Tuesday, 19 March 2019
Copan, Honduras
Breakfast in El Salvador.
Lunch in Guatemala.
Dinner in Honduras.
Three countries.
Two border crossings.
One day.
Hard life innit.
5hr drive to Copan. First border crossing El Salvador/Guatemala is a quick passport stamp on both sides of the border. Takes minutes.
Second border crossing Guatemala/Honduras is even quicker. Guide takes passports into immigration and shortly returns with a bit of paper which has been stamped. It’s a 72hr pass to enter Honduras without any immigration and customs declaration. Can you remember something similar when visiting France for a day trip in the 1980s?
Many money men at the border wandering about touting for business with huge wads of local cash in exchange for US Dollars.
Only a 15 minute drive into Honduras for a couple of nights at the Hotel Casa de Café (http://www.casadecafecopan.com/) in the small town of Copas Ruinas. The site of a Mayan complex. You can look forward to a bit of Mayan history in tomorrow’s blog.
As it’s the town’s patron saint’s day, there’s yet another church procession. Treated to a small bunch of musicians playing in the main square to the people perambulating. How Banana Republic is this, I think to myself. They’re a rag tag bunch and many men wearing cowboy hats. A young lad soon joins them and starts singing which draws a crowd cooing at his angelic singing.
Just before the procession of Jesus through the streets, a few fireworks can be heard. Upon closer investigation it’s the Catholic priest setting them off. He’s assisted by a local who is putting homemade rockets (rolled up newspaper stuck to a stick holds the gunpowder) in a litre sized plastic bottle and launching them from the bottle in his hand. The first few captured on video below go off and whoosh up into the sky and explode over the church roof. As intended.
Don’t video the next bit as it’ll be more of the same.
Or.
So. I. Thought.
Priest puts rocket in plastic bottle held by bloke and lights the fuse.
Bloke points the bottle upwards but not vertically upwards. Stupidly.
The rocket goes off with a whoosh.
Hits the church wall a few feet above them.
Rocket now has momentum and ricochets off church wall to the other wall across the driveway.
Simultaneously, bloke and Catholic priest immediately duck for cover and scarper away from the wayward rocket.
Which is going off on one ricocheting off walls.
It eventually flies into the open terrace of the first floor restaurant next to the church. Priest is no doubt praying.
Fortunately, rocket veers right into an empty room and not left into the diners. As soon as it enters the room it explodes. We’re all wetting ourselves laughing at the running priest and the rocket whizzing about an enclosed space. Fortunately, no one is hurt.
Priest disappears and starts the procession whilst the bloke moves on down the road with his two sons holding the batch of homemade rockets and setting them alight once they’re in more open space.
So funny. I’m told that later on that evening they set off a load of Chinese lanterns but these all burned up as they rose into the air and landed setting fire to stalls, small bushes and the electrical equipment of the concert in the square.
Excellent dinner at Carnitas Tia Lola restaurant. The waitresses serve up nachos and beer balancing plates and bottles on their heads.
