Well let's see, where to start. We're back to our wonderful boat after a week of inland travel in Honduras and have lots of good memories, a mild case of GI disturbance, I have a cold and survived getting kicked in the thigh by a horse, but more on that later. We plan to spend a couple more days here in La Ceiba getting ourselves organized to head to Roatan for 2 weeks before going into the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. We're very excited to be hopefully coming home June 3rd if we can get to the plane and all works smoothly. Personally, I hope it stays cool up there in New England and we have a rainy summer! Jon is in town as I write this trying to find us a portable AC so we can turn this boat into a refrigerator like Ann did with hers in Florida!

We traveled to the beautiful town of Copan Ruinas in Western Honduras which is the home of the popular Mayan ruin site as well. We took a direct, very comfy bus there which took 8 hours start to finish. Since we're definitely on a budget, we're using the Lonely Planet guide called Central America on a Shoestring, which is the bible for practically every budget traveler here. There are tons of backpackers from all over the world exploring Central America. One couple and their young son are doing it a little differently- they had their safari vehicle shipped by sea from South Africa to Argentina, then have driven up through South and Central America, camping along the way. We had lunch at adjacent picnic tables together on the day we toured the ruins and it was very interesting to see their vehicle (you would have loved it dad) and hear about how they're doing this trip.

You can easily find a place to stay here with no reservation necessary. When we get to a town, we just walk around checking out the possibilities, then pick a place and ask to see the room. Our requirements are private rooms with our own bathroom and the price ranged $10- 20 per night. The amenities include sheets, a towel, usually soap, sometimes a TV, and a fan. AC is much more expensive here as compared with Mexico, I think because power is so expensive but since the power goes out every single day practically, you wouldn't get to run the AC much anyway. I don't get what the problem is, but we were without electricity several times during the week.

For the afternoon, we walked around the town, went to a little museum and then had dinner at a cute restaurant with a beautiful garden patio. We had the typical Honduran meal which is an assortment of beans of course, tortillas, maybe some meat, a cream that you put on your beans, avocado, plantains, and Honduran cheese which is like a soft, white feta but with a parmesan flavor. By the end of the week, we couldn't even think about this "typico" meal since we were so tired of it! The town of Copan is just beautiful and has its own dreamy feel with huge trees, broad pastures and cobble stoned streets. The Copan River runs next to the town and they cultivate tomatoes in the valley. The parque central was all refurbished and full of tropical landscaping. There are plenty of tourists but the town maintains its charm. The men all wear jeans, western shirts and cowboy hats and look especially handsome that way. They ride horses with well worn leather saddles and bridles and I couldn't get enough of seeing them walking along the roads through the trees or herding cattle in the pastures.

The next day, we had typico for breakfast which included eggs this time, then walked a couple of kilometers out of town on a cute little stone sidewalk to the site of the ruins. They weren't as impressive as chichen itza, but the landscape was so moving. It took us almost all day to walk all the paths. The trees are my favorite part; it is Spring here. There were few people there, so it was a nice quiet day. These ruins are known for their intricate stelae (the tower like sculptures) and how well they are preserved. There was a really nice nature path there that had little roofed stations every few hundred feet that explained the Mayan lifestyle. What was interesting is that they were all oil paintings on canvas. It's too bad that they'll eventually be ruined by the rain, but they were really unique. That night, the power was off for about 8 hours so we were baking in our hot room with no fan to cool it.

Got a slow start the next day from no sleep and decided to move to a different hotel since I felt like I couldn't spend another minute in that room, electricity or not. We found another one that was quieter, with 2 fans and a pretty courtyard. That day, we went to Hacienda San Lucas which is a fancy hotel with large grounds and trails to walk on. We walked up to a little Indian town called La Pintada where I was promptly surrounded by little girls trying to get me to buy these little corn husk dolls that the women make to earn some income. I bought 2 but was offered about a hundred. We enjoyed the grounds at the hacienda and sipped lemonade as if we were staying there, then walked back into town to arrange our own fancy accommodations for the following day.

Everything we'd read raved about Finca El Cisne, an old family farm/estate that does trips where you spend a day or more at the finca. The word finca means farm and I think in this case, like a gentleman's farm. They grow coffee and cardamon for export and process it there with their own machinery but also have cattle, dairy cows to make their own cheese, they grow vegetables, fruits and are self sufficient in many ways. The son is running a small business by having tourists come and spend time experiencing the finca and its beauty. We did this with another couple from Switzerland. Carlos (the son) picked us up in town in the morning and we traveled 24 km up into the mountains outside of Copan. The scenery was stunning and the finca is I can't remember how big- but huge. You stay in the guesthouse, which is simple, yet peaceful and pretty. We took a 3 hour fantastic horseback ride through incredible scenery and snacked on tamarinds, swam in a mountain stream, looked at their tilapia cultivation ponds, tasted various cherries and berries that Carlos was pointing out and seeing how the coffee and cardamon grows. One berry tasted just like cotton candy. Then we had lunch at his parents house which was varied and delicious. We had coffee after lunch made from their own coffee and Jon had a cup too! Then we toured the coffee and cardamon processing areas. Cardamon smells like a limey juniper to me and is used a lot here and in India, not so much in the US. They grow and export a lot of it. Some of the rice was flavored with it and the next morning, there was cardamon in the hot milk for coffee con leche which was nice for a change in flavor. I learned that coffee plantations process the coffee but don't usually roast it- the roasting is done elsewhere down the line and there are 2 grades that are determined by whether the coffee beans sink (good) or float when being rinsed. This finca specializes in shade grown coffee which is good since it preserves the trees when so many of Honduran forests are being cut down for firewood and timber.

After all that, it was about 6pm and Carlos took us to the Aqua Caliente hot springs a couple of miles down the dirt road. We sat in hot natural pools of water in the dark during a light shower with tons of heat lightening. And there were even lightening bugs. If was fantastic! The water coming down the waterfall is extremely hot but it quickly mixes with the cool water running in the stream and makes these little pools with varying temperatures so you can find just the right spot for yourself and then nestle into the rocks to relax. We had another fine dinner that night along with the typico fixings. The next day, after a big farmhouse breakfast, Jon and I took a 2 hour walk along the road in the finca. Two very friendly men in cowboy hats gave us a ride on their horses and although we couldn't communicate too well in our broken spanish, we exchanged very warm gestures. At noon, Carlos took us back into town and the 5 of us had lunch together. We had a perfect time and it was so nice to get to know the couple from Switzerland- Curdin and Asi who are traveling around Central America on a shoestring too! That night we stayed in the same motel and went out for pizza together.

This is getting very long! We headed out the next day on a 4 hour chicken bus ride to another less touristy mountain town called Gracias. It was supposed to be much higher and cooler but we didn't notice that to be true. Chicken buses, as they are called are the local buses that travel between towns where there aren't much of any tourists. If you want to see those areas, you've got to cram into these old US school buses where what the capacity limit listed on the outside of the bus is usually doubled. The spanish music blasts, wind and dust are flying and you feel disgusting and uncomfortable barreling down the road. I am not exaggerating in any way here! Lonely Planet said Gracias was a lovely little mountain town adjacent to one of the most beautiful national parks in Honduras but we found the town torn up with construction for roads, not pretty and not overly friendly. I was feeling uneasy and trapped so high in the mountains knowing that the only way out was another 4 hour chicken bus ride to anywhere. We checked into a nice motel owned by a German woman, set on a hillside above the town with a pretty view of Spanish tile roofs and a restaurant. We took a walk through town to see the old colonial churches- one was from the 1500's, and went inside a gated finca where there was supposedly another hotel we wanted to check out in case we decided to stay another night to explore the national park trails. After all, we had come a long way to see this town, pretty or not. This finca was nothing compared to what we saw before! And, while I was walking down a path that led toward the rooms, there was a horse tied to a tree next to the path. He was facing me as I approached, and I was focusing on the buildings I was walking toward when out of the corner of my eye as I passed him, I saw him turn around to put his back toward me and then he hauled off and kicked the crap out of my thigh! My water bottle went flying and I caught my balance again before starting to cry, wondering where I'd be had he kicked me in the kidney or something. I decided that was an omen and we left Gracias the next morning for an 11 hour trip back to Evergreen; half chicken bus, half luxury bus. We did have a nice evening together that night at the restaurant at our motel, enjoying a soft rain. I numbed myself with Salva Vidas and Jon gave me much needed TLC. Since the next day was socked in with clouds, we figured the hiking in the park wouldn't have been feasible anyway so it was just as well to go home; we were ready anyway.

Overall, it was a wonderful trip and experience. I have a hard time enjoying the beautiful scenery between towns because of the trash and relative poverty when compared to US standards. Jon tells me that it doesn't bother him as much since he sees it differently and I'm working on trying to see it from his point of view. I'm growing I think, but progress is slow! The tourist spots aren't overly touristy but are clean and pretty and I guess that's why most people head for these places since you can get there more comfortably, feel pretty safe and enjoy the best of what the area has to offer. Venturing to less touristy places is neat to try and experience more of the "real feel" of a country, but it is more of a gamble since you don't know what it will be like. We don't think we'll ever be true backpackers (mainly because of me), going from town to town for months on end with no home base, but these jaunts from the boat do afford a much different experience than just being on a cruising sailboat. While I don't see myself as a homebody at all and have actually been referred to as being a restless person, I do see that I need a consistent place to hang my hat, even if it is floating.

Hopefully the CDC book is right and our little bout of GI discomfort will move on now that we're done with typico meals and back to our own familiar food. As soon as we're feeling better, we'll head on out to the open sea again and out of this little river. It'll be good to get back amongst fellow cruising boats again.