A long day...

After the excitement of volcanoes and Mayan ruins, this blog needs a bit of tedium for a change, and today provided just that (although there is a bit of a Honduran style to the dull day). Executive summary: I made my way from Copan Ruinas across the country to the Caribbean Island of Utila.

I started at 5am with a bus to San Pedro Sula. This bus left about 10 minutes late, stopped 5 minutes later whilst our diver took a torch and a pair of pliers and opened up the engine. We left again after 10 minutes, but continued at a speed of around 10mph for the next hour and a half. At first I thought this low speed was to do with some sort of technical issues, although after a while I cottoned on that along the first hour of the journey or so, he's expecting to be picking up a lot of passengers along the road, so it doesn't make much sense to go any faster. We ended up stopped numerous times, often only 100m after the last stop (makes you think having a general gathering point, like maybe, a bus stop, would be a good idea).

After arriving in San Pedro Sula bus station (4.5 hours later) there was a number of people awaiting our bus' arrival and calling out the destination we were onto next, La Ceiba. We were escorted by one of these into a waiting room, with an armed guard outside. The waiting room was either really safe, or really dangerous.

After about 45 minutes in a waiting room everyone got up as it appeared the bus for the San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba had arrived. We got onto the bus, with the heat now starting to rise (comfortably over 30 degrees) Fortunately the bus wasn't too full, and I could sit next to the window and enjoy the breeze (although now have a tan/burn on only the left hand side of my arm and face). At pretty much every stop or traffic lights a number of people come up to the window of the bus offering generally fruit and other small snacks, and about 30 minutes in, when I was starting to get quite uncomfortable, a kid was selling 2 litres of bottled water (cold!) for 2 dollars, which was a great relief. Possibly the first and last time I'll complete a transaction through the window of a bus...

Final leg of the journey was the 1 hour ferry to the island (well, actually the intermediate leg was the taxi journey from the bus station to the ferry port, but I'll leave that out). We had about an hour to wait before the ferry left, very promptly at 4. The timely departure was about the only good thing on this journey - it's not nicknamed the vomit-comet for nothing. So, whilst it is a swift catamaran crossing, the thing is very bouncy, and I spent the whole hour feeling ill, and in the hours since coming on land, haven't really returned to my pre-maritime state.

The ending to this rather dull day is that I'm staying in a dive centre, where I've paid 280USD for a 4-day dive course and accommodation (which apparently is quite cheap for global standards). I'll write more about this rather odd island in the coming days...