“Where the sun doesn’t shine...”

If the countries of Central America were parts of a body, then Honduras would be completely engulfed in darkness when that body sat upon a chair. There’s not much to like about the country, although I suppose we haven’t given it a fair chance, but first impressions have not been great. The border crossing this morning had Denielle throwing forty dollars in frustration at a man in a shipping container that was typing out our car registration. I won’t elaborate beyond that, but needless to say we spent entirely too long waiting for things to happen, and would later be forced to race across the country to make up lost time. The upside of the whole situation is that we now figured out that “aduana” is Spanish for spending lots of money to sit and wait and not really understand what’s going on.

Later in the afternoon we were soon making sketchy passes on blind corners, following large trucks doing the very same. Weaving in and out of traffic, quick bursts of acceleration were followed by rapid braking to gain space by space as we wound up and down the low rounded mountains surrounding the capital. A quick glance may lead one to believe that we had passed through Kamloops, as the dry mountains were dotted with widely spaced Ponderosa Pine trees with scrub brush and grasses interspersed underfoot. Prior to our adventurous drive however, we became entangled in the mire of road construction that greatly impeded our forward progress. I will say, however, that the capital city of Teguicigalpa was the easiest city by far to pass through, with one thoroughfare winding along the outskirts with nary a traffic light or speed bump to be seen. Immediately upon the other side of the city was where we encountered our first construction-related setback. The precarious roadway is apparently subject to frequent landslides, and as we would soon see, sections of road completely missing, forcing crews to cut a new one out of the mountainside.

Unlike our previous traverse across Honduras during New Year’s Day, this trip had us encounter numerous police check stops, four of which we were asked to stop for. But everything seemed to be in order, and we were quickly back on our way. A brief respite at Wendy’s to refuel, and we realized that we would be squeezing it close with the setting sun, and although I was trying hard to keep an average of eighty kilometres per hour, the heavy traffic was making it difficult. Getting ever so close to our destination of Copan, the evening sun had started to dip below the low clouds on the horizon, setting the heavens on fire in shades of bright orange and yellow. Vampires come out at night, everyone knows that, and here we are in the spooky haunted remains of the Mayan empire. So as the sun crept lower, my foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, and we soon found ourselves safely in the confines of the city without a moment to spare. Tomorrow it’s off to Antigua, Guatemala, so we only have 3 countries left before Canada.

Tyler.