A Visit to the Copan Ruins and Roatan Island in Honduras
The van ride was uneventful. There wasn’t much scenery to appreciate, and I doubt if anyone would have anyway, since most were groggy from last night’s festivities and silently cursing the early 5am start. Traffic flow was better than expected, and pretty soon we arrived at El Florido where Chris collected the passports for validation at both the Guatemalan and Honduran immigration offices. Money changers were soon crowding around our van, and despite some misgivings about getting a raw deal I parted with my leftover quetzales and was soon examining the lempira notes. After a few minutes delay caused by my passport (Honduran authorities had to double check entry requirements), we continued on to Copan.
After a cheap, sumptuous steak lunch, five of us walked the 1km or so towards the ruins. The whole visit took a mere couple of hours – we happened upon different impressive stelae, the ball court, the Hieroglyphic Stairway, and altars. All the while, our local guide Virgilio was telling us fascinating facts about the various kings and their reigns of power over Copan – with very exotic names like Moon Jaguar, Smoke Serpent, Eighteen Rabbit…(Crouching Tiger?!)…you get the idea. All this information, while educational and made all the more so by Virgilio’s enthusiasm and “interesting” use of English, proved to be too much to digest – that 430am wakeup call and long travel must’ve taken a toll – thus towards the end, I simply shut my ears off to the commentary and concentrated on taking pictures. To sum up, a worthwhile visit to one of the most important Mayan ruins.
Cheers erupted as I entered the waiting room of the bus terminal in San Pedro Sula, with tour leader Chris even bounding up to me and giving a big hug. No, I hadn’t turned into a rock star, but the reason was in my left hand I was holding my long-lost duffel bag. Congratulations were heaped upon me, and cries of “That small thing caused all this trouble?” were heard as well. Earlier that day, after 6 long days of waiting and constantly calling up the baggage claims office of Continental Airlines, Urs and I had separated from the group and made our way to San Pedro Sula airport, where the bag had just arrived from who-knows-where. The others had kindly waited in town so that the whole group could proceed to Comayagua together, and everyone was happy to finally be able to bid adios to the stench of the garbage-lined streets. Rain had fallen recently, making a bad situation worse – the trek to the next bus terminal through mud and water-filled potholes was disgusting. (Eerily reminded me of my college days, when I took public transit through Blumentritt market everyday). Another puzzling feature of San Pedro Sula was that several bus terminals were in close proximity to each other, and one had to know exactly which terminal one’s bus departed from – usually a function of destination (e.g. to the North, to the South) – adding to the foreign traveller’s confusion. Urs and I asked no less than 5 locals where the buses for Comayagua departed from, and in each instance got a different answer. The concept of a central bus station appeared to be light years away.
Not much had happened during the past three days in the island of Roatan, famed for having the world’s cheapest scuba diving courses, other than the constant downpours. The island wasn’t all that impressive – the sand was dark brownish and the beaches so-so, and for some reason I considered it as some sort of “poor man’s Boracay”. This pretty much confined us to our hotel rooms and I spent most of the time watching CNN or reading. At dinnertime, we would console ourselves by eating fresh, cheap lobster or another seafood – as if this would make up for the wonderful time we were all having due to forces of Nature. Oh well, we wanted total relaxation, and we got it in a slightly different form – I also busied myself with calling up Continental, and this proved both to be a huge expense as well as a source of frustration, as it became evident that their staff had no clue where my bag currently was, nor when it was expected to arrive – each conversation brought a different excuse and timetable. One day Chris and I paid a visit to their office in Roatan airport, whereupon their staff proved displayed both unhelpfulness and a despicable attitude severely lacking in customer service. Fortunately, in one of the later phone conversations, agent Amilcar Fuentes was put on the line, and he proved a great help both because he actually spoke English and he went above and beyond his duties in setting the wheels in motion for the search and eventual retrieval of my bag.
Perhaps the most memorable thing that happened was on the bus ride to La Ceiba. This huge, black man (a rarity) boarded our bus and pretty soon he was preaching about eternal damnation, the flames of hell, and salvation in a manner not unlike that of those fire-and-brimstone preachers on television. I was utterly riveted by his spiel (delivered en Espanol), and followed his every word and action intently. At the end of it, I thought how great it would’ve been if he had been a pastor in my church during my younger days, instead of the ones who tended to have a soporific effect on the congregation.
