beaten, tired, and ready to be back.
Some short reflections: Honduras is a great country. The ruins were cool, Pico Bonito was amazing for Eco-tourism, which is going to grow so quickly in the coming years, I think, and Roatan was nice. Honduras is so much more developed touristically than is Salvador, and for that reason we met a lot of travelers in each place. Even in the jungle there was a couple from Ireland doing an around-the-world trip, a guy from Colorado, a freshman from NYU, among others. Also, English was spoken in all of our three destinations. My hiking guide spoke English, Roatan is mostly English-speaking, and Copan has a fair amount as well. Spanish helps for some stuff, that’s for sure, when you venture off the beaten path, but you can get by with English. If you’re an outdoors person looking for something different than the Costa Rican adventure, I’d head to Honduras. La Ceiba features the forest and Roatan—so you can explore, relax, dive, and do anything you want—they’re even building a big mall in La Ceiba! So, it was much different for us than Salvador, definitely a lot safer as well. A lot of times, we felt like our life wasn’t real, like we were living a movie. The dance party on the back of a pickup under the stars, standing under a huge waterfall, boulder jumping, sunset cruises—it was such a blessing. Back to real life, or wait…that’s another two more months until I reach that point!
love,
antonio
