As mentioned, I took the shuttle from Antigua at 4am, so I was very tired when I got to Copan eight hours or so later. When I got there I met up with Dan, one of my friends from San Pedro. I spent a couple of days in town checking out the local Maya ruins and walking in this banana plantation. It was a nice place, but it was obvious that I wasn't in Guatemala anymore. Whereas all of the guatemalans I've met have been very friendly, the people in copan seemed less so. The locals sat at every corner dressed in their jeans, cowboy hats and cowboy boots staring g at you while fiddling their big machetes. They weren't hostile, but I've never felt less welcome in my entire life. Thus it was not with a heavy heart I left Copan.
Next stop was Rio Dulce back in Guatemala. I didn't want to pay a lot of money for a private shuttle, so I decided to go local style. It was a bit frustrating when all of the four people I talked with told me that I had go take different routes. After a while I got sick of it all, so I just took a bus to the border and improvised Three buses, four hours and five dollars later I was in Rio Dulce, not far from the Caribbean coast. The journey went fine, and for a couple of hours I even got to sit next to the driver. This turned out to be a mixed blessing though. When you ride shotgun, you have the best seat in the vehicle, but that also meant that I had front row seat to when our small bus overtook a large bus in a steep, upwards curve with a large 18-wheeler bearing down on us from the other direction. It wouldn't have helped much with airbag and a seatbelt if we had crashed, and that's probably the reason why we didn't have any in the first place.
The name "Rio Dulce" actually means "sweet river", and sweet it was. My hostel was right by the river, so every morning I had breakfast at the riverside. That wasn't too bad. However,the localization was the main reason why I stayed there. The dorms were kind of crappy, and the beds were hard, but I guess you get what you pay for, and for 30Quetzales , 3.5usd pr night, I guess I can't complain. But the hard beds only made it better when we made it to Finca Paraiso, a place on the river with hot waterfalls. It was epic laying on hot rocks with hot water cascading down on your back. The sad thing is that my backpack got in a small pond, so my kindle is now dead. R.I. P.
After a couple of days in Rio Dulce I took the bus to Semuc Champey with Lydia and James, this British couple I met at the Finca. For those of you who don't know, Semuc Champey is this beautiful natural park in the middle of nowhere. After an extremely bumpy ride we arrived at our hostel, beaten and sore after spending g 30mins holding on for or lives in the back of a pickup.
The main attraction in Semuc Champey is a series of pools and pond in the river. The water is crystal clear, and the place itself is amazing. In adittion, there's a big cave nearby. I went on this candle light tour which was pretty cool. We swam around in the cave, climbed up waterfalls, traversed deep pits and stuff. The bottom was riddled with razor sharp stones though, so I lleft with cuts and bruises on my feet and knees. Still worth it.
Now I've made my way up to Flores, a small village on this island in the middle of a lake. The main attraction in the area is the ancient Maya city of Tikal, one of the largest ever built. So tomorrow I will embark on a three day hike through the jungless, and on Friday, we will end up n Tikal. To say it like the cool people would; this shit gon' be live, yo!
So long!
As always, the pictures are a bit mixed and clumped together, but from the upper left, they are as following;
1: the stairway at Copan. The longest inscription in central america with more than 2000 signs.
2: The Makaw (aka parrot) the national bird of Honduras
3The hostel in Rio Dulce
4:Pitstop on our way to Semuc Champey
5:Caveswimming
6&7: The pools at Semuc
8: The river
9: Chillin' in Copan
10: A four faced Mayan god. Creepy bastard.
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