Sunday, May 25, 2008
Day 45 Saturday May 24
Left La
Temp: 42 degrees C
Sunny, Super Hot and Humid
By morning we had decided to pack it in and head for the ferry to Roatan. This was the objective of going all the way to La Ceiba and we were pretty excited about getting there and were happy to write off the extra nights cost at the “Hotel from Hell!”
When we got there we were informed by the “agent “ who was supposed to access the ferry cost for the bikes(no set fee schedule) that we would have to pay 6000 Lempiras plus 1000 per person. It seems that they haven’t figured out yet that bilking foreigners is not the way to build a healthy tourist trade. What a disappointment! The reef ther is part of the second largest barier reef in the world and I had been so looking forward to doing some diving there!
Fed up, we decided to strike out for 
The map we were given from the officials at the border show both these roads as paved main roads!
It was now three in the afternoon and we were at least four hours from a town with a hotel we could stay at. We turned around and headed back to La Ceiba hoping to get there before dark. I was in a bit of a panic and didn’t spare the horses. There were times we were doing 110-120 on roads we had previously traveled at a nervous 70-80!
. I was in a bit of a panic and didn’t spare the horses. There were times we were doing 110-120 on roads we had previously traveled at a nervous 70-80!
You do not want to drive after dark in
La Ceiba was a zoo and we had no hope of making it in to the room we already had paid for. Theat section of the city was closed to traffic and cordoned off, so we hightailed it to Tela , a town on the coast about 80 Km away, in the setting sun with fingers crossed and “spider senses” tingling.
It was getting dark as we pulled into Tela. The town wasn’t exactly what you would call a tourist destination, and I was thinking as we drove around the town looking for a suitable place to stay that we were in dire straights. As I was about to give up I spied the shoreline and off in the distance I could see palapas on the beach so off I went in that direction through the narrow streets.
The Veromar!
What a surprise to find a nice hotel with air conditioning and a swimming pool as well as a decent beach, bar and restaurant, and a gated parking for the bikes. At this point I think I’d have given my first born (sorry Mikie) to stay there! And to top it all off, the price was reasonable for what we got.
Three happier people you never saw!!!
A nice finish after a couple of bad days…
Kilometers - Daytrip: 384 km total: 11,604
Gas: $ 25.00
Lodging: Hotel Veramar $58.00
Day 44 Friday May 23
Left Santa Rosa de Copan,
Temp: 36 degrees C
Sunny
The power went out early in the evening and was still out when we left. No fans equals a hot night in a room with no outside window. The good news was that the cooking was done on a gas stove so we were able to have coffee and breakfast before leaving.
The kindness of strangers:
As we were getting ready to pull out a gentleman who was sitting near us at breakfast went out and returned with a bag of fruit for us. “Some good Honduran mangos for you” and wish us a good trip in passable English.
The roads were in reasonable shape so we made good time and made it all the way to La Ceiba before dark, although we hit some heavy rain in the mountains and were soaked to the bone when we stopped for the night.
This was a day filled with unpleasant moments. We had many near misses on the road with crazy drivers forcing us over or cutting us off and witness two serious accidents before we got half way. One was fatal and I’m still struggling to get the picture out of my head.
When we got to La Ceiba we found that there was a big annual festival starting and no rooms were available for miles around except for a sort of backpacker place called The Rotterdam Beach Hotel.
We had it on a list of possibilities to check out from the Lonely Planet book (2007 edit.) which claimed the cost was 255 Lempiras per night, clean and English was spoken there.
Well the last room was available but the owner insisted on charging us 600 lempiras . She was very rude (in Spanish) and would make no effort to speak slowly after I politely asked her so that I could understand her. After we had paid her for the night another couple arrived looking for a room and mentioned that nothing else was available, they had looked everywhere.
When I asked what her check-put time was she got offensive and insisted that we could only have the room if we took it for two nights and practically threw our money back at us.
We didn’t have any choice so we paid 1200 for two nights.
The room was squalid. there were no towels, no soap, no place to put anything or hang our clothes, no hot water and limited cold, holes in the screens and only one window opening properly. Everything was dirty and the sheet was ripped and threadbare on a broken down mattress that had a serious sag in the middle and a resident population of lower life forms…..
nothing really serious, except for the fact that the temps were in the forties and the relative humidity was at 98%! We lay in pools of sweat or sat out on the porch most of the night. At around two in the morning the couple next door called it quits and left for another town hoping for something better. The owner showed up to change the sheets and I asked if we could borrow the fan in the room as the room was now unoccupied and we would return it in the morning. She refused and when I “begged” she brushed me off and told me it was “reserved”! It was still empty the next day….
Kilometers - Daytrip: 338 km total: 11,220
Gas: $ 30.00
Lodging: Rotterdam Beach Hotel $70.58
We are in Honduras, Baby !
Day 43 Thursday May 22
Left
Temp: 30 degrees C
Sunny
We had coffee and left at 10:15 for the border.
About two kilometres from the customs we ran into a horrendous line-up of tractor trailers and vehicles as far as the eye could see. And it wasn’t very assuring to see the drivers camped out under their trailers in hammocks and chairs and sleeping pads. Drivers were cooking, sleeping, wandering and browsing at the local tiendas. I thought “we’re here for the duration, and no place to pitch a tent!”
Fortunately everyone kept waving us forward and moving over so we could squeeze by on the bikes until we were right up front where we were asked to park the bikes to one side.
We spent the next three and a half hours getting the paperwork done to bring the bikes through
Sue got a lot of reading done…..
We finally got clearance and the go-ahead at 3:15.
By the time we got to Santa Rosa de Copan (about 120 KM) we decided to stop for the night as the next nearest place we could expect good lodgings was San Pedro Sula which would have required hours of night driving through the steep mountain switchbacks of broken pavement.
The geography of 
And to add a “soupcon de j’en
And the curves were a lesson in extremes as well, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes not, most times scary!
The good news was the altitude. We were so high up at times that we were shivering with the cold and had our winter coats been immediately available, we would have been wearing them!
Today was the first day that we haven’t been in an “all day, drenching sweat” for weeks. Nice.
We pulled into Santa Rosa de Copan around six and settled intoa nice gated local hotel where the bikes would be safe.
The plan for tomorrow is to head towards La Ceiba and the bay islands of the coast.
Kilometers - Daytrip: 118 km total: 10,882
Gas: $ 10.00
Lodging: Hotel Getsemani $33.34
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