Central America 2000 - Border nightmare
From Worldtraveller
The next day it was time to brave our second border crossing. While we were in Granada, the news had been that a bridge on the road to Guasaule (the border post) had been washed away, and this was indeed the case, and the bridge was still down, but by now the floodwaters had subsided somewhat, and the bus was able to ford the river. It was a very slow journey, road conditions being pretty bad after the rains, but we made it to the border in reasonable time.
Here we did not have a fun time. We were only going to be in Honduras for a short time, and we knew what border banks were like, so we decided to brave the moneychangers. Unfortunately, they have a habit of quoting a good rate, then counting out money at a bad rate. You can then argue all you like, but they'll deny ever having said '14 Lempiras per dollar', and we had to settle for 13 (still better than the bank rate, though).
Then we got a lift across the border in some bicycle/rickshaw type of things. As we got in, I asked how much it would be, and the driver said a dollar. However, by the time we reached the other side, this had gone up to ten dollars. This was clearly ridiculous, but unfortunately, the driver was a pretty well-built fellow, and seemed to have quite a group of friends on his side. In the face of this there was little we could do but hand over some money and get on the way.
I had a pretty low opinion of Hondurans at this point, but things soon got better as we got on a bus to Choluteca. It was fast and large, and infinitely more comfortable than Nicaraguan buses, which are exclusively old yellow American schoolbuses. The bus from Choluteca to the capital, Tegucigalpa, was equally luxurious, and though we once again arrived in a big city after dark, we got a taxi to hotel and again avoided mishap.
We left before the sun was up the next morning, and thus failed to see Tegucigalpa in the daylight. I am told this is not a great loss. We were headed for Copán Ruinas, some 500km away, and we needed to get a bus first to Santa Rosa de Copán, 400km up the road. We were pleased to find that, for our fare of L90 (about £4.50), we had a luxuriously comfortable bus for the six hour journey. We wished we were spending longer in Honduras as we passed through its beautiful mountainous forested scenery.
After two further short but (relatively) painless bus journeys, back in the yellow school buses, we arrived in the town of Copán Ruinas, which is right next to the Mayan ruins of the same name. We booked into a very cheap hotel, at only £2 each per night, which nonetheless had a rooftop terrace with fantastic views over the Valle de Copán, and where the family served meals on request. Having forgotten that it was the weekend, and we wouldn't be able to get money for two days, we were skint, but fortunately the friendly family said we could pay up on Monday.
The main purpose of coming to Central America had been to see volcanoes. Honduras has none, so we were originally going to pass right through without stopping. However, right on the border between Honduras and Guatemala lies the huge Mayan site of Copán. It would have been silly to pass by without seeing it, so the next morning we left early to walk the 2km down the road to the ruins.
