So I’d planned to chill in Copan. I figured I’d zoomed through a fair amount of Honduras and after a days traveling to get here I deserved it. There’s some ruins, there’s some trekking, and there’s even a few bars. But one slight hiccup. There’s no water.

On the recommendation of a certain Alexia Rogers-Wright (ah the joys of facebook) I headed for The Blue Lizard hostel in Copan to enjoy their amazing hot water showers. None of this heated head element with dodgy wires lark, a proper shower, with proper hot water from a tank!

But that was to be the last of the water. The following day I got kicked out of The Blue Lizard to make way for an en masse booking of the whole hostel. My roommates and I went in search of am alternative location but it wasn’t as easy as we’d previously envisaged. The hostels wern’t taking anyone. There was no water, their reserve tanks had run out almost immediately, and since the showers and toilets couldn’t function they’d decided to shut up shop and refuse custom.

Frederick

This is when it becomes very handy to have shared a room the previous night with a multi-lingual Spanish/French/Hebrew/German speaking 19 year old from the States. Frederick went into full charm mode with the hostess at The Green Apple, a hostel little further into town. When things got tricky he asked her to phone her boss who he spoke to in fluent Spanish over the phone and persuaded to let us stay the night on the condition we’d move on the next day and did’t use the toilets. Sorted.

That the left the afternoon for me to wander around the ruins. Copan Ruinas represents a city at its peak in the Mayan age. It was the capital of the local area during the classic era and goverened over large swathes of Honduras and Guetemala. That was until the Kings got a little greedy, overstretched themselves, got in a pickle with the neighbours and upped sticks for a more defensive position down the road. Despite local decrees, some Mayans stayed to live amongst the delapidated city, ignorant of its once noble history, and farmers were still in the area when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s.

Me and Stela (she was all over the place)

I won’t rabbit on about what the ruins were like, the pictures speak for themselves. Although I will say that I got somewhat distracted after my barotrauma kicked in with some blood in my saliva. That spooked me a little to say the least, and convinced me, water or no water, that I should leave Copan for Antigua to see a Doctor as soon as possible. So much for chilling out.

Andy