Cocoa for chocolate

With increasing signs that Easter weekend would be manic wherever we were, we decided the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras was our best bet. So, after our time at the lake, we headed back through Antigua and GC and crossed the border near Copan, where we stopped off to visit our first Mayan ruins. The ruins at Copan together with the Bay Islands appear to constitute the entire tourist trail in Honduras, but we´ve loved what we´ve seen. The ruins were amazing. We hired a guide to talk us through it, which led to us spending a gruelling 4 1/2 hrs in 40 degree heat working our way round the main complex (a measely 1 square km, of a complex that spreads over something like 24km and encompasses several thousand buildings). 'Fidel-from-Habana' (our guide) assured us Copan was the Paris of the Mayan world (with Tikal being the New York) and wouldn't move on from any given sculpure until we took a photo ('this one is very famous! very famous!'). He had the usual guidely manner of using the same few stock speeches on many many occassions. Most of his speeches ended with a (never varying) list of crops that (depending on the subject of discussion) the Mayans a) grew, b) sold, c) ate, d) offered to the gods, e) buried with the dead or f) used in some other way. Apparently, no matter what the purpose, the Mayan world ran on 'tobaccomaizesquashricebeanspepperstomatoes and cocoaforchocolate.'

Copan also offered us the best food we´ve had so far- cheap and ridiculously oversized platters of meat (our basic two person platter included 4 steaks, a chicken, local sausages and a couple of racks of ribs, char grilled with onions, peppers and other local goodies - so good!). If anyone passes through Copan, eat at Momo´s.

By the way, cocoa trees/fruit are kind of cool and not at all what I would have expected.