One of my colleagues, when I told him how we were going to just rely on the buses (something I really didn't know about first hand, just from our travel book) said that we were brave.
I didn't really think about it like that, but I started to after he said that.
When we got there I learned a little more about the autobuses. They're everywhere, coming by almost every few minutes, and heading in every direction. Getting to Copan Ruinas the next day was an adventure of its own upon the autobus.
See, being a white pair, it can be expected that we'll be charged a little more than locals, but that really only happened once maybe, otherwise we were charged the normal prices. These autobus organizations may not be as big and organized as Greyhound, but they have other cars (sometimes) in their cadre, as we saw on our second day, when we left Santa Cruz for Honduras.
We hopped into the first autobus we saw that said that yes, they would take us to Chiquimula. The trip was wild. In the town of Estanzuela the traffic got ridiculously backed up, so our driver decided to go against traffic and head down the opposite side of the street. Oncoming traffic caused him to scoot over to the parking lot areas of the markets on that side of the street. Eventually we went doown a pedestrian underpass going under the road and back up the other side so we could drive through the shoulder and gutter.
The line of traffic was miles long and stopped. We then took off through the city, moving towards the front of the traffic. The road went away and we were soon on a dirt road, running parallel to the main road, which was visible off in the distance looking like a parking lot.
They were doing work on the road, which caused the traffic jam. We made it out and on later to a spot where the road split. The barker told us to get out and get onto a different autobus, a bigger one, actually. It was a transfer outside of Zacapa. That autobus went onto Zacapa, and we wanted to go to Chiquimula, and this new autobus, one that had been waiting for us at this spot, was going on in that direction.
Connection and transfer by cell-phone. It was pretty cool.
In Chiquimula we were dropped off by the main market, a <span style="font-style:italic;">mercado</span> for which the town is known, and found a barker quickly who heard we wanted to get to Copan. We were the first travelers with this crew, and the barker went on yelling outside the van, "Jocotan! Jocotan! Jocotan!" This is how the barker works: they holler for a destination, and if you're headed in that direction, you tell him so, work out a price, and get on board.
We didn't know where Jocotan was, and were unsettled by the mysterious whispers between the barker and the driver. After a while and finally arriving in the bustling Jocotan, I was getting ancy and ready throttle this diminutive barker when he started hollering for "Frontera! Frontera! Frontera!"
A sigh of relief was exhaled. <span style="font-style:italic;">Frontera</span> is "border".
Near the border between Guatemala and Honduras, our bus pulled over and the remaining riders, Corrie and I and a pair of Japanese tourists, a young couple like Corrie and I, were booted from the van and handed over to a rik-sha, motorized three-wheelers that live in many foreign cities the world over. "<span style="font-style:italic;">No pagado</span>," was what we were told here, as well as when we switched vans before Zacapa. It means "no pay," as in "you already paid me, and this guy won't ask for more money, and if he does, tell him to screw".
The rik-sha took us the last few hundred yards to the border zone. Another autobus took us the relatively short distance from the border to our destination town of Copan Ruinas.
The autobuses are awesome, and next time we go, when our Spanish is better, we'll be able to get everywhere we want for only what we want to pay.
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