Utila

Today was another early start to set off from Copan for the bay island of Utila, off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. It was also the first time I would be using public transport on the trip, all my travel up until this point had been using the super cheap tourist shuttles in Guatemala. In all honesty the public bus was a pleasant surprise, it was more of a coach and quite quite comfortable.

From Copan we headed to the coast and from there got a ferry over to Utila.

On the ferry

The view

Utila is the smaller of the two bay islands off the coast of Honduras, it is also less expensive than its big sister, Roatan, but similarly a haven for divers. As such if we fancied learning to Scuba dive this was the place to do it.

We stayed in a lovely little hotel about five minutes walk from the centre of town. It was an awesome place with its own Jetty heading out into the turquoise crystal clear waters.

The Bayview Hotel

Nice accomodation

The Jetty - the best place for a spot of sunbathing

The hotel speedboats - we would later use these to get back to the mainland

Many of the group did indeed venture for a spot of Scuba diving, as very few people had been diving before we enrolled on the DSD course (Discover Scuba Diving). Now as many of you will or willnot know, I’m not the biggest fan of water, more accurately the sea. ‘So why did you go Scuba diving then?’ I hear you ask, well its something I’ve always wanted to do and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to overcome any fears and give it a try.

I managed in the end, but that was after having had to overcome panic attacks and almost giving up before we’d even got started. A combination of not wanting to loose face in front of the new group, really wanting to go diving and underwater ‘rock, paper, scissors’ eventually enabled me to get past the panic attacks and relax underwater. And thank goodness I did, its one of the best things I’ve done so far on the trip and something I definitely want to do again in the future. I found the most important thing to remember is, whatever goes wrong there’s always a way to sort it out. Unfortunately there’s no photos of the diving but I think everyone really enjoyed it.

Now three days into the trip and with a three night stay, Utila formed the perfect place for the group to bond alittle and everyone get to know each other properly. I was sharing a room with Eric (the big Swede) who would come to be a great friend on the trip.

Flip Cup

The Gang

Utila was an amazing little island and, had I been travelling on my own, would definitely have been a place I’d have stayed longer… but this is a Gap trip so it was quickly on to the next destination…

Gap tours and Copan

Having parted ways with Australian friends it was time to meet up with the Gap tour group I'd be traveling down to Costa rica with. After 40mins of wandering around Antigua City fully laiden with all my bags I finally found our meet up Hotel. After an introduction meeting we headed out for a meal together, then quickly headed to bed after hearing we were setting off for Copan in Honduras at 4.30 in the morning.

Today's chosen mode of transport


By mid to late morning we had reached our first border crossing. One member of the group, a Northern Irish lad called Simon, had a slight fright when his passport wasn't where he expected. The crisis was averted as he found it moments later, but the panicked look on his face was definitely enough to remind me to always keep tabs on important documents (not always my strong point).

Welcome to Honduras


We reached Copan by about lunchtime and after checking into the hotel, all headed to the main attraction, Copan ruins. Copan is one of the best and most extensive of the preseved Mayan ruins in central america and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A model in the information centre showing the site as it was


Now my actual knowledge of Copan isn't massive by any means, especially as our group decided against taking a guide, as our Gap leader had said they can range quite alot as to how good their information is. So instead we just wandered around and marvelled at the various complex's and plaza's etc. In this regard I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures for you to see rather than trying to explain what each photo shows etc.






One of the main attractions at the site is the hieroglyphic stairs. When the ruins were discovered approximately half way through last century this section was in a far worse state. Archeologists have since reassembled it, and climbing the staircase is now completely off limits to tourists in order to halt any further erosion as best they can. Its also under a giant protective canopy, again to attempt to limit the effects that the weather conditions can have on it. Overall it was an amazing thing to see.



The Hieroglyphic staircase




At the exit we found a few friendly maccaws, well they seemed friendly