Sunday, January 15, 2006

Having finally seen the Copan ruins, we bought tickets for a bus to La Entrada, from where we planned to catch another bus to Santa Rosa de Copan, which the book describes as “a quiet, beautiful little town with a fresh climate and friendly people.”

Michael whacked his skull right into a sign that said “Mind Your Head,” at Casa de Todo, where we were checking our e-mail while waiting for our bus. He really hurt himself, so that put a damper on things. But our bus turned out to be very nice, a Gleaming Behemoth with TVs and a bathroom.

The movie was that one where Cuba Gooding Jr. is a dentist who inherits some sled dogs. In English, without Spanish subtitles. Michael and I were the only foreigners on the bus. If I were Honduran, I’d be pissed. Like, hello, we speak Spanish? Could we get a Spanish movie up in here?

Stops are rarely announced, so if one doesn’t already know where one is going, one needs to maintain extreme vigilance and keep asking questions. By the time we asked, we learned we’d missed La Entrada. The ayudante motioned that we should stay in our seats, saying something we barely understood about another bus going to La Entrada.

So we waited. A few minutes later our bus suddenly pulled to the side of the road. The ayudante beckoned to us from the doorway and we rushed up the aisle and got off the bus. We didn’t know where we were going, but by now we understand that everything to do with busses is to be done quickly.

The ayudante was grabbing our mochilas from under the bus when another guy came running up to collect us. It turned out that our driver had either called headquarters or simply flagged down the bus going in the opposite direction.

The new ayudante herded us across the highway with our bags, threw them under the other bus, and we got on and found seats. They did not charge us anything. The ending credits for Snow Dogs were rolling. La Entrada was the last town we’d passed, so we only had to backtrack for another ten minutes or so.

This was an extremely nice thing for the bus people to do. My entries are much longer than what blogging experts consider to be the ideal, but believe it or not I’m actually having to leave out a huge amount of stuff. And some of what I’ve left out is how rushed everything is on the busses. Hurry to get on, hurry to get off, or the ayudante will push you, busses barrelling down the roads and taking hairpin turns at full speed, passing vehicles across the double yellow line, doing everything possible to save a minute here, a few seconds there.

So for our driver to stop just because we missed our town, and not only stop but cause another bus to stop as well, that was a true act of kindess of which we’re fully cognizant after all the bus hours we’ve logged.

In La Entrada, the ayudante pointed us toward where we could catch a bus for Santa Rosa de Copan and when we got there, there was a bus waiting. A chicken bus, but bigger than any school bus I remember riding. I sat down next to a woman who had an actual rooster on her lap, in a plastic bag. His head was free of the bag, and he was cuddled into her lap like a cat.

This ride lasted about an hour and at the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Copan, we took a taxi up a monster of a hill to arrive in the town.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 127

 

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Gleaming Behemoth to La Entrada.