Home » Guatemala » Rio Dulce to Honduras

After leaving Finca Ixabel in the late morning, we drove to the town of Rio Dulce. Rio Dulce is on the river of the same name, which is an outlet of Lago de Izabel. The river leads to the Caribbean Sea, so the area is very popular with "yachties" looking for a spot off the ocean.

Rio Dulce to Honduras

Dbg
2005-11-04 19:50:52

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America are on vacation. There was a large group playing loud "Guatemalan Pop" in the campground, but we were glad to have found a spot. The music finally went off at midnight.

March 21, 2005

In the morning we headed back to the ruins at Quirigua. This archaeological site is famed for its intricately carved stelae. These are gigantic sandstone monoliths up to 10.5m tall. Quirigua's location lent itself to the carving of the giant stelae as the nearby Rio Motagua had large beds of brown sandstone. Soft when wet, the sandstone dried hard. Cauac Sky (AD725-84) ruled during the time of carving and the stelae are dedicated to his glory, he had his face caved on most of them.

Leaving Quirigua, we continued down the road to Chiquimula. This town lies in prime tobacco-growing country and though small, is a major market town for Eastern Guatemala. Also as this is Semana Santa, there was bound to be a procession going on somewhere in town - and low and behold, the children's procession was scheduled for this evening.

At 5:00pm, the doors of the church opened and the male children began carrying out a statue of Christ on a large float held on their shoulders. The female children followed behind carrying a float with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Helped by adults along the way, the kids carried the floats for several blocks around the town square. As Don bobbed and weaved his way among the marchers to capture the moment in our camera, the parents smiled and seemed proud that a stranger was interested in their children and their culture.

March 22, 2005

Less than an hour out of Chiquimula, we came to the Guatemalan border with Honduras. This was supposed to be a road that was not only dirt but winding as it crossed the mountains. It seems that sometime after our maps were made, the road was straightened and - surprise- paved. At the border we once again grabbed our passports and the paperwork for the vehicle and headed to deal with officialdom. Once again, the immigration and customs people were polite and efficient and we were done with both sides of the border within 45 minutes. This is now three border crossings that have been as easy as could be and quite contrary to what we had been led to believe. That's not to say that others haven't had long waits (4 hours), but we have gotten extremely lucky so far.

We continued on to the town of Ruinas Copan. We had lunch in a restaurant and enjoyed walking around the streets of this cobblestoned town. We actually drove the expedition vehicle into the center of town and with only a couple of exceptions, we were able to easily negotiate the streets.

Outside of town, we negotiated a place to park for the night at a Balneario (swimming park). We were allowed to use the facilities and the swimming pool was very nice on this very hot afternoon. It also allowed us to experience the local middle class during their leisure time. It was a very enjoyable afternoon. In the morning we'll had back to town so that we can explore our last Mayan ruin of this expedition, the ruins and stelae at Copan.