My first stop in Honduras is Copan, famous for its Mayan ruins. The journey here would have been a lot quicker if the driver hadn´t made several stops to drop of suspicious looking packages to his friends. We´d be haring down the motorway, when he´d get a phonecall, slam on the breaks and stop at the side of the road. On the other side there would be a similar shuttle-bus, with similarly confused looking white people. The two drivers would meet in the middle of the busy road, exchange what probably wasn´t baking powder or sweets, nod, and be on their way. The journey was quite an entertaining and stressful one altogether- we dodged several suicidal dogs, cows and people, passed by two nasty crashes and sheer cliff drops. My favourite moment was at the petrol station. The driver filled up, engine still running, before rocking the van backwards and forwards in order to get more in. He even asked us to lean to and fro to help him squeeze that extra 1 and a half Quetzales. I could only guess that he was getting the most out of his company budget.
I arrived here at about 11am yesterday. The ruins were good, but I will definitly be all ruined out by the end of this trip. Ruined by ruins. The town itself is a little odd- stagnant, I think is the word. It´s very small and quite charming on the outside, but the locals are a little offhand and unfriendly, especially compared to everyone I met in Guatemala.
Nothing seems to happen here: when we, there was a man sitting in his mango cart amongst hundreds of ripe mangos. "Ah, that´s very picturesque," thought I, "I´ll take a photo of him". But when I wandered out for lunch he was still there. And when I returned from lunch, he was still there- in the exact same position. The same later on. This morning when I headed out at 8am to see the ruins, he was STILL there- I checked to make sure he wasn´t dead, shot over some mango-related dispute, but his eyes were open and he was chewing on a piece of mango skin. It´s now about six thirty in the evening and he is STILL THERE in his mango cart, sitting amongst ever ripening fruit. I guess he just can´t shift that many mangos in a tiny town where nobody moves. Like the tortilla woman- sitting on the same kerb, day and night, frowning at passers-by, no longer having the will to say "quiere tortillas?".
I am staying in a "hotel" called `Don Moses`. It´s pretty dark and dated, but the cheapest place in the town I could find, after discovering that my intended hostel had actually closed down a couple of years ago. Cheers, Lonely Planet. The "hotel" is essentially a very large house, complete with very large family of all ages. The family members struggle to make sentences, especially if it is me who tries to talk to them, and spend the day taking turns on the public computer to look at each others´ facebook profiles. The only activity in this place comes from the horrible, bratty children, who run around shrieking and throwing food at me when I dodge past. I cannot even pretend to smile at them. They´re probably just bored though, because their parents spend all day staring at screen. Come to think of it, I´ve spent far too much time here staring at the same screen... it must be catching. Time to leave.
I did try to leave today. I´ve exhausted the local activities. Yesterday after settling in, I thought about going straight to the ruins, but it is so stiflingly hot, I knew that going in the heat of the day was a bad idea. So I assessed the Lonely Planet guide again (fool that I am) and decided to investigate a Butterfly House just outside of town- in fact I was pretty excited by the idea. So I walked, armed with camera and water, to the point where cute cobbled town met open highway and cowboy country. I found the place easily, but was greeted by a slightly harrassed looking woman with a child on her hip.
"Hello, I´d like to see the butterflies please!" said I (in spanish- just saying...)
"Yes but there is a problem," she said, "There are no butterflies".
"Oh, that is quite a problem..."
From what I gathered, the butterfly enclosures, which were set up by some nutty but well meaning ex-pat scientist a few years ago, had been attacked by insects, killing the butterflies or rather their eggs (I assumed... although she did say the insects ate the butterflies- making me imagine some pretty beastly insects, in itself quite exciting). The woman said I could still walk around the area and see the museum for half the price if I wanted, and I agreed.
The area was nice, and was probably lovely about 5 or10 years ago when it was well cared for and included butterflies. I would have enjoyed the whole experience a lot more if the woman hadn´t insisted on following me around all the time. "Look," she said,picking up dead butterflies from the floor, "dead, dead, all dead. Pah." She was ruining the atmosphere somewhat. What thoroughly depressed me however, was the museum. It was a pokey room with walls of pinned, dead butterflies. I know that´s what people did for fun back in the day, but something about those rows upon rows of sad but beautiful wings made me want to run away screaming and hug the nearest alive stray dog I could find. I came away with the consolation that at least I´d donated about one pound fifty hopefully towards the improvement of the next depressed tourist´s visit.
This morning I got up at the crack of dawn to go to the ruins, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They weren´t as huge and awesome as Tikal of course, but better preserved with amazing detail. Armed with my guidebook, I learnt quite a lot about them and took great pleasure in sitting cross-legged in the middle of what was probs a sacrificial alter, to eat my banana. The site is also home to several wild (but relatively tame) bright red Macaws, which won it for me.
The plan was to leave Copan and head to San Pedro Sula this afternoon...I spoke to the moodiest bus ticket dispenser in all of Central America, who reacted towards me as if I´d demanded a ticket on space ship.
"The bus leaves at 2pm", she growled.
"But the page says 1.30?"
"2pm."
So at quarter to two, I dragged my stupid bag down the hill to see what looked like my bus leaving. But it couldn´t be, because every single bus I´d caught on this continent was about 30 minutes late. Oh but it was. A man in sitting on the kerb told me that the bus had gone because it was already full, but he could drive me to some other obscure town if I wanted?
I complained a lot to the transport folk and will hopefully be on my way straight to La Ceiba by 7am tomorrow. It was probably fate that kept me here in this silly town- San Pedro Sula is apparently quite dangerous and not worth staying in after all. Still, at least the people there are actively doing something- even if it is robbing and shooting people, rather than wasting their lives on facebook. This is my second blog in two days- just think how much of my whinging you´d have to endure if I stayed.
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