taco's & toucan's travels ~ 2019

aussiefitzy.com

DAY 52

Week 8

RÍO DULCE (Izabal, GTM) to COPÁN RUINAS (Copán, HND)

Sunday May 5^th, 2019

TODAYS MILEAGE – 147 miles / 237 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 20,343 miles / 32,739 kilometres

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 commercial passenger service 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 actually 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 back to all us “Avocados” and then simply shuts up shop 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. Ray Charles could see that 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 with 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 all the Happy Hours at Carnitas Nía Lola ..... and the food was pretty decent as well.