KeTcHup

(the pictures are all from the after school kids club/ eco hostel in jiquillo)

first of all i would just like to point out some new nicknames that red has acquired from various central americans because of his beard---osama bin laden is still most often but believe it or not Bob Marley is a close runner up--what? i mean really, what?! trailing behind that are Fidel Castro and Santa Claus. hmmm.... that i can see.

as for me, red swears he heard someone call me Janet Jackson. i would be flattered if i believed him.

ok so quite a bit has passed without much from us. i think i already described our impression of El Salvador... as for Honduras our impression was rather mixed for reasons that some of you might know. i kind of think that in all three countries El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua our experiences were often tainted by being caught in the ´wrong´(thats too strong of a word) place at the wrong time. in all three countries we rarely stayed put for more than two days and many times just one.

i think that part of that was in comparison to guatemala that we just fell in love with and had such a wonderful time in. between the landscape, the intensity of the culture and the prices, guatemala is an all time favorite.

also we didnt make it to much of the national parques that make those three (el sal, hond, nica) countries amazing too, we arent really city people despite the absolute quaintness of some of these colonial towns.

The Copan Mayan Ruins in Honduras was something that really touched us though. while Tikal ruins are spectacular for the height of their structures, Copan matches that magnificence with their exceptionally artistic carvings of various warriors and kings
and their hieroglyphics everywhere. including an entire staircase leading up... two or three stories tall that was completely and intricately formed from carvings, telling stories of various leaders rising to power.

also there were underground temples too.. really amazing. in the museum they had a skeleton of what they thought was a mayan shaman from maybe 300 a.d. in a glass case. that was really wild to see, especially since all of his teeth had holes that had been drilled in them and then filled with gems like obsidian and jade!

We visited the caribbean coast again while we were in honduras which was crystal clear and lazy smooth (minus some unfortunate circumstances) and then hauled our bums over to Nicaragua.....