The Boat Ride From Hell

I’m usu­ally very com­fort­able on boats. I’d take a boat ride over a bus ride any­time and I’m not scared of water. So I was feel­ing pretty good about our 2.5 hour long trip to Belize.
That said, the boat did look small.
We all climbed aboard and off we went. I quickly felt like we were a cork jerked around in the huge waves. A tiny boat in deep open water.

Puerto Cortes

Puerto Cortes, despite its evoca­tive name, is a fairly unin­spir­ing place for trav­el­ers. Not much to do, not much to see. There is less traf­fic there than in La Ceiba or San Pedro and it has a bit of a small town feel (at least on a Sun­day dur­ing day­time). But the cranes that are part of the sky­line and the num­ber of bars give it away: Puerto Cortes is a port, an indus­trial one, from where half of the exported Hon­duran prod­ucts are shipped.

La Ceiba

Tak­ing a shower in Cen­tral Amer­ica is often a small adven­ture. Some have good water pres­sure and some don’t, some have hot water and some only have one tap—a sure sign that hot water isn’t on the menu. My favourite are the “wid­ow­maker” showers.

Big Bang or Of a Boat Accident

I swear I wasn’t driving.

But I doubt the Princess IV will do the trip between La Ceiba and Utila any time soon.

After a few days of watch­ing the sun­set, swim­ming with the fishes and eat­ing baleadas for break­fast, lunch and din­ner, we took the 2:00 p.m. boat back to La Ceiba, on the mainland.

Utila and the Bay of Islands

While it’s not the par­adise I had expected, the sea is great and the water is very clear. You can spot all kinds of crea­tures, includ­ing huge crabs right by the side­walk at night. The sun­sets are amaz­ing. The guest­house where we are stay­ing has a small pier with a bench and a cou­ple of ham­mocks and I could spend my days there. I like the weather: it’s very hot but still breezy. Like in most islands, the dress code is lax and I just bum around in a light dress, sweat trick­ing from my fore­hand, my hair messy and tan­gled because of the humidity.

San Pedro Sula

This morn­ing, while hav­ing break­fast in Copán, I read La Prensa. There was a quick sur­vey on page four: “Do you think Hon­duras is the crime coun­try of the world?” 75% of the read­ers answered “yes.” The fol­low­ing page detailed all the mur­ders that had taken place in San Pedro Sula over the week­end.
I put my cof­fee down. Okay, good to know that.

Copán Ruinas

The biggest attrac­tion in Copán is the Maya arche­o­log­i­cal site nearby. While Tulum mostly draws peo­ple because of its amaz­ing loca­tion by the sea and Tikal is loved because it’s set in the jun­gle, Copán is some­what more mys­te­ri­ous. His­to­rian com­pare Tikal to New York and Copán to Paris: the first one has the build­ings, the sec­ond focuses on the arts.

Copán, Honduras

Hard to believe we are right at the bor­der with Guatemala, only about 100 kilo­me­tres from Guatemala City. Hard to believe it took us half a day to drive these 100 kilo­me­tres actu­ally. This is how it goes in Cen­tral Amer­ica: dis­tances are fairly short—at least they look short on the map—but roads are bad and get­ting from point A to point B is never that easy.