Travels to Honduras, Jim writes:

I debated about describing this part of the trip because this was so little fun. However, lest you think we'll feed you only the best parts of the trip, (you are right, mostly we will!) I thought perhaps a dose of some not so fun days would balance the picture.

We signed up the day before for the 4 am 6 hour shuttle ride from Antigua to Copan in Honduras. We all managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 315 am for this ride, only it never showed. We called at 445 to find out where it might be, operator said she'd check and call back. Of course, no call back. When the agency opened in the morning, we were there and given the story that we weren't there when the shuttle came by. They would put us on their 1 pm shuttle that day. Upon loading that afternoon, there were about 6 other passengers, turns out, all of whom had signed up for the 4 am departure. Interestingly, they were all given different reasons, driver didn't show, bus broke down, etc.

Okay, at least we were heading to our destination. The bus this time was a 15 passenger van with a driver who apparently was trained, to never, ever, under any circumstance, drive at a steady speed for more than 5 seconds (literally.) If the unthinkable event happened (that is, a steady speed for more than 5 seconds) he would stab the accelerator and immediately either let us foot completely off the gas to cancel the acceleration, or actually stab the brake pedal.

That is not the end of the story though. There was the issue of taste in music. Now I know if you have 14 people, you are likely to have 14 different preferences. So perhaps there was someone on this ride that liked the music besides the driver, but it was loud. And the speaker located close by. Constantly on too. Did I mention loud?

Then there was the ride through Guatemala City looking for two more passengers. We tend to avoid the large metro areas with traffic, constant smell of diesel exhaust, dreary housing, etc. We saw alot o Guatemala City as I think the driver was lost circling neighborhoods for these two passengers.

And, speaking at least for myself, having an unsettled stomach for days before (and after) this ride did give me one other issue upon which to focus.

Okay, you have the picture, except the ride turned out to be 8 hours instead of 6 due to I guess our Guate City tour. My last remaining fear for hassle for the day (as was every traveller on the bus) was finding lodging so late at night arriving in Copan. The good news is that finding a hotel proved to be easy upon arrival. We were assaulted (figuratively speaking) by three fellows representing one hotel. They had pictures of their place, looked too nice in the pics for our budget, and we were offered rooms for $50 each. I told the fellow we usually bed down for about $4 per person per night. To my surprise, he did not leave scorning me, but actually counter offered, but still way out of range. Linda was conversing with another, older fellow who turned out to be the hotel owner. He ended up accepting our $24 offer for two rooms and drove us right to the hotel. Turns out, we even had very small attached baths! A very nice place.

I get the feeling that the slow world economy is being felt by the tourism industry here.