Bay Islands
Trip Start
Nov 20, 2006
1
2
9
Trip End
Jan 22, 2007
6 days in,
Honduras
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Whilst not as impressive in scale as Tikal, Copan is famous for intricately carved stelaes depicting the kings of Copan. We spent a few hours exploring the wonders of the ruins, climbing over the temples and seeing the impressive ball court with six famously carved macaw heads. The Hieroglyphic stairway was breathtaking. The flight of 63 steps was allegedly built by King Smoke Shell and it contains several thousand glyphs depicting the history of the royal house of Copan. The stelae in the great plaza were beautifully carved between AD 613 and AD 738, depicting the various Copan kings of the era.
From Copan we caught the bus to La Ceiba for the night and took the ferry the next morning to Roatan in the Bay Islands to kick back in the sun for a few days. We stayed at Chillie's hostel in a cute little cabin only meters from a beautiful Caribbean beach in West End Village
01 Cool carvings at Copan Ruinas
. We checked in and headed straight to the beach for a swim in the gloriously warm water and a few hours of sun-baking on the golden sand. Roatan is very chilled out and you definitely feel relaxed here, especially after a couple of beers or pina coladas at the bar on the beach. We cooked ourselves a nice dinner for a change and relaxed with a few drinks in the cabin playing cards.The next day we hired some snorkelling gear and a brand new scooter to tour the island. Unfortunately the weather was against us and it rained most of the day making it a little challenging to ride the scooter on the muddy, pot-holed dirt roads. However we still managed to get all the way to Paya Bay near the eastern end of the island. We visited Punta Gorda, a garifuna settlement and then across the island to Oak Ridge, a port town with many timber houses built on stilts over the water. After some lovely prawns at a restaurant overlooking the glorious coastline, the rain was getting stronger so we headed back to the hostel. An hour later, we arrived home completely soaked, but thankfully we managed not to drop the scooter.
On our last day we went for a snorkel at West End then caught a water taxi up to West Bay, a gorgeous sandy bay lined with palm trees and a pristine reef for snorkelling. Snorkelling was excellent but not quite the same as snorkelling with seals in the Galapagos. We really enjoyed our stay on Roatan and could easily have stayed a few days more.
Onto the ferry to La Ceiba, a taxi to the bus stop and a bus to Tegucigalpa, before staying the night in a dodgy hostel and then bussing it to the border with Nicaragua.
