There was that time in Honduras I saw my first ever Maya ruins...and was somewhat unimpressed. To be fair, Copan in northern Honduras is neither my first mayor archeaological sight (I have, in fact, visited several of the world's biggest sites and even worked on an archeaological excavation), nor is at the most impressive Maya site in Central America. Nevertheless, Maya ruins was one of my main motives to visiting Central America, so I was disappointed when Copan didn't blow me away. The place was somewhat small and the buildings blant, at least compared to other things I have seen. But one of the things I really do like when visiting archeaological sights is getting to explore then on my own, without the crowds and no guide. This was very possible at Copan, as there was almost no one there. What stunned me most about the place was the colourful and friendly parrots that were hanging out in the trees. They almost made up for the blantness of the ruins. Almost.

There was that time my broken Spanish made finding my way difficult for me in Honduras. I had studied Spanish briefly in Ecuador some years earlier, but as I hadn't used much of it since, I was back down to the bare minimum. So as I was looking for a bird sanctuary a couple of Ks outside of Copan Ruinas, I found myself lost (I swear, half of those roads weren't even on the map!).

I tried "talking" to multiple people to find the right direction, but since none of then spoke English and I didn't know the Spanish word for "bird sanctuary", it all seemed a bit hopeless. That was until I came up with a brilliant fix for my lack of language skills. The next person I met, a teenage girl, I decided to mimic the squeeck of a bird while waving my arms like wings, then pointing toward each of the two directions of the road, respectively, with a questioning look on my face. The girl laughed at me, of course, but she did point me in the right direction, so that's a win for me! Who needs language lessons anyway?

The little town of Copan Ruinas.

There was that time in Copan Ruinas I met new friends...and we spontaniously decided to go to El Salvador! The freedom and spontaneity of back packing is really the best part of it all! We needed at least four people to arrange transportation to El Salvador though, so my new German friend and I spent the better part of an afternoon and evening crashing hostels around town, trying to persuade other backpackers to come to El Salvador with us. Of course, somehow we ended up with a group of seven people, as jumping on board with other people's crazy ideas seems to be the general rule of backpacking. Off to El Salvador then!