Central America in Four Days

One goal of our blog is to show that is possible to do a lot in just a little bit of time.  This itinerary is a classic example.

On July 3, I purchased tickets to Guatemala City from Detroit for $786 a piece on Spirit Airlines. That price is quite steep, but the travel period was over the upcoming Christmas break season.  The ticket prices only went higher.

We departed Detroit on December 29th and arrived in Guatemala City at 12:40 p.m.  After securing a rental car, we attempted to drive through the city and get on the highway and make our way to Honduras.  With a map in hand, we were unable to navigate the city.  I’ve never seen such a labyrinth in my life.  The map in no way matched the road signage at all.  Thankfully, locals would tell us to follow them and pull over to signal it was time for us to make a turn.  We navigated our way to the highway like this with at least three guides.

As night fell, we made our way to the border of Honduras.

The border crossing was not well lit and it entailed going to one building where we had our passports stamped and were issued a piece of paper.  We then had to walk to another building across a dirt road, hand over the piece of paper and our passports to a man behind a window.  The man seemed to take forever to look over the piece of paper and approve our entry into Honduras.  After we were permitted to enter, we proceeded on to the town of Copan Ruinas.

Copan Ruinas was a pleasant little town with a bit of colonial architecture.  After finding a hotel room, we set out to find a beer and something to eat.  It didn’t take us long to discover that the Honduran beer, Salvavida, was very good.  We spent the rest of the night in a pizza place that was run by an American retiree.

The next morning (December 30), we were up early and were the first ones to arrive at the Copan Ruins a good hour before opening time. While we waiting for the gates to open, we took several pictures of the macaws.

We spent a good while exploring the ruins of Copan.

 

After we explored the ruins in Copan, we drove on to Santa Ana, El Salvador. We had lunch there after a quick look at the town.

We returned to Guatemala City that evening.  We checked into the Crowne Plaza of Guatemala City where we paid $164 for the remaining three nights of our trip.

On December 31, we took a day trip to the town of Antigua.

On January 1, we flew from Guatemala City to the town of Flores. The round trip airfare was $297 on Avianca and allowed us to spend around 12 hours in the area.  Once we got to Flores, we found a shuttle driver who drove us out to Tikal.

Once we arrived to Tikal, it was a good 3/4 mile walk through mud to reach the ruins.

On January 2, before our 1:30 p.m. flight back to Detroit, I went out and explored the main plaza area of Guatemala City.

~Bella