Honduras has been the ‘bad boy’ of Central America for a long time, topping the tables for all the wrong reasons – murders, poverty, corruption and extortion. After the crowds and chaos at the borders with queues of people leaving Honduras, we walked up the hill and found a clapped-out minibus which was going to Copan Ruinas, our destination. We had a wad of lempera in our sweaty hands, changed at the border on the black market – i.e.men with satchels of cash giving a very competitive rate. The currency of Honduras was named after Lempera, a national hero because of the resistance he put up against the Spanish. The countryside didn’t feel any different to Guatemala but the first surprise was the driver putting on a seat-belt – we hadn’t seen any bus drivers using seatbelts in Guatemala or Belize. He didnt read the paper whilst driving either…..always a good sign😁

Copan Ruinas was a small town with cobbled streets, a lovely central plaza and lots of flowers. It was also very hilly, some of the streets were almost vertical and we struggled and sweated up to our accommodation in the dense afternoon heat. The big attraction in Copan Ruinas was the Mayan site just outside the town. The scarlet macaws flitted about the entrance, enteraining everyone who walked through the gates – loud, raucous and brillantly coloured. These birds were sacred to the Mayans who saw the fire and power of the rising sun in their feathers. While the site was not as big as Tikal in Guatemala and the excavated structures were not as large, it had very impressive hieraglyphics, stellae and stone carvings. Our guide, Francisco, who was dressed in a brightly cpoloured shirt (like a macaw) had lived in Canada for about six years and really missed the cold Canadian winters and scampered under the shady trees as much as possible. Archeologists found layers built on layers here, as the Mayana had a tendency of destroying existing buildings when a new ruler took over and they building on top of the past. Some of the history of the site had been pieced together by the deciphering of the complex hieroglyphics but like all good mysteries, the reasons for the abandonment of the site was still conjecture. Deforestation with consequent erosion, severe flooding and crop failure were the likely reasons. Worryingly, this is not very different to what is happening now and the Mayans, who were very clever and advanced in mathematics and astronomy, believed that life was cyclical and that history repeated itself😮. Without a doubt. the Mayan Copan dynasty from the second to ninth centuryAD was the heady glory days of Honduras, Since then Spanish invasions, British pirates, American interference, corrupt governments and severe weather events have all taken a toll.

Cacao beans were also grown around Hondorus and that meant one thing – chocolate😊. Our trip was turning into a chocolate tasting one. We met a Belgium man living in Copan who made delicious chocolate and visited a Tea and Chocolate Place which specialised in selling an incredible variety of tea and chocolate, set in a garden with a large verandah with views over the trees and a welcome breeze. Bliss!

After a couple of days in Copan, we had decisions to make. We felt that our time was running out (although we had about a month left but we wanted to visit El Salvador and Nicaragua on the way to Costa Rica to fly home). Hondurus was temping with a lot to offer, fabulous islands in the Carribbean and mountains in the interior. We met an elderly Canadian couple who winter every year in the Bay Islands of Hondurus but travel was slow because of the poor infrastructure. Hondurus has a woman president (Xiomara Castro) since January 2022 and people told us that they were optimistic that things would change for the better. Lets hope that’s true – the human capacity for hope is powerful – but the crowds exiting the country was a worrying sign. In recent years, Honduras ceded the mantle for the country with the most murders per capita to El Salvador, the country that was next on our list 😮.

We decided to get to Santa Ana in El Salvador by shared shuttle ( a minivan). It cost about $50 each ( a lot of monney in these parts) but it was worth it especially as we were the only two in the van. We felt really privileged as we bypassed queues at the border back into Guatemala (just as crowded and chaotic and confusing as crossing in the opposite direction) and drove through Guatamala to the border with El Salvador, a quiet organised crossing. The countries are quite small – San Salvador is about a third the size of Ireland. The journey took little more than 4 hours including the two border crossings.

In El Salvador, the roads were straighter with a blue haze on distant hills. We drove past lakes and green forested hills. Our shuttle dropped us at the door of our accommodation in Santa Ana and thats where the luxury ended. Our room was very cheap (about €12 a night) but it was like a prison cell, windowless with a tin roof that trapped heat and a swirling fan which rotated the hot air and there was a padlock on the door. Lily on ‘reception’ – a chair and small bench inside the door – was friendly although we struggled to understand her rapidfire Spanish. We didnt meet anyone in Santa Ana who spoke English. There was a restaurant on one side that blared music (torture by noise) on the first evening but thankfully was closed for the next two nights. The basic Mexican restaurant on the other side had a friendly man with a gun as security. But then men (and some women}with big guns were very common. The cleaner in the bus station had a sweeping brush in one hand and a gun in the other, the bus driver had a gun, most shops and all bars had men with guns outside. Most of the litte grocery shops(corner shops) have huge iron grids pulled down and sold their produce through a small hatch.

We got a local bus to the National Park Cerro Verde to climb the Santa Ana Volcano. This was a gorgeous hike through forests up to the top of the volcano. When we peered over the rim, there was a lake of the most exquisite turquoise and views over the countryside and i kept thinking that El Salvador was a beautiful country with such a bruised and battered past.

The longer we stayed in Santa Ana, the more we liked it..although we never quite adjusted to the sweatbox conditions of our accommodation (Hostel Casa Luna). We became accustomed to the level of security and guns. There was wealth too, evident in the shiny new shopping malls with Christmas trees and designer shops at the southern end of town. The central plaza towards the north, had seen  better days but retained some old grandour with fine faded buildings, street vendors and park benches. In between these two areas were the markets selling everything, a riot of colour with the smell of poverty. Here, everything was repaired and reused, from TVs and electric fans to clothes and bicycles and all this among a pile of rotting veg, blowing plastic bags, discarded styrafoam cups, broken footpaths and unpaved roads. But going through the market one early morning to catch a bus to take us to the mountains, the street vendor wouldn’t take any money for two bananas…that El Salvadorean welcome that we experienced over and over.

We ate pineapples so sweet and golden, it was like eating sunshine🌞. The snack food of El Salvador wass the pupusa. …a ball of maize or rice dough slapped into shape by women with large biceps,  stuffed with fillings of your choice, flattened into a circle, cooked over a hot plate and eaten with a spoonful of fermented peppers and onion, hot enough to make you cry and reach for water. We ate ears of corn barbecued over smoky fire and doused with of fresh lime juice and a sprinkling of salt Fried chicken was  popular and VERY fresh… chickens ran around pecking the ground under the fryers without realising that their days were numbered.  Of course, chips (patas fritas) were everywhere, cooked in vats of oil at the side of road and eaten with grated cheese, ketchup and a few jalapenos. We also visited Bam Bam, a confectionery cafe selling the most delicious chocolate tartlets and flaky pastry puffs. Bam Bam was a chain that originated in Santa Ana and much as we searched in other places, we never found another one in El Salvador. Breakfast was similar in all of Central America – scrambled eggs, refried beans, rice or tortillas, fried bananas or fried yucca. It wasn’t really a surprise that a significant number of the population of Central America were so very generously proportioned.

The bus service was really good in El Salvador. We got a local bus. which was comfortable and cheap, from Santa Ana to San Salvador, the capital city for a dollar, a journey of one and half hours on good roads. The currency of El Salvador was the US dollar.

San Salvador with its noise and fumes had us reeling.  Certain streets looked like they had been bombed…last week. To be fair, there were lots of roadworks going on. But the heat was intense enough to  make us dissolve…even the pigeons were seeking shade. Music blared at full volume from all the shops as we dodged belching buses, forced to walk on the road because of broken footpaths and street vendors. We didn’t like it much and realised why it was often avoided by visitors. The church (Iglesia de Rosario), reputed to be the most spectacular in all of Central America  and our reason for visiting the city was closed when we got there although Google was saying that it was open😮.  A man on the plaza told us that it only opened  at the weekend. I found the Facebook page of the church and sent them a message,  Disappointed, we sweated back to our hotel to rest but as soon as we hit the WiFi, I saw that I had a message , the church was opened between 2.30 and 4.30pm. It was now 3 pm so out we trudged out again and this time we had a totally different experience. We avoided some of the more congested streets, the heat had abated and the afternoon was a little cloudy  There was music and dancing in the Plaza, lots of noise with competing bands of musicians but wonderful ambience. Old men shook our hands and welcomed us. Christmas was coming and a team of workmen were putting up  lights and Christmas trees in another plaza outside the Metropolitan Cathedral. This contained the crypt of Monsenor Romero who was assassinated in 1980 for speaking out against the government. 

The church of the Rosary was incredibly spectacular. From the outside, it looked like a utilitarian concrete building in need of maintenance but inside the interplay of light from the coloured stained glass in the domed concrete walls was sublime.  It sent a rainbow of colour across the floor. The light gave the illusion of steps up the walls and has been called a staircase to the heavensl. Unique understated simplicity and awe inspiring creativity.. The stations of the cross were simple structures using leftover concrete and iron from the building as the budget was tight. We stopped into a lively bar – more like a barn really – near our hotel where customers greeted us and welcomed us, pleased that we were visiting their country.

But few tourists meant that there was little traveller infrastructure for people like us ( that is, backpackers who want to travel relatively cheaply) All the accommodation websites. Booking.com, Airbnb, Hostelworld were quoting crazy prices for accommodation on the coast or in the mountains, much higher than we could afford so we had no choice but to leave ….ironic when El Salvador was an inexpensive country.  There was a ferry departing from La Union in eastern El Salvador to Potosi in Nicaragua so we booked that online and asked the ferryman to recommend accomodation in La Union as there was very little online. We messaged his recommendation and they had rooms, $15 a night with a fan and $25 with A/C😀. So accommodation was available but not on the accommadation websites. Our guidebook described La Union as an unattractive place where even the dogs on the street whimper at noon with the heat….so we reserved the room with A/C, not really knowing what to expect.

Although La Union was hot as hell, it’s location was unexpectedly heavenly, looking out at the Golfo de Fonseca where three countries meet – Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. We took a trip in the back of an old army truck up to Volcan Conchagua -a bit surreal when you consider the stories that such a vehicle might tell. The views over the Gulf and all the islands scattered in it were breathtaking and the air was cooler and fragrant with pine. The area was called the L’Espirit de Montana, the spirit of the mountain and some university students told us that if you had belief, the spirit might reveal herself to you as a white butterfly or maybe an eagle and might even provide you with solace and peace. We met a family who were holidaying in El Salvador, the parents were born in El Salvador but emigrated in the early 1980s as teenagers to the United States to escape the fear and the death squads. The woman kept repeating that El Salvador deserved to experience peace after all the suffering the people had endured not only from the civil war but also the drug gangs, She was also hopeful for the future and a white butterfly fluttered past as she spoke.

So after three days in Hondurus and six days in El Salvador, we hope to cross the Gulf of Fonseca in a small boat to Nicaragua tomorrow.Thanks for staying with us ….its been a bit hectic….we hardly know what country we’re in but we plan to spend two weeks or more in Nicaragua, the largest of the countries in Central America.