- The Adventure Begins
- Getting There is Half the Fun
- Triunfo de la Cruz
- Triunfo de la Cruz II
- Lancetilla Botanical Gardens
- Christmas in Triunfo de la Cruz
- Fishing
- Copan Ruinas
- The Mayan Ruins at Copan
- Final Thoughts
- Wenyao's Photos
(Winter 2003 Albums » Honduras)
Copan
Sat, Dec 27
Copan is 180km from Tela, which doesn't seem like much (3 hours at a decent pace) until you realise that the last section involves winding roads that snake up into the mountains. In the end we arrived around 1.30pm after a 4 1/2 hour drive.
The town of Copan seems geared entirely towards tourism and 3 of the 5 tour operators in Honduras operate from here. We saw at least 3 Internet cafes while we were here and I think it might have been the first time on our trip that we saw other tourists after leaving the airport.
Copan is best known for the Mayan ruins nearby, but there are other things you can do while you're here. Every other person standing around asks if you want to go to Agua Caliente (literally hot water in Spanish), the hot springs nearby.
We were starving when we arrived so we grabbed some much-needed food before heading out to explore the town. A couple of really long stairs and 40 degree slopes later, we decided that we'd seen enough and headed back to the hotel where we found 40 channels of cable TV! We didn't get much news while we were in Triunfo (despite the satellite TV there were no English news channels) so it was quite a shock when we heard about the earthquake in Iran the day before.
That evening we wanted to try out the only Chinese restaurant we saw while walking around. Turns out the chef was nowhere to be found. When they finally managed to get him to the restaurant, he declined to explain the menu to us and just sat around mumbling stuff. Yet another drunk guy. Wonderful. So we grabbed dinner at another place where we (foolishly!) ate more salad. Remember this well. It was a decision that would haunt us the next day.
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