Whistle Stop Central America

After a lazy morning by the pool, we packed and set off to the airport. Our flight was quite long, but uneventful. A couple of hours stop in San Salvador, where we got off the plane, and a 45 minute stop in San Jose (Costa Rica). where we didn't.

San Salvador looked amazing - the whole Volcano thing is quite impressive when you fly so close to them.

Costa Rica may also have been impressive - it was dark.

We arrived at about midnight in Panama and got a taxi to our hotel.

Panama's currency is the Balboa (Written B/.), which is interesting, because it isn't. Panama doesn't print notes - it chooses to steal them from America (the US of), so dollars are the currency. Luckily for all concerned 1 Balboa is worth exactly one US dollar.

Our hotel wasn't the poshest, and it wasn't in the nicest place. However I was amazed about how noisy the street outside was - until I realised (after we had woken up and got dressed by 7am) that the window was wide open. It was tolerably quiet when shut.

Our first day in Panama was spent lookng for somewhere to base our tourism from.

After traipsing through the heat - we settled on the Backpacker enclave of the Panama Mariott.

Third time lucky

As a rule of thumb, we had discovered that we weren't too keen on places called San Pedro. The one on lake Atitlan was a smelly, dirty looking place (in its defence, the worst part of town was the tourist bit, which seemed to be suffering from a hangover), The one on Ambergris Caye was such a shock to us after the peace and quiet of Caye Caulker that we pretty much left on the boat after we arrived.

Sn Pedro Sula, coming hot on the heels of the Kir affair, had an opportunity to redeem the good name of saint Pedro.

Our Taxi driver was very proud of Honduras and, whilst swerving in and out of traffic on the motorway; honking his horn for many reasons (some of which were a mystery, most of which were reasonably, if not worryingly, obvious) and nattering away on his mobile phone - managed to give me a running commentary on the many attractions we passed.

"Beautiful View", "Clothes Factory", "Cement Factory", "Big Cement Factory", "Bad Smell (Sewage works)" - Honduras has all the things to drag in the tourists - most of them were missing from our guide book for some reason.

After trying to locate our hotel in the metropolis (San Pedro Sula is the second city of Honduras), by talking to anyone he stopped next to in traffic and asking them if they knew where it was, our driver hit upon the novel solution to his lack of knowledge by stopping in the middle of town, pointing to a police car and informing us that it would be illegal for him to go any further with us. 10/10 for style - not going to get him a tip though.

We arrived at the Copantl and Keri arranged to fly out to Roatan that very afternoon. We said a tearful goodbye to our adopted Canadian and retreated to the pool for a swim.

T had had enough of being on an adventure and decided that we were going to be tourists for a while. We booked a flight for the next day to Panama City and, as we were due to arrive at midnight, booked a hotel for the first night.

Our stay in Honduras was to be very brief.

Change of pace

After escaping from the yacht at Puerto Cortes, we came to Honduras' second city, San Pedro Sula.

This evening, we are flying to Panama City.