07 APRIL (Monday)
First thing in the morning we checked out of the hotel and left the town of Copan and the
country of Honduras. Back at El Florido we dealt with the same people as before (this time
I purposely gave the soldier the paperwork upside-down just to watch him pretend to read
it). We also noted that our vehicle's paperwork was still on top of the stack of documents
hanging from the wall (evidently they don't get a lot of vehicles through there). The trip
back to Guatemala City was uneventful. Once in town we had lunch at the equivalent of a
"Burger King", and then we used our guide maps to locate the Central Post Office
downtown (not as easy as it sounds).
Sue dropped me off at the Post Office so that I could get stamps and mail some postcards (we thought they would get back quicker if they left from the countries main post office). While she cruised around the block a few times I found my way to the right office, used my improving Spanish skills to complete the transactions, and eventually met up with her again outside. She laughingly told me about how people would just step off the curb right in front of her, until they looked up and saw a WHITE woman driving a big expensive vehicle towards them, at which point they would jump out of the way. She said that with each succeeding trip around the block there would be more people staring at her. I guess it just is not a common site in that culture.
We then headed off to see the "Museo Nacional De Arquelogia y Etnologia" and the "Museum Popol Vuh", in order to see their collections of Mayan artifacts. Unfortunately, both museums were closed on Mondays, which was not the day listed in our guide books. We returned to the airport and turned in the Suburban, and took a taxi back to the hotel "Ramada Conquistador". We had dinner in the elegant hotel dining room, and though the food was good I did not enjoy it. I was by this time succumbing to the discomforts of an intestinal disorder known as "turista", which I must have picked up while in Honduras. (To be fair, I would probably have gotten it anywhere in Central America.... Honduras just happened to be our first stop.) I probably should have seen it as inevitable, despite the fact that we asked for bottled water wherever we went. It might have been something in the food somewhere, or maybe it was the time I forgot not to use the tap water when brushing my teeth. It didn't matter; I was sick. I took the generic medicine that we had brought for just such an event, but I didn't want to take the antibiotic that we had each got from our travel doctors. I had read that you should take it easy and stay out of the sun when on that antibiotic, and with Tikal on the schedule the next day, I didn't want to play by those rules. So, I just suffered through the symptoms and waited until the next day.