Thank goodness for Mr. Letham....

...Our high school spanish teacher for those who don't already know. The tourist people here make no attempt to do ANY english. Charles finds that unrealistic and I suppose given the state of the tourism industry most places I have been before, he may be right. Anyway, we are actually doing OK because I think Charles may have taken grade 10 spanish. I only had grade 9 but that in combination with speaking english and trying to learn french lately seems to be doing the trick. We are pretty conversant now with most transportation, food and accomodation needs. Talking to others on buses and around does exhaust itself relatively quickly. I am still at the noun and verb stage at best. When they ask me a question, I try to figure out the verb and respond what I think is accordingly. From the puzzled looks I sometimes get, I am sure I get it wrong a lot.

Yesterday we had a very ambitious day of movement. We set off from our hotel around 8 am, had to wait till 9.15 for the bus from Dangriga, Belize to Punta Gorda at the south end. We pretty much only had time to have lunch before we headed for a boat back to Guatemala. Charles had wanted to watch rugby but the hotel we were planning on trying to stay at (that p.s. had 10..count 'em...10 satellite dishes in the yard) did not have the game on. We decided to push on instead. The boat was supposed to leave at 2 but they held it for a resident ex-pat until closer to 2.30. It was nice to be on a boat instead of a bus, if only for an hour. When we arrived in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, we just stayed long enough to get a bus for Chiquimula, near the Honduran border. The guys on the bus sort of scammed us. I had noticed on the window that they were going where we wanted to go. There was another bus at the corner. I suspected that it was also going where we were headed but Charles thought we should just go with the one we found first. They actively tried to keep us away from the other bus. It left a few minutes later and we took up residence exactly where it had been. We waited another half hour to assemble passengers. We also stopped for 45 minutes en route to wait for other passengers while the conductor was on the cell phone constantly. I think he was in contact with several other minibuses which were coming from other places. Several of them came and gave us passengers. The last one seemed to finally arrive and we took off again. In the book it is supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride but from the time we found the bus until we arrived at our destination was more like 5. By that time it was 9 pm and we just found the nearest hotel and took a room. Not bad even though Charles thought the neighbourhood was the worst we had been in yet. I didn't go back out after we arrived because I had eaten some empanadas a lady sold me on the bus. Charles went out to get pizza. In the morning we walked through quite a nice market to get to the next bus...to here in Copan, Honduras. We now only have about 4 more border crossing to go before we head home. We are half way through the trip.

We left our hotel around 7 this morning and arrived here about 10. We had caught a bus from Chiquimula and we had to switch to another bus half way. I didn't understand at first that we didn't have to pay for the onward conveyance. It made a lot of sense since we were the only people left on the one we had started on and the next one was a van, half the size. I think they all work together and your ticket is like a transfer which gets you from town to the border.

Here in Copan is another set of Mayan ruins. They are not as extensive as Tikal although there may be as many structures. It is much more compact but has more fiddly bits. We were at the ruins for a couple of hours. I stayed an extra hour to go to the on-site museum where they have moved many of the original carvings. They have replaced them in situ with concrete casts. It is housed inside to protect them from the elements so that is great. Charles was happy at Tikal but I think one Mayan ruin was enough and he didn't seem nearly as interested today. It is nice to just stop and get our laundry done.