Category: Copán Ruinas

I was up early to take a wander around Copán Ruinas and if the truth be told, if you did more than two laps of the Parque Central in 10 minutes, you’d be considered a local. There are a few side streets containing several hotels, small businesses and homes, but you’ll find the place to be more of a village in stature than a town. Its primary aim appears to be supporting and servicing the tourist trade visiting the adjacent Mayan Ruins.

First order of business when I got back to our accommodations was to check up on our El Hefe Avocado – Sonia, as it looked like she’d stubbed a toe and it decided to play up something fierce late yesterday afternoon/evening. After taking a quick look at the injury, from someone who’s had plenty of issues with digits during my rugby career, it looked to have no dislocations or fractures of the toe and no bruising to speak of. As I’m carrying some pretty good anti-inflammatories, in case I have a flare-up with my left ankle, I offered them to Sonia to see if that settles things down. Being the smart woman that she is, she got a second and third opinion of the medical professional kind and was advised to follow what I basically instructed her – rest, ice, elevate & isolate.

SO ….. at the end of all that, I found Sonia to be in great spirits at breakfast, the toe and foot were feeling a whole lot better and the day was full of sunshine. Not more a whole lot more you could do or ask for.

At 8 o’clock, we were met by a local guide to take us over to the Mayan ruins in which we spent most of the morning wandering around the huge site. These ruins are arguably the most intricate of the 22 known Mayan cities that housed over 7 million people throughout Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.

Having previously visited 5 previous Mayan ruins, I would have to say that this site seemingly had more intricately carved artefacts, but ranks well down in the “wow factor” when compared to the others I’ve seen. It’s a small thing, but I was somewhat miffed that the site managers use old photographs and artist impressions to try and express some of the grandeur of the sites that have been fully excavated, rather than allowing the public to see for themselves.

Our guide left us to wander on our own back to town, and with it being a hot morning, we ended up at a local cold stone ice creamery where Cookie Monster ice cream was my lunch of choice. Yeah I know …. but I’m on holidays, so nutritional eating care factor zero!!! Mid-afternoon saw all the “avocados” trundle off to some hot springs for spa treatments, mud masks and a meal, which to me was about as appealing as ex-foliating oneself with a cheese grater.

I decided to finish off David Baldacci’s new Amos Decker series book – Redemption, and then head back to Carnitas Nia Lola for a Happy Hour(s) or three and a pretty decent nosebag.

I didn’t get much sleep overnight as the local disco, which sounded like they were just across the walkway from me, finally packed it in around 4AM. Got to give them props for their sound system as they are actually located 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) away by boat – fuck it was loud!!!!

All us “Avocados” crew were good to go by 8AM, for our 15 minute ferry transfer, then 6 hour minivan ride into Copán Ruinas, just over the border in Honduras. Well some of us that is …. I took a precursory “pre-start” check of the Hyundai Grace shitbox sauna minivan and found four bald tires, no spare tire and fluid leaking from seemingly every orifice.

We get going and find next to zero seat padding and no air-conditioning in the rear of the vehicle, where I’ve preformed my very best ‘pretzel’ yoga stance & slide, just to get into the freckle numbing seating. Yeah, I was kind of cranky when I told our CEO Sonia that I’d burn this fucken vehicle before the day was out as in all my travels, this was by far the worst set of wheels I’ve sat my arse in. Fair dinkum, you wouldn’t run it in a Shitbox Derby for fear of your mates disowning you.

We got to the Guatemala/Honduras border and I surprised myself for not coming unglued for a couple of reasons. The Guatemalan female Immigration officer was thumbing through my passport and I watched her as she rips the photo page, putting a tear clean into the photo. She looks at me, closes the passport, hands all the passports back to Sonia to distribute them back to all us “Avocados” and then simply shuts up shop and goes and hides in a back office. I make mention of this to Sonia and show her the tear, but there’s not a lot you can do about it apparently.

The Honduran side was not a whole lot better, I had to have my fingerprints taken 3 times, my passport swiped 9 times, but only after I queried the guy as to why he was taking images of our passports with his mobile phone – which I’ve never seen anywhere in my global travels.

The Honduran official gave an explanation of “it’s the process” when Sonia asked him about it. It was at this time that I had to go through the whole fingerprint process another couple of times and watching him manipulate my passport in a manner in which it was not designed or meant for. It was pretty obvious he was just fucking with me, because he could. I was at the point of smacking him in the snout because he fully understood when I said to be gentle on his handling of my passport, which spurred him on to mangle the multi-page document just to prove a point.

I left the border crossing ready to rip someone’s head off and shit down their neck. Yeah, I get that you’re some kind of minimum wage numpty that’s angry at the world for manning a border station on a Sunday afternoon, but there’s no need to fuck with people simply because you think it’s fun to do so.

Anyways, we got into our accommodations at the Plaza Copán Hotel just before the heavens opened up, signalling the start of the rainy season. Dinner was a casual affair in which we took full advantage of the Happy Hours at Carnitas Nia Lola and the food was pretty decent as well.