Boat trip to Livingston – 30 Jan 2023

We spent the night at Amatique Bay, just outside Puerto Barrios and had another early start to get a boat across the bay to Livingston.

The town has a large number of people of Afro-Caribbean origin, including the Garifuna people who have their own language. One of the locals told us that they were being priced out of the area. It used to be a major port but now Puerto Barrios is the main port for the area – the road we’d taken the previous day was very busy with trucks going to and from the port.

The bottles above contain rum with a mixture of herbs. The drink has an interesting taste …

Quirigua – 29 Jan 2023

Another early start because we had to head back to Guatemala and then onto Quirigua. We didn’t get much of a chance to appreciate the hotel, but it looked as if it would be a good place to stay for a while.

Quirigua has a large number of impressive stelae – carved stone columns – and some zoomorphs – animalistic figures carved onto blocks of stone.

The faces with headdress represent the ruler at the time the stone was carved. There are typically 2 heads underneath the ruler – these are designed to inspire fear.

There’s also interesting wildlife to be seen.

A small army of leaf cutter ants were busy on the site – YouTube video 1 and YouTube video 2

Copan – 28 Jan 2023

Copan was a Mayan city in what is now Honduras. We arrived at about 1530 and found that the site closes at 1700 so it was a bit of a rush to get round. There’s a very impressive museum containing some sculptures which have been moved for protection and some replicas of original buildings – the red one below is a replica. Some of the existing buildings still have traces of red stucco so the replicas have been made the same way.

Macaws live on the site – our guide told us that they know they are safe, so they are often seen. There’s also plenty of other wildlife to see.

As with the other sites we visited, the ruins are very impressive.

Journey to Honduras – 28 Jan 2023

We left the hotel very early to set off on the long journey to Honduras. Guatemala city from the main road doesn’t look very attractive but it is very busy.

We soon got into more rural surroundings and found cows on the road. At one point we drove along a dirt track – some of the roads in Guatemala are excellent but this wasn’t one of them (I was looking on Google maps and it was the recommend route). The colourful “boxes” are graves in a cemetery.

After about 7 hours on the road, we made it to the border. It was all very straightforward – passport stamped to leave Guatemala, stamped again to enter Honduras and a fee of 30 Guatemalan Quetzales paid and we headed to Copan.