Honduras 2014 – Day 8 – Cindy and Lynn’s Excellent Adventure

We started the day off early at breakfast with all our friends.  We had leased a car through Hertz and they were to deliver it to the Hotel Maya at 9:00.  Our group was leaving for the airport at 9:20AM.  The car never arrived, so finally, we called them and they said they had brought it at 8:00 and we weren’t there.  We either had to wait for the car or come to the airport and pick it up.  We hired a taxi to take us to the airport and we got on the road 3 hours later than we planned.  It was easy getting out of Tegucigalpa, which was our biggest fear.  We had gotten good advice about how to get out of the city and how to get to Copan Ruinas, which was our destination for the day.  We were originally told it would take us 8 hours, but a lady that we met at the hotel told us it would take us 2 1/2 hours to get to San Pedro and then 2 more to get to Copan.  We took the nice highway to San Pedro and stopped for lunch along the lake on the highway from Teguc to San Pedro.  We had fresh fish that we picked out of a cooler, along with plantains and some pickled onions and pickled cabbage.  We liked the onions the best.  We paid for our meal and left the restaurant about 3:00.  We drove up the highway to San Pedro and were to get on another highway to Copan Ruinas, but missed the turn-off because we had to take a detour.  It was not much out of our way – perhaps 30 minutes,  We were surprised at the road conditions.  The map showed a really nice highway, much like what we took between the capital and San Pedro.   The road had such numerous potholes that we had to dodge them constantly.  We were told not to drive in Honduras at night, but the road was so treacherous that it took us 3 hours to drive from San Pedro Sula.  Our only real concern were the security stops, but we had no troubles there.  There were times when the road turned into a dirt road and it seemed like miles between villages and there were no lights whatsoever for much of the way.  We discussed the possibility of spending the night in the car because we thought it might be possible that we had missed a turn.  It was definitely no highway.  When we started discussing our options, we finally saw a sign to Copan Ruinas.  We were perhaps 45 minutes away, but it was obvious that we had arrived.  A mile or so outside of town, we finally saw a sign that said we were on the right road.  Then we saw the lights of the town.  We were really relieved.  We arrived in this beautiful town with cobblestone streets and weren’t sure we could find our small hotel that has only 4 rooms.  We asked some gentlemen that we saw where the Calle de Independenzia was and they could not tell us.  We finally just started driving around and lo and behold, we found it.   It was a one-way street and just about the time we thought we weren’t going to find the hotel, there it was!  We were greeted at the gate by the night manager and taken up to our room.  It was absolutely fabulous.  The room had A/C, television, Wi-Fi, 2 twin beds and a double bed.  We both liked the twin beds because the mattress seemed more substantial.  We asked the night manager where to eat and he suggested a Uruguayan restaurant.  We walked less than a block to the restaurant and we both ordered a beef dish.  They brought us a salad first — believe it or not potato salad — and a regular iceberg lettuce salad.  I ate the potato salad and it was actually very good.  I asked for my meat to be medium rare and it came that way — a first in Honduras.  I actually had a vodka tonic and then we asked for them to put an extra beer on our tab.  They wanted cash and when they brought our change several minutes later, both of us had received too much change.  We were able to get that rectified.  We came back to the hotel and drank our beers in our upstairs lobby area.  We are now getting ready to sleep like the dead.  Buenos noches.