Honduras

I finally started getting everything back to normal when I got to Copan. I spent a nice day here visiting the Mayan ruins. This was the first Mayan ruins I have seen so I was really impressed by them and learnt a lot about the Mayan culture and history of the area.
The following day I travelled to Antigua in Guatemala. A bit of a scary journey as I think the driver was trying to break some kind of speed record on the narrow mountain roads with a lot of lorries. Relieved to arrive safely I found a hostel and spent the rest of the day looking round the town. Its a really nice city, lots of impressive colonial buildings, and ruins from the many earthquakes. I enjoyed looking round the cathedral, from the main square it looks in good condition but in actually fact only a very small part of the building is in use, the rest of it is in ruins.
As I had enjoyed the afternoon there I decided to spend the next day, looking round more areas of the city, including some more ruins and churches, the museum and the market.

From Esteli it took all day and too many buses to count to get across the border into Honduras and up to the capital Tegus. After struggling to find a cashpoint that worked we eventually managed to get some money and went for dinner. The next day I travelled to Tela, a small town on the Caribbean coast, so it was another day on buses.The following day I hired a bike and cycled to the nearby botanical gardens, apparently one of the biggest in the world. That evening I was walking just a couple of blocks from the hotel to a cafe when i got stopped by 2 guys with a gun, so I just had to give them my bag. Fortunatly I didn't have that much cash on me or my passport but I did loose 2 bank cards and a lot of really annoying things like my guide book and suntan cream. The following day I spent all morning trying to sort everything out. I have 2 other bank cards with me, neither of which would work, so I only had a bit of cash left, most of which I had to spend on the phone to banks in the UK. I was unable to get any money from anywhere, so had to spend the weekend doing nothing as I had too lottle money left. So I was not happy when I went to the bank first thing Monday morning and found that none of them were going to open until Tuesday. Another day of doing nothing at all. I couldn't even just go and sit on the beach because I couldn't afford any suntan cream.Finally the banks opened on Tuesday, and after waiting there for over 4 hours I finally managed to get some money. So I got the next bus out of town. I was trying to get to Copan but as I had spent so long at the bank, I missed the connecting bus and got stuck in San Pedro de Sula for a night. But at least I had got away from Tela. The following morning I got the first bus to Copan and started getting everything back to normal again.