We are back to the day to day routine after our two week bus trip through Honduras, Guatemala and a quick run through El Salvador on the way home. We happened to start our trip just as Hurricane Felix came on board. We sat out 2 days of rain in San Lorenzo (up Gulf of Fonseca) Honduras, a place where we could have spent this rainy season. We stayed at the Yacht club and met up with a fellow cruiser Dale, of sailing vessel Parrot Bay, who has the only boat there. He has started chartering and giving tours.
From there we took a chicken bus (so named because you will see people with live chicken and even pigs aboard) to Tegucigalpa, the capitol of Honduras and saw the Center of the Americas monument for peace on a hill in the city.
Then we caught a Headman Alas bus, luxurious, serving snacks and juice, showing movies. The road into Copan Ruins was temporarily closed so we were forced to go on to the coastal town of Tela on the Caribbean coast. The brochure boasted a Garrafuna (black Caribbean people) population but we mainly saw Honduran Latinos. The sea was murky from Felix so we just hung out walking the beach and enjoying the local cuisine.
Now on to Copan Mayan ruins on Alas again, their security measures reminded us of US airports, complete with metal detectors and frisks.
Copan ruins was located in an incredible mountain setting (no humidity and cool nights) smaller than Chichen-Itza but with different hieroglyphs and carvings and an incredible re-creation of a buried tomb painted and decorated with life size masks and carvings. Diane and Ann took a tour of an exotic bird place with Toucans, Makaws and Parrots, letting them hold them on their arms. After three days shopping, eating and touring we left with a present for Barb and Gary for watching Kiira and a new straw hat for me. We then took an express van to Antigua Guatemala.
Now Antigua is the place to see, churches and monasteries and dwellings from the 1600 to 1700s, and the woven goods and coffee plantations. This town also sports its own active Volcano on the edge of town. We ate dinner in an art gallery/restaurant where the owners were artists and Mayan shamans. One of their sons was the chef and the other the other was and is the light weight boxing champion of Guatemala. This town is restoring itself from an earth quake with many of the cathedrals waiting their turn since the restoration project is quite immense. Many of the monasteries have converted to hotels and restaurants and markets for woven goods, jewelry and clothing. Somewhat a yuppie town, it still boasts the cleanest Mercado we've seen as well as a city block sized crafts pavilion with purses, blankets, hammocks, leather goods, wooden carved pieces --- you name it, it was there. We never tired of looking at the various crafts and the color combinations of the Mayan peoples.
Our time was up but Tom and Ann moved on to Lake Atitlan S.E. of Antigua for some Spanish lessons and on to Chiapas to visit some family. We took a mini van to Guatemala City to catch a Tica bus to San Salvador and on to Managua Nicaragua. No security checks on the Tica bus’s. Passing through the mountainous highlands of El Salvador and Nicaragua by bus, we caught up on our movies seeing at least two each day. The mountains are the place to be in these countries. Dryer air and cooler temperatures; Lake Atitlan and Antigua Guatemala being the best, even over Oaxaca ,Mexico. And if you like Volcanoes, we saw and passed over a dozen on this trip. One should Google Earth over Central America just to see all the Volcanoes.
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