Honduras!!

We finally made it out of Guatemala! We thought we might not. It was too nice. Here we are, in country number 3.

The border crossing with Honduras was really easy. We crossed at El Florido, and the officials were efficient and friendly. The only hitch was that we had some trouble making the photocopies for importing our car into Honduras. Every border has an independent contractor who photocopies documents for a small fee. But this time, one of the photocopiers wasn't working, and the guy who ran the other one was off somewhere for over an hour. Douglas ended up going back into Guatemala to find a photocopier, and when he did, it took at least 20 minutes to copy 8 pages. His copier was almost out of toner, and he had to turn it off and tap the toner cartridge between pages to make it work. I also got this photo of a truck driver hanging out in his hammock under his 18-wheeler, waiting for his turn to cross the border:




While Douglas was off photocopying car documents, I was keeping an eye on the car. I noticed two border guards at the back, looking at the bikes. Everyone looks at the bikes, so I just ignored them. Then I noticed there were 3 guards back there, then 4. Then 5. So I got out to see what was going on, and I walked over and said "Buenas". One of the guys took out a big roll of bills and asked if we were willing to sell the bikes. The border guards wanted to buy our bikes!

The ruins at Copan were fantastic, and the pictures speak for themselves.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dpwool/RuinasCopan

We're camped at a Texaco station tonight. Not much for atmosphere, but we paid to camp here ($2) and there's a guard outside with a big gun across his lap, so we guess it's OK. We asked several people in town where we could camp, and they all suggested the Texaco. We asked in hotels if we could park in their courtyards, and they told us to go to the Texaco, too. So we did.

So far, Honduras is really different from Guatemala - much more prosperous, and also more expensive. I think we're having some mild culture shock. We had dinner at a really nice restaurant ($10!! - to make up for the Texaco station), and sat on the patio and watched people go by. Aside from the odd tuk-tuk, we could have been in a town in North America. Weird.

We're not going to spend much time in Honduras because we're kind of anxious to get to Costa Rica and find out about shipping the car. The newest possibility is to take a ferry from Panama to Cartagena, Colombia, via a Caribbean island. We can't seem to find any good information about this, though, like where it leaves from, or how much it costs, or whether we can really take the car on it (though our Colombian friend Alexandra has confirmed that it exists - that was in question, too). If anyone out there in blogland knows anything about this, please pass it on. This would be a great option - until now we thought we would have to leave the car at the mercy of port workers and hope it would be intact when it arrived in Guatemala. We've heard lots of stories of cars getting robbed while in transit, and we're not excited about sending La Tortuga off on her own.

O, and every kid under 10 *had* to touch the strong man that Dean tied to the front of the van, as a sort of figurehead. I think we'll be lucky if the strong man makes it out of Honduras.

OK, this is the next day and we drove right by Tegucigalpa and are now at the Nicaraguan border in El Paraiso, a kind of cowboy town. We're going to cross into Nicaragua tomorrow morning. The drivers here are *insane* - we figure that Douglas' long years of mountain biking experience are coming in handy helping him dodge giant car-eating potholes and avoid oncoming buses/trucks/you name it. Everyone seems to like passing on blind corners best, and keep on coming even if you are coming towards them! It's like an adult game of chicken, and several times I was sitting in the passenger seat saying 'o god, o god, o god' and squeezing my eyes shut to block out the sight of an oncoming semi in our lane. BUT, we've made it this far, and Douglas says he always has his eye on the shoulder of the road so he can dodge off. i should stop this train of thought, sorry mom.

Nicaragua looks great! more from there