Antigua to Copan

I'm currently sitting at my hotel in Roatan, looking out at the bay 5 metres from my room. Roatan is an island in the Caribbean off the coast of Honduras and it is picture perfect. It's been a great place to relax after several serious days of travel. Later I'll throw something up about getting to Roatan.

On Monday, the tour group boarded a private minibus that would take us from Antigua in Guatemala's south across the country and into Honduras. It was meant to be about a 7 hour drive if we were lucky with the traffic in Guatemala City. We reached Guatemala City in no time and it looked far nicer than when I had arrived there at 430am two days earlier (still not somewhere I would want to stay or visit). We actually made it quite easily through the city and were looking to be making great time until we were halted half an hour out of the city. In front of us a line of trucks wound its way up the hill, around the corner and out of sight. It turned out that protesters had blockaded the room, a fairly common occurrence apparently. All we could do was wait. An hour later in the piercing sun and the traffic finally grounded back into motion. This coupled with some longer stops and unfavourable traffic meant that we didn't reach the border with Honduras until well after sunset. I don't think I have seen such a tiny and lackadaisical border control than the one between Guatemala and Honduras.

Copan is a small hilly town just inside the border with Guatemala. Like Antigua, it has a Spanish colonial influence with its cobbled streets, but the countryside is vastly difference. Antigua was surrounded by volcanos and mountains looming over it, while Copan is pretty much smack bang in the middle of a mountain range. Some really nice restaurants and bars there, particularly Twisted Tanyas, with good drinks and an even better view. The main draw of Copan is it's Mayan ruins, which I was worried would be more of the same. Copan's ruins are quite concentrated and almost build onto of each other, which I had not seen in any of the previous sites. There were also some incredibly ornate stellar and a series of steps with inscriptions carved along the face of the steps.

I don't think one day in Copan was enough, as there are a number of activities you can do in the surrounding area like horse riding and visiting hot springs.