Days 130 - 135
May 25^th - May 30^th 2010

On May 25^th we crossed the border to Honduras. The border crossing at El Florido was very easy. We were through in about a hour. Everyone we dealt with was very professional. Read more on the “Tips & Tricks page.

We don’t have too much time for Honduras. Friends are coming to visit us in Costa Rica on June 19^th. So we have to speed up a little.

First stop was Copan. Nicole wanted to check out the town of Copan Ruinas, which is about 2 miles away from the Mayan ruins. Bad idea. Very narrow cobbled streets and lots of one way streets…We almost got caught in a low hanging telephone line. The town looked nice, but we did not stop as we couldn’t find a spot to park. We headed straight to our camping spot, Balneario El Jaral, which is a modern (for Hondurian standards) water park. We enjoyed an afternoon swimming and playing in the water. We stayed in their parking lot. Next morning we were off to the Ruins of Copan. Copan was our forth Mayan site on this trip and while nice they all start looking the same after a while. The museum at the site is great though. Many of the original altars and columns are displayed in the museum as well as a original sized replica of a temple. The original temple is buried under a newer temple.

After 3 hours at the side and the museum we drove to Gracias. Gracias is one of the few colonial towns in Honduras. Soon after we left Copan it started to rain and it never stopped. We parked our camper at the Finca Bavaria in Gracias. We woke up the next morning - still rain. We didn’t want to leave Gracias without checking it out. We did - for 15 minutes - before we returned to our camper. The Finca Bavaria was not the most welcoming place we’ve been to so far, so we did not want to spend another night. We decided to move on to La Esperanza. Getting to La Esperanza was quiet an adventure. First we had to “choose” the right road. There was a really, really bad one and a slightly better one. We asked the locals about the first road which is posted in maps. Everybody told us to stay off that road which was not really a road anyway. More like a collection of mud and rocks. Everybody talked about a “new’ road to La Esperanza. The only other option was a road that - according to the street sign - should lead to Dolores. We took that road and at first it was great. Almost like a German Autobahn. But it got worse and worse. The road was totally washed out and covered with mud. It was like driving on soap. I was thankful for my 4x4 and slowly “crawled” on. The average speed was like 5 miles an hour. After 4 hours ( for 20 miles) we finally made it to La Esperanza. We were exhausted and didn’t want to look around for a place to camp so we took a hotel. By the way, it was still raining. We wanted to visit some sites around La Esperanza but the we didn’t feel like staying. The rain was getting on our nerves. So we moved on to Lake Yojoa. This time the road was perfect and it only took two hours. We found our place of choice pretty fast - the D&D Brewery. D&D is an American micro brewery. There are some cottages to rent, a nice pool and a good restaurant - and a place to park our camper. It’s a good place to just hang out and meet other travelers. We stayed for 3 days.

 

Garden of D&D Brewery (www.dd-brewery.com)

Honduras is nice but not a “must see” country. At least not in our opinion. We will spend another day or two here before we move on to Nicaragua.