When I woke up in Coban, Guatemala, I decided I didn’t want to spend an any more time there. It was more depress­ing than I like. My room was right off the street, and I haven’t been sleep­ing much, so I was able to get an early start, about 7:30 A.M. I made a bee­line for Hon­duras, as I wanted to go to Copan. Try to keep this straight — Coban is in Guatemala, Copan is in Hon­duras. I’ve had a pickle of a time keep­ing where I’ve been straight. First it was the time zone, then the time, now the city. I’m slowly slip­ping into obliv­ion, or blondness. It feels like I’m one 85 year old bil­lion­aire away from my own TV show.

These are small coun­tries, the roads are good, and I got an early start. I’m in Hon­duras around noon. The roads I’ve been on are recently paved, and quite good, but there aren’t a lot of them. Cross­ing the bor­der was a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. I didn’t have any­body has­sle me, or try and get a bribe. One lit­tle boy wanted to watch my stuff, but he couldn’t tell me that, since he only spoke Span­ish, and I, Eng­lish. I gave him a cou­ple of Guatemalan coins I had, since they weren’t of use to me any­more. He was nice enough, and not pushy — I like to reward that.

I’ve just barely got­ten into the city of Copan, and have pulled over read­ing my map, when this guy jumps out of a truck offer­ing to help me find a place to stay. He’s got a hotel in mind, and I’ve got a dif­fer­ent one in my mind. After going back and forth — him doing the hard sale, me say­ing I’m fine, he even­tu­ally says “if you’re going to waste my time, why did you ask for my help?” At least he left. Years ago, I had an Amway guy come onto to me the same way, and get annoyed when I wasn’t inter­ested. Annoy­ing bastards.

Even­tu­ally I find a hotel with park­ing (esta­cionamiento) with­out hav­ing to say esta­cionamiento. That’s worth an extra 20 what­ever the hell cur­rency they use. The room is cheap and oth­er­wise won­der­ful — beau­ti­ful path lead­ing to the rooms, with plants every­where, and hot water, enough for a shower and a shave. When I’m at these ruins, I like to get up early to take pic­tures at least until past check­out time, so I gen­er­ally stay two days. I do the same here.

Since I got set­tled in so early, and didn’t have any­thing to do, I headed to lunch. One thing I REALLY liked about Hon­duras is you could get meat. Every­where else I’ve been, when you want meat, it’s either a taco, or carne asada, which is a piece of the cow about 1/16th of an inch beaten as thin as you could go. Hon­duras, they had grilled meat — bit juicy, meaty chunks of grilled meat. Some­thing you could eat by itself. The restau­rant I head to is some­what full, and next to me are two sis­ters speak­ing Eng­lish. Nor­mally I’m not for­ward. Ever. But I even­tu­ally said my hello and started a con­ver­sa­tion with them. They rec­om­mend some places to go, and some things to do in Copan. It was a nice con­ver­sa­tion — the first I’d had in a while, and I was glad to have it.

One of the things they rec­om­mended I do is go to a but­ter­fly gar­den, which was pretty nice. This gar­den had a cool dis­play of the life cycle of but­ter­flies, from egg to larva to but­ter­fly. You might not know it, but but­ter­flies are pretty spas­modic crea­tures. I spent 30 min­utes try­ing to get a pic­ture of these beau­ti­ful things, and got but one pic­ture. It changed my view of them.

Later that night, I go to one of the restau­rants in my rough guide. I got there early, and I’m the only one there. After a few hours though, the place livens up and the twins sis­ters come in. One of the sis­ters asked me to join them, and me, in my always awk­ward phase, decline. After a lit­tle while though, I hear the boyfriend of one of these girls talk­ing to some guy about cell tow­ers, and I invite myself over. Even­tu­ally it becomes a party as we end up with some­thing like 10 peo­ple at the table. Most of the night I spend talk­ing to a really inter­est­ing woman from New York. She’s Indian, born in Guyana (or was it French Guyana), then moved to New York at a young age. She worked for one of the finan­cial firms on Wall Street and acted, and now she just acts. Pretty inter­est­ing woman, as actors usu­ally are. I left the get together pretty early, since I wasn’t feel­ing great, and wanted to be at the ruins when they opened.

The ruins are Copan are pretty nice. How­ever they can’t com­pare to the grandeur of Palenque. Every site seems to have a dif­fer­ent focus, and here it seems to be sculp­tures. These sculp­tures are amaz­ing and awe inspir­ing, but they didn’t speak to me the way other ruins did. How­ever, I was glad to have seen them.

After the ruins, I went to a bird sanc­tu­ary, which was rec­om­mended by the actress. It was nice to see all these crazy birds, and to see the place had an eye on con­ser­va­tion. The girl show­ing me around was pretty cool, and she knew here stuff, and my lan­guage, so it was kind of fun. One guy that shows the birds off took a pic­ture of me with a Tou­can. He lived in L.A. for a while, so we talked about Hon­duras and Los Ange­les and birds. It was fun. I gave the girl a tip after the tour — I wasn’t sure if I was sup­posed to, espe­cially after she seemed flus­tered by my offer, but I think she deserved it. Maybe I should have kept my pants on.

After din­ner that night I went back to my room and tried to fig­ure out what to do next. I spent some time get­ting my pic­tures in order, and some time going through my plans. As luck would have it, two great movies were one. First was Lord Of The Rings — The Two Tow­ers, and The High­lander. These, of course, kept me up until 2 some­thing in the morn­ing. But I got a valu­able les­son from Frodo, Sam and Smeagol. The scene where Frodo is going to Mor­dor via the black gate, Smeagol tells him about another way — a bet­ter way. I took that to heart. But, more on that latter.

Here are the pic­tures. Enjoy