I couldn’t get a direct shuttle from El Paredon to Copan so I had to go back to Antigua to then get a shuttle to Copan Ruins. The shuttle was at 3:30am and there were no other times available so I woke up at around 3am, gathered my things and waited outside my hostel to venture off to Honduras.
The classic Central America backpacker trail gets a bit murky once it gets to Honduras. Honduras is one of the more dangerous places in Central America and many elect to skip it and either go straight to El Salvador or even further beyond to Nicaragua. The main 2 areas that backpackers visit are:
- The Bay Islands : Roatan and Utila, which are away from the Honduras mainland and are popular spots for cruise ships and divers. Utila is one of the cheapest places in the world to get your PADI dive certificate. Although interested in getting my dive certificate, getting to the Bay Islands was a logistical nightmare to get to from where I was and would involve many buses or an expensive flight. I opted for the second option.
2. Copan Ruins: The UNESCO world heritage site of the Copan Ruinas, which is only a 20ish minute drive over the border from Guatemala.
To visit Honduras for only 2 nights in the border town of Copan Ruins of course, in a way, feels like I’m ‘cheating’. To ‘tick’ Honduras off the country list after such a short stay in what is a massive country with I’m sure lots to see. It resembled my tick off Qatar last year when I took a 4 hour city tour during my extended layover on the way home from Europe. Anyways, that is exactly what I did, a short but sweet stay in Honduras.
Despite being in the touristy part of Honduras my experience here was still very different to that of the countries I had already been to. People would stop me in the street and ask where I was from, the servers at restaurants would thank me for visiting their country and the overall looks of approval I got whilst I walked down the street were really nice. I explored the town and of course tried the local beer, another tick off on the beer bucket list.
Of course, I couldn’t visit the town of Copan Ruins and not visit the actual Copan Ruins itself. After visiting the Mayan ruins of Palenque, Chitzen Itza and Tikal already, I’d be lying if I said the ruins weren’t beginning to all look the same and blend into one. Despite this I still enjoyed them as I do find the Mayan history and how they were built super interesting.
Next stop El Salvador.