On Thursday, I bid farewell to Nicaragua at 4:00 in the morning and borded a Tica Bus bound for Honduras. Tica Bus is really an institution in Central America. They run daily trips in luxury (luxury as in Greyhound) buses between most of the region's capital cities. Unfortunately, the two countries NOT connected are Honduras and Guatemala. D'oh! You can get to Guatemala from Managua via El Slavador, but Americans have to pay $30 just to pass through El Salvador, so I decided to take the bus to San Pedro Sula, which is relatively close to the Guatemalan border.
Tica Bus makes everything ridiculously easy. We got to the border at about 10:00 AM, where the ayudante (driver's helper) took our passports and $7 for fees. Half an hour and a breakfast of black beans and eggs later, he'd checked us out of Nicaragua and into Honduras. Sweet.
We even got to watch two Godawful movies on board: Dumb and Dumber 3 and some thiller from the early 90's starring Don Johnson.

It's funny: you'd think that with a region as small as Central America, a border crossing wouldn't make any difference, but it really did. Where Nicaragua had been lush yet fairly populated, Honduras was more sparse, both people- and vegetation-wise. Honduras was the country hardest-hit by Hurricane Mitch, with devestation of Biblical proportions. Four yars later, it still hasn´t recovered, really. To exacerbate the effect, the day was cloudy and drizzly, and it was hard to shake the general feeling of malaise that the depressed surroundings evoked.

We finally got to SPS at about 4:00. I'd heard plenty of horror stories about the city: murder capital of Central America, the taxi driver would try to rip me off, etc.
Like many such reputations, this one seemed to be ridiculous as soon as I stepped off the bus. My taxi driver charged a completely reasonable rate, and we chatted the whole way to the hotel. Looking out the window of the taxi, I was surprised by how beautiful the city was: modern, clean, and green.
I checked into a forgettable hotel and set out to walk around the bustling but friendly city. I had an excellent dinner and spent a good half hour talking to a kid selling the ubiquitous pirated CDs. Later, I watched an episode of "Will and Grace" on the satellite TV in the lobby!

The only weird thing that happened that day was that, after I went to bed very early (having woken up at 3:30 that morning) I was woken up by loud knocking at my door. I looked at my clock: 10:30 PM.
"Que?" I yelled sleepily from my bed. It turned out to be the front desk attendant, wanting me to pay for that night. "What?" I said after opening the door, this time in English, pissed off. He had asked me to pay earlier but I'd asked if I could pay the next day and he had said fine.
"Manana, manana." I mumbled, starting to close the door. But he was insistant, so I got the money, marched downstairs, plunked it down on the front desk, and marched back up to my room, laid down, and fell back into a deep sleep.

The next day, I took the bus to Copan Ruinas, a gorgeous old colonial town with Mayan Ruins. The bus trip was only about 100 miles but the road was windy so it took all afternoon. Miraculously, though, the bus was almost empty, so I and my backpack had a whole seat to ourselves!
By the way, I'm not sure if I've written about the buses here in Central America. Most of the regular buses are old schoolbuses from the States. Some of them still have the names of the school districts on the sides (and the rules -i.e.¨obey the bus driver¨ in the front) ! They're not the most comfortable, but, hey, they get you where you need to go.

When I got to Copan, I let myself be dragged by a ten-year-old boy to a very nice hotel. It worked out pretty well - I got a great private room for about $4 (I'd been sleeping in dorms almost everywhere), he got a commission, and the hotel owners got a guest for the night.
He then told me that I could buy a ticket on a direct shuttle to Antigua (my first stop in Guatemala) for only $12. So I followed him again to the travel agency, where another good deal was made: I got a cheap ticket, he got a commission, and the travel agent got a sale. By taking this tourist bus, I would be able to avoid transfering at the border and - more to the point - in Guatemala city, land of stolen passports.

Then the next morning I walked the kilometer to the Mayan ruins at Copan. Many travelers have told me they were disapointed by it, but I was quite impressed. It apparently doesn't have the immense pyramids of Tikal, but the stone carving, even 1300 years later, was impressive.

I left that afternoon for Guatemala. I was pretty much just transiting through Honduras. I'll have more time in Honduras in December, when I'll be meeting my family for Christmas on the Carribean Coast, and I was itching to get to Guatemala.