Honduras

I assume I covered the border in the last part, so having been driven into town I found an ATM and gave the 60 Lempira to the border jefe and left for my hostel. Ah shit sold out. I was beginning to hit a high season as it was noticeable places were now sold out compared to previously when I had been travelling in Mexico. I wandered out into the backstreets down a hill and found myself another place that still had rooms and was seemingly overrun with children who had invaded the whole place. Copan Ruinas itself seems a pretty little town. I thought it was not too touristy given Copan Ruins is here and its a nice pleasant place to walk around in (even if it is quite small). That night I just grabbed some food from a local store and then came back to the hostel to chill and regain some sleep after the brutal day long journey. I think I am becoming old. They had a bookshelf in the hostel and on it were some ancient travel guides (even more out of date than mine) and amongst these was a battered copy of Heart of Darkness. Ah its a short book I thought. And I hated it when I read it for Mr Ramsey at school (I was 14 and disliked it as it only has 3 chapters). I wondered if I would like it more now. I managed to start it that night and got chatting with three girls from Barcelona. I do like that Spanish accent and all that energy. Its like their conversation has to literally explode from their body or they will spontaneously combust. We chatted for a bit and then I turfed in with the book.

In the morning I woke and armed with some water, bread and cheese (the staple food of prisoners and long haul travellers) and Joseph Conrad I set off for the ruins. They have a $15 charge, but Dom and Tom I later found out had jumped the fence at the back where the barbed wire is straggly and it is apparently quite easy. I thought they had cruelly clipped the wings of the Scarlet Macaws (apparently not as they were gone when I came back), but they must just be quite docile. The ruins themselves are impressive. They would be the last of the Mayan ruins I saw. I had learnt of myself that I really don't give a shit about ancient history, because it teaches so little of modern life and I don't really have any time for the past (both odd revelations for a historian). I do however like architecture a lot. There are some impressive carved faces, patterns and stelae in the ruins, but the buildings themselves are so so. The incrdibly impressive staircase is forbidden to climb, so the most interesting part is off limits. It is still well worth visiting though. Damn this heat. Normally I like the heat, but Managua feels like it is trying to suck the life out of you. I took all the ruins in for a few hours and considered sneaking into the tunnels that I did not pay for. I bottled that though and I think there may be a way in round the back from the main square. When I finished up I went back to the hotel, because I was paranoid about my passport (damn it. I never used to worry, now I stress. But most of the time I control it because its pointless. Only this time I went back and actually used a locker for the first time in my life). I gathered up some stuff and headed off to Las Sepulturas. These are some small ruins about 2km beyond Copan and noone goes. I think I saw a quetzal and apart from some wandering Germans I had the place to myself. I read another chapter of Heart of Darkness and would finish it off in the hotel. Back in the hotel I was joined by Briana and Shaun (brother and sister from Idaho). Briana had been working in a school in Norhtern Honduras and her family had come to visit. We were soon joined by their parents and had a spirited chat on things ranging from travel to US politics. I was invited to join them for dinner and the dad insisted on paying for my meal. It was a really good conversation and evening as I went drinking with the Briana and Shaun afterwards. Reinforced my belief that the centre of the States is far better than the coasts. It was really easy company and all of them were really nice people. A stark contrast to the awkwardness of travelling with the Californian the few days previously. In the evening I finished Conrad. Really enjoyed it. Can sympathise with going nuts travelling solo in a foreign land. Wonder how I will handle the Amazon. Probably a good idea Helen is joining me halfway down, or they'd find me polishing skulls and leading my own revolution from the interior.

In the morning the Spanish girls had gone and I got chatting with Dom and Tom (a couple of guys from Barcelona and New Zealand who had met working in London). We reminisced about the city and then I joined them for breakfast and we set off for Gracias. I had wanted to climb the mountain there, but I was feeling a little unwell and was getting big city itch. Excepting a few hours in Guatemala City it had been over 3 weeks since I was last in a real place (San Salvador) and I needed somewhere real. Therefore I decided to stay for one night and push on to the capital of Tegucigalpa. We were sure the buses would rip us off (Guatemala is so bad it makes you suspicious of every other country. So far I think it is alone in gouging your eyeballs until you bleed from them, before twisting your bollocks for good measure to squeeze out anything you have left) and so we set to haggling down the price. We even hiked away and the bus drove past us. Perhaps we had miscalculated. We would have to hitch we thought as the bus drove off round the corner. Then there was a beeping sound and the chicken bus reversed all the way back down the road to meet us. Class. So we tried to shave some more off the price but they just shoved us on. Dom and I tried to calculate how much extra if any we were paying. It was three buses to Gracias and we did the same with the next one, but some people were complaining about how little we were paying and so Dom felt a bit guilty and we accepted the price for the last one without question. These guys had planned to buy a boat and take it all the way down the Amazon. Sounded interesting, was a shame I was headed the other way but Tom was interested in my attempt to get into Panama by fishing boat. Gracias is a tumbledown hill town and slightly overrated by Lonely Planet. We got a two bed room between three people after some haggling and despite Dom being sick we hiked out to the thermal pools. Part way we hitched on a truck because Dom was bad and I got the standing on the back on top of one of those two wheeled wheelbarrow things you use to lift boxes that are heavy. It was tied on by string, so when the truck bounced it catapulted me into the air. Was interesting to hitchike effectively on a truck playing Buckaroo. The hot springs were a pleasant break and we got chatting with some Yankees who had done the original hippy trail in the 1970s. Nice. They did all of this before it became touristy at all. Must have been interesting and cheap. I get the feeling the next generation is not going to be able to do what I am doing now, because the other countries would have equalised economically and we wont have such a dominant currency (not that we do at the moment. I sometimes wander what I could have done with that extra $9,000). A lot is the simple answer. I then somehow wandered into a huge debate on religion, politics and that twat Dawkins with Tom. I was trying to impress upon him that Dawkins is incredibly biased against religion, that atheism which Dawkins loves is a religion anyway (If god is omnipotent and omnipresent he is beyond human comprehension. If that is the case then we can't prove he exists or does not due to our lack of mental faculty. Therefore you either have faith he exists or faith he does not. And so both take faith alone and not science. And faith is the cornerstone of religion. Therefore atheism is a religion), he is intolerant of other views which is what he argues religion is, people can be whipped up in the name of anything (Hitler, Stalin, the American Left) other than religion and most importantly that most genuinely religious people tend to be harmless and really nice if not always the sharpest thinkers. Anyway I have decided to drop in little philosophies and observations as I go. Needless to say I did not 100% convince him and somehow we slid onto abortion as a topic (the only thing in the world that I don't think is clear cut. Everything else in life is simple, we just invent excuses not to have to act or don't think things through clearly bout spout shit we read). It was quite exhausting. Thank god the relaxation from the thermal pools was balancing that out. I am liking the opportunity on this trip to sharpen my thinking and hone my arguments. Spurs finally won a game that evening against Hull and that evening in town we had to deal with some real moronic people. We asked one guy for internet and he says that way waving his arm, then right. So its right? No its left. What? Its right. Ah fuck you. And in the restaurant they had a portion listed as an option. My friend said a portion of what. She said a portion. Of what? meat. What meat? meat. And so on and on. He asked for a knife as they had not brought one for the steak and he got a napkin. And he is Spanish so there were no language problems. The Kiwi did not know what was going on, but I was laughing because I understood it and Dom was getting really frustrated.

In the morning I said goodbye to those two and got a bus to San Juan. From there it was another bus to La Esperanza and then a long one to the capital. Was moving through Honduras quite fast. I had wanted to see the Bay Islands but I did not think learning to dive was justified with teh currency collapse, because I would not make the most of it. Will learn when I am working in Australia. I also wanted to see the Mosquito Coast (but it required a lot of time or money to see this mini Amazon. I was going to the real thing and I did not want to use up either of those resources because I wanted to get to Colombia desperately). On the bus I finished Red Badge of Courage and thought it was a good book and interesting seeing as I have never been at war or under fire. Was rapidly clipping through some books on this trip now and improving my literary mind. I realised as I arrived by bus that I am now capable of map reading without road signs, but just through sight and landmarks I can GPS my location. Kind of a funky discovery as I was always a good map reader and now I can read from terrain alone. The city seemed a little chaotic and mental. The cheap hotel was shut and I asked in another place, but that man was so creepy. He looked like he wanted to steal my kidneys and then creepily make love to them. Yes he was that weird and that uncomfortable. I decided I like my kidneys and I would stay somewhere else. I found a really cheap, shitty place next to the church and bedded in. I wandered around the old town but was still whacked out from whatever had been bothering me. The place had no electric plugs so I would have no way of telling the time until I got into Nicragua. Shit. I went that evening to see The Hitcher starring Sean Bean. I was told it would be in Spanish with English subtitles so I thought I could practice, but it was the other way around. It was watchable and the girl from One Tru Hill is good looking. It was also very cheap at only 20 Lempiras. I found out in Honduras the trailers show virtually the whole film so I have no need to watch anything I get a trailer for, because I know how it starts, ends and every important bit in between as they are done chronologically. This is also the case in Nicaragua by the way. On a side note Slumdog Millionaire had won the Oscar. Still not managed to see it.

In the morning I got up and did what I usually do in capitals. I wrote my blog up to date. And then I contacted loads of couchsurfers in Colombia for places to stay. I have somewhere in every city bar Cartagena and Bogota now I think, though I have people to drink with in those places. Will do some mellow slow travelling and lots of partying in Colombia I think. I did have to pay 40 Lempiras for headphones though as it was 10 Lempiras an hour when I thought that was the price for total rental. Shit. I went to the art gallery. Bottom floor is shit, but the top floor has some really interesting modern art stuff. Was going to go the next day to the History museum but could not be bothered in the end. I decided to head up the big monument hill in town. Walking past the stadium I clocked some weird guys and adjusted my walk to put a barrier between them and me. They approached me and I ignored them. Creepy. Then as I went up the hill in a deserted neighbourhood there was weird chanting all the way up this lonely road. I did not feel comfortable in this city and I think so far its by far my least favourite Central American capital. After I got the good view and escaped the hill, I walked down through the posh neighbourhoods (complete with car park barriers and armed guards) to a cinema far side of town. It was a tough walk and the place had nothing to see, so I walked around a bit and headed back. Its probably not worth stopping in Tegulcigalpa. I'd seemingly been solicited by some of the Colombians I had contacted and Geli had told me my letter in Spanish was great as a letter and awful Spanish. Ah damn it. Still no reply either :-( I made up my mind I would fly to Colombia on april 1st so I had my departure date. That gave me at least 5 weeks there. When I settled in, the walls were thin and both light and strange noises were eminating from next door. Felt like some weird twilight zone episode. Sleep was the best option.

I thought this capital was quite innaccessible so was not looking forward to Managua (as Lonely Planet says its worse). I had also not been able to meet up with the couchsurfer here. Shitty. Lonely Planets coverage and map was shit though and they really don't provide for those people who are not fat and lazy and take taxis everywhere with proper maps. I also wonder how far they actually probe in cities. Fuckwits. They are good but they are vulnerable to a superior guidebook. This place was full of decrepid buildings and rivers and I had to ask directions all the way to get a bus for the border as the map was inadequate (this was true as well for Managua). It was cheaper to get a direct bus so I waited 2 hours and read Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor. Good piece and quite difficult English at parts, even for me. So my style should take on a nautical air now. I think I need to read more Russian masters as my language improves accordingly. Its the Scarlett Letter next anyway, then will need a new one in San Jose. There were some strange plastic bottles arranged on wooden stakes like Kurtz´s skulls. A tribute to a coke lover no doubt. I met an English couple and a couple of Israelis on the bus and used my Spanish to get the 5 of us over the border. Even saved them all some random taxes. We had to pay $1 to leave, $7 to enter and another $1 for municipal tax. We got one to one exchange, avoided the badgering children and were finally in Nicragua, that I have been assured is cheap.