Off Into the Great Blue Yonder

We are about to begin the last, and probably craziest, stop on the tour--a place called El Mirador. El Mirador, or ¨the big M¨ is the largest city built by the Mayans and is a circular city 26 km in diameter. It is only partially excavated, so many of the ruins are under 1800 years of dirt, rock, and vegetation. Under normal circumstances, one must find the one or two daily buses that make the trip to Carmelita, the northernmost town in Guatemala, to begin a 5-day hike to El Mirador


In order to get there from diving in Honduras we needed to do the following:

-catch the 6:20am boat from Utila to the Honduran mainland
-ride the 8:30 bus to San Pedro Sula, purportedly the drug capital of Central America
-wander around the mall and happen upon the 12:30 bus to Puerto Cortes, the largest Caribbean port in Honduras
-have a 3-course meal at the dining palace that is Pizza Hut abroad.
-barely make the 3:30 bus that actually left at 3:15 for the border. After crawling through the dirt roads of two surprisingly large towns, arrive a quarter of a mile from the border.In ironic tribute to the Texas-Mexico border, two Americans walked the Honduras-Guatemala border as it was getting dark.
-after a bit of negociating in Spanish, hire a private shuttle to the main road.
-around 6:15, catch a collectivo full of children for Morales and get dropped off at a rest stop
-hang out at the rest stop and eat Magnum ice cream bars until the7:30 bus to Flores shows up. We sweet-talk the driver into giving us a ride.
-catch a midnight taxi in Flores to an ATM and then a hotel. On the brightside, the hotel was $6 for both of us. On the dark side, we definitely received what we paid for. Seth guarantees he felt 4 distinct springs in the matress.
-woke up at 4am to start walking to bus station. Fortunately a taxi picked us up to relieve some absurd sketchiness.
-waited until 5:15 to find that the 5am bus was broken and was not going to Carmelita--the town closest to El Mirador
-after buying mud boots and lots of snacks we are waiting for the 12:45 bus. Wish us luck!