Rains, Banes and Automobiles

Up until Honduras the rainy season in Central America had little, in fact no, visible impact upon our daily drudge from country to country. The weather had been pretty nice for such a temperate climate, and from Ana to Wanda, and all of their breezy friends in between had neglected to blow upon our shores. But, as we were to find out, you can't avoid the rain in the rainy season.

Another morning came, along with another bout of packing, checking out and moving on, although we hoped that with Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital and our next destination, being relatively near (146km) then perhaps the moving on would not take the whole day. Sadly, as any positive time:distance outlook is in Latin America, the ride would once again deliver us after dark, this time involving 3 buses. On this occasion, however, after dark was less appealing than usual, as Tegucigalpa had a reputation for being pretty dangerous. Meekly, we checked in, grabbed some food from the nearest eatery and bedded down for the night. This would only be a stop over city, before heading to the Bay Islands for some much anticipated scuba diving and snorkeling.

Yet another mammoth journey was about to begin, this time from the capital to San Pedro Sula, a different kind of capital (the H.I.V. capital of Latin America), and on to La Ceiba, the port town in which we would ferry across to the Bay Islands. The only real event of this journey involved me losing my wonderful little P.D.A., which had served as a great device for writing this blog (it's absence would later cause a mountainous delay in posting), the rest of which involved sitting doing very little yet again for the whole day. Once again the routine of arrive in the darkness, argue with taxi driver over the doubled fare, wonder round looking for a bed and crashing out was performed with precision and regularity, and we arrived wet, exhausted and a little agitated. Two days had taken its toll on us and our first major remonstrance occurred. The next morning it was pretty obvious that the air had not cleared from the night before, Emily and I were absolutely fine but the rain which had welcomed us off the bus and hammered down all night relentlessly had very much evidently not abated. We checked with the hotel staff only to find that it would be like this every day for the next couple of weeks, and would later find out that the ferry had been cancelled until further notice. The proverbial bubble burst immediately as we realised that our plans for finding Nemo under paradise skies were now down the baño (toilet), and it was back on the bus. We arrived back in San Pedro Sula and checked into a slightly nicer hotel (nice by our standards) with small but smashing little rooms, and went out to the most expensive restaurant in town (but still cheap by UK standards). We, like the weather, were pretty glum and a big steak, glass of wine and soft bed really helped keep our spirits up after three days of miserably uncomfortable buses and one big disappointment.

Like the others before it, the next day would involve another bus journey before hopefully hanging out in Copan Ruinas on the border of Guatemala for a few days. After a miserable few days we desperately hoped that Copan could offer up better times; but could it?