Starting the fourth week of classes up in here (up in here! up in here!). We just disembarked from a looong weekend trip. September 15th was Honduran Independence Day, so we had class off from then until now, the 20th. On Independence Day we had to get up at 4:30am to hop on a 5am bus to French Harbor and join in the parade festivities. Everyone dressed up in marching outfits, parade float costumes, and traditional regalia. After the long, hot walk in my slacks, dress shirt, and dress shoes we peeled off our schweaty attire, slapped on some more breathable threads, and made our way to the ferry for the mainland!
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| Lil' cadets with some last minute marching "focus" |
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| From the parade within French Harbor (Kelly's pic) |
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| Some parade onlookers |
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| I just realized that this is actually a photo from a water taxi (not the ferry), but it takes 10 minutes to upload a photo, so deal. |
We made a quick stop at the “mall” where I bought my second phone (first one was lost/jacked, RIP) and then we were on our way.
Speaking of RIP, my waterproof camera=dead…Sony digicam=almost dead. I think that Olympus will repair the waterproof camera for free (they did last time), but getting it sent there is quite a riddle seeing as how mail doesn’t truly exist here. So I am using the big-boy Nikon D-90 SLR for all my pics now and I have a helmet cam thingy that has an underwater housing that I will probably end up breaking as well. As long as nothing happens to the big-boy I won’t be too upset.
Anyways. The ferry is surprisingly efficient, on time, and comfortable. We took the smooth picturesque ride to La Ceiba which is the port city on the mainland. Granted most of us were zonked out, but the parts we were awake for were nice. We boat right by the little islands of Cayos Cochinos where my dad and his friends go every now and then to a friend’s house. Think of the island from Cast Away, but divided in size by 20, and that’s the size of Cayos Cochinos. Wiilllssoooonnnn!!!! (that’s for you, Mark McKendrick).
We (Harrison, Kelly, Erin, Jessica, Amber, John, and me) got off the boat and I waited in line to get my knife that I checked. This little Honduran man swindled (I keep wanting to spell that as “swendel” thanks to one Welden Johnston) his way in front of me. It happened again later and I began to notice a pattern suggesting a history of not using a line system. After getting everything together we made our way to a parents of a friend of a friend of friend’s house. Confusing. We barely knew these people or even the people that hooked us up with them, but This older couple took us in for the night and fed us. That kind of hospitality is definitely very Honduran/ Latin American.
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| Racing taxi's to the Butterfly Museum. |
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| Cruisin through La Ceiba |
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| From the house of the random yet amaxingly hospitable family with whom we stayed |
After some fresh pasta and some rousing Spanish convo’s, we grudgingly agreed to go out on the town to this nightlife district. We ended up havin’ a good ‘ol time with some karaoke...I totally owned “Gangster’s Paradise.” When did we wake up the next day? You guessed it 4:30 a.m!!! AGAIN to catch a bus. I thought I would be super sneaky and sit in first class, but apparently that wasn’t a novel idea because they had bar going across the middle of the seat to make it impossibly uncomfortable. I sat there anyways and just crouched down below the bar. Needless to say I woke up in need of a chiropractor/massage.
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| Karaoke supreme! |
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| The pre-5a.m. walk through some sketch backwoods and along the side of a highway on the way to catch our bus. |
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| Leaving La Ceiba. |
We had a layover in San Pedro Sula before heading to Copan, so we decided to head into town. We asked the taxi to take us to the mercado (market). Well…after 20 minutes of driving he pulls up to the super mercado (super market). FAIL. We went in anyways cuz we were too tired to conjugate Spanish verbs into the past-subjunctive. After the bus was able to drive through the protestors and people on strike, it arrived at the bus station and we vamoosed.
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| Layover in Hedman Alas bus station in San Pedro Sula (FYI: L to R: Erin, John, Harry, Kelly, Jess) |
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| Boxcar children out side the bus station. "I've read ALL your books!" |
The ride to Copan did not permit sleeping due to the coiling mountain roads, but that was fine cuz it was more than picturesque.
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| yup. |
Right about the time nausea was sneaking up on me, we were there. What an awesome town! Cobblestone roads all throughout (have I peaked your attention yet Whitney Walker?). The city is in the hills with streets and people and red tuk-tuks (tuk-tuk, trishaw, auto, rickshaw, autorick, bajaj, rick, tricycle, mototaxi, or baby taxi) going every which way. We had no plans before arriving and ended up getting herded towards a new hotel that only costs $5 per night! The cheapest hostel there was about $4-$4.50 per night, so this was a steal considering we had private rooms and bathrooms in a fresh new crib.
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| Crazy colors. |
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| Entry way from within our "hostel." It was more like a legit hotel! |
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| Roof top sun bathing....wait, no...ACTUAL bathing since all it does is rain. |
After climbing on the roof-slash-deck of our hotel and admiring being eye-level with the clouds that met halfway up the lush mountains, we decided that we would finally fulfill Harry’s need (need, not want) for some pizza. Yummy, cheap pizza and a beer made me forget where I was; I felt like I was back in Dallas eating at our ghetto pizza joint. We then wandered through the labyrinth-esque streets with our full stomachs and gravitated towards this gift shop – coffee shop combo. We looked around at the stupidly over priced souvenirs and pretended like we were going to buy something. You could go out in the street and buy the same thing for one tenth of the price- no exag. The coffee shop in the back gave this place some redeeming qualities. There was a mini library made from a hodgepodge of shaky shelves burdened with German self-help’s, romance novels, and “books” by hippies who made their one-and-done attempts at being an author. We admired a few….
Harry went to play soccer outside on the street with some kids and then we made our way towards a bar with some people we met while playing (trying) hacky sack in the street. We watched as this local chica tried to teach us how to do the “punta”, the local dance…pretty pro-voc-a-tiiive. We walked back home as we admired how chill (and chilly) Copan is. About that time when we were walking without wondering where we were wandering (sorry, had to have some alliteration in there) someone hit the switch and the city became pitch black. The power goes off prrrtty frequently here. We were blessed with some moonlight to help us finish the journey to our hotel which was already filled with lit candles by the time we got back. They have their post-power-outage routines down. Honestly, it looked really awesome with the candle glow…que romantic, no?
The power came on in the middle of the night to relieve us from our mild sweat and helped us sleep-in til an absurdly ridiculous 7am!!! Gettiiinnn crraaazzzyyy. It was our first non-pre-5a.m. in a while so we basked in the glory of waking up AFTER the sun being up. We walked back to the tourist trap souvenir shop cuz at least the coffee was reasonably priced. We used that as our headquarters to plan the day. It was honestly a little too much planning for my blood so I disappeared for wee bit. Out on the street I saw the taxi driver we met on the first day. He’s kind of a cowboy in his own right. He reeeaalllyy wanted us to come ride horses (and pay him for it) at his ranch. I was down, but wanted to find a better deal…sorry Juan Carlos.
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| Pre-excursion pow wow and pick-me-ups |
By the time I met back up with the group they had decided on the Mayan ruins and finding a way to do some horseback riding- perfect. We had a successful walk: we ran into some children selling some crafts (we were later plagued by these children), got another view of the city, and found some horses. John was talking with the owner of these horses and managed to get me, him and Amber a little appetizer ride on the horses on the side of the street. I know mine was surprised by the sudden 100lb increase in weight from the typical Honduran.
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| Laying out the conditions of our agreement. |
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| A true caballero. |
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| Amber heckling the children to go from 20 limpiras to 15 limpiras. Monetary translation: "What? One dollar? Let's make it $0.80, OK?" |
The ruins were awesome. We got there right as this giant group of students got there. I was upset of the idea of these ruffians going in at the same time as us and ruining the camera shots and overall experience. Don’t you dare ruin my ruins….
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| Parascope up! |
Turns out they were going in a little later, so we scooted in front of them and went straight in to the ruins. We were pretty much the only people there. It was awesome. See below…
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| Polly wanna snap a picture? |
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| In an old dungeon/tomb/...latrine? |
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| Ancient Mayan ball court. The winning team gets the honor of being sacrificed. We skipped that last part of the rules in our Mayan hackey sack tourny. |
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Long vines. Caution: do not climb...not sturdy.
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More Copan stories to come....
