8-16

Lonely Planet, you´re not doing yourself any favors here. First you were off base with Alegria, El Salvador and now you´ve missed the mark with San Lorenzo, Honduras, as well. You´re on thin ice here, bub. Sure, it´s not the most beautiful town I´ve even seen, but I can assure it´s a far sight better than my last Honduran travel experience. Indeed, even if our border crossing was not as speedy as we might have hoped, San Lorenzo and the Gulf of Fonseca its perched on are both better than you led us to believe. I mean, we may be the only foreign tourists in town but hey, there´s a carnival tonight so it can´t be all bad, can it?

Editor´s Note: A large number of Candied Apples says that no, it cannot. :)

This is not the kind of water therapy I was looking for!

I should have taken the hint. After five sunny days in Guatemala, it began to rain as soon as I crossed the border into Honduras. Still, my destination, Copan Ruinas, one of the southernmost Maya settlements ever built, is only fifteen kilometers from the border with Guatemala (the cradle of Maya Civilization) and almost directly in my path eastwards to Guatemala. So, on paper at least, in made sense – here, however, practice and theory diverge. My first twelve hours in Honduras can be summed up in one word: rain. It rained and rained and rained. It rained so much that my moderately-overpriced hostel – as well as the rest of the city of Copan Ruinas – lost both electricity and water by the next morning. The electricity I can do without, but the water is a different story.* Fortunately ruins, by their very nature, need neither and I will say the ruins of Copan were worth the trip. Still, few can blame me if I elected to beat a hasty retreat back to Guatemala far sooner than I expected.

* There is perhaps nothing sadder than cooking Ramen with bottled water by candlelight.