10 Lempiras

Our internet lately has been really unreliable.  Hopefully it works long enough for me to post this blog.  I will post pictures from more of our trip after we get home to Tegucigalpa and have more reliable internet.

We're still on our long trip that has taken us to five different cities.  A few days ago we took a bus from Copan Ruinas to La Entrada that made stops in a bunch of little places along the way.  When we got to La Entrada we had no idea where to get off that would be closer to our hotel.  We had already passed a stop or two within the city, and when we saw signs for the highway to San Pedro and Santa Rosa we decided to get off and try to find a taxi.  As we were trying to get off the bus, both the guy who collects the money and the busdriver tried to stop us.  They seemed worried that we wanted to get off at La Entrada, didn’t we need to go to the terminal to catch a bus somewhere else?  We insisted that, no, we were in fact going to La Entrada.  We got off the bus right in front of a gas station, and we walked the length of the gas station before a taxi pulled to the side to give us a ride.  We told him we were going to the hotel San Carlos.  He said it was on the other side, but he didn’t say on the other side of what.  We assumed he meant the other side of town, so we asked how much it would cost.  He said 10 Lempiras, which I assumed was 10 for each of us.  That’s still pretty cheap, but believable (we just payed 15 L cada una to get to our hotel in the next city we went to).  He loaded up our luggage in his little three-wheel red taxi, we all got in, and he proceeded to take us across the street where K noticed the sign to our hotel.  It was RIGHT THERE.  We literally got off the bus directly across the street from our hotel.  We were so busy looking for a taxi that we missed seeing the hotel.  I drew a map so you can all see the hilarity of our little escapade.  The purple arrow shows where we got off the bus.  We then walked to where the blue arrow is pointing where a taxi driver picked us up.  We then paid him 50 cents to take us to our hotel across the street. 

Then to add to the hilarity, two days later as we were walking to the bus terminal, which is like two blocks up on the other side of Texaco, the same taxi driver saw us as he was leaving Texaco.  He jokingly asked us if we needed to go to San Carlos.  I still laugh every time I think of this little experience.