Copán Ruinas

After spending then a week in the wonderful and quiet environment of the lake Attitlán, I was happy and relaxed but was really looking forward to come back to civilisation. I had seen most of the places and things I wanted to see in Guatemala and time had now come to carry on down south, to Honduras.

During my travels in Mexico and in Belize, I had had several opportunities to go scuba diving but the high prices for the certifications had discouraged me slightly. Besides everyone was saying that Honduras and the Bay Islands are one of the best places in the world to dive (thanks to the coral reef) and probably one of the cheapest as well. So it is with this intention that I was leaving lake Atitlán and the very nice people I had met there, to head off straight to the Caribbean coast of Honduras, to resume my scuba diving practice that I had stopped 14 years ago.

Unfortunately even though it looks quite close on the map, I had to go back and stay in Antigua for a few nights (and recover from a food poisoning I had experienced when leaving Atitlán) then make a stop in Copán Ruinas in Honduras near the border, before eventually reaching Utila, one of the Bay Islands in Honduras.

But whilst the bus journeys are most of the time long and boring, they are also a fantastic opportunity to meet people. In Antigua, I could meet again a couple of friends I had met in Mexico a month and a half earlier (by the way Maël and Suna, we didn't even take a picture together!), which is always fun and nice, and in the bus journey to Copán, I would meet my companions for the next week to go (same thing, Thomas, Patty, Roscio and Chris, who forgot to take the group picture !? )

And as I had to stop for the night in Copán, I took the opportunity to visit its famous Maya ruins, which are not the biggest ones ever, but the ones with the most preserved carvings, which actually look quite impressive. When looking at the pictures below, you also need to realise that all these statues and stelae were full of colours, which over the time faded away...

Another field to play the famous "Juego de pelota" (Ball game)

Chris, I'm sure you are trying to say something very important here... Roscio seems captivated as well...

Three macaws posing for posterity near the ruins...