It’s confusing, we know: The closest town to the ruins of the Mayan city of Copán, the most famous and widely studied archaeological site in Honduras, is called Copán Ruinas.Therefore, the comparatively new city of Copán Ruinas is your base for exploring the positively ancient remains of Copán ruins.

Copán Ruinas is tiny but jam-packed with tourists and the services that come with them. Because the number one tourist attraction in Honduras is right on the town’s doorstep, most offerings are of the mediocre but overpriced variety (case in point: laundry is $1 per pound). We visited Copán Ruinas on two different occasions and found a few finds that stand out from the rest.

Sunset view over the town of Copán Ruinas in Honduras as seen from Hacienda San Lucas hotel.

Sleep with the Mayans

About a mile and a half above the center of Copán Ruinas lies one of the most noteworthy hotels in Honduras. Hacienda San Lucas is the 100-year-old home of the Cueva family, whose patriarch was a passionate amateur archaeologist and instrumental in early protection and exploration of the remains of the Mayan city of Copán.

The inviting patio and sprawling lawn at Hacienda San Lucas hotel above the town of Copán Ruinas in Honduras.

His daughter, Doña Flavia Cueva, oversaw a disciplined reinvention of the family home which she has transformed into an eight room hotel. Flavia did a lot of the work herself (don’t miss the photos of the restoration in progress–Flavia is smiling in every single shot) and she worked hard to retain country touches like exposed beams, thick walls and ample patios.

Modern touches like electricity, hot water, great beds and WiFi were added. One thoroughly modern addition to Hacienda San Lucas is the large, colorful, graphic art work of Falvia’s daughter, Frida Larios. Frida has turned her artists’ eye to Mayan glyphs, transforming the traditional ancient stone carvings into modern graphic art which decorates the hotel. Frida calls it Modern Mayan and it’s great stuff.

The Hacienda San Lucas kitchen, staffed by Mayan women, also turns out some of the best food in the region. We had some of the tastiest tamales we’ve ever eaten here and dinner, open to non-guests too, is a set menu, multi-course affair featuring dishes made from traditional Mayan recipes paired with wines. The town of Copán Ruinas and the edges of the Copán archaeological site itself can be seen in the valley below.

Yoga with a view at Hacienda San Lucas hotel just above the town of Copán Ruinas in Honduras.

Your own (sort of) private ruins

Though touring the ruins of Copán is the main draw, guests at Hacienda San Lucas are only a ten minute walk away from a tiny, little-visited archaeological site called Los Sapos (The Toads) that’s actually located on land owned by Hacienda San Lucas. About the size of half a football field, the Los Sapos area features boulders carved into the form of toads. Dozens of types of toads live in this area and the toad is the Mayan symbol of fertility. The origin and importance of this odd little site are still being studied but one theory is that Los Sapos was a fertility and/or birthing site used by the inhabitants of ancient Copán.

Look closely. Can you see the toad in this carved rock at the Los Sapos Mayan archaeological site near Hacienda San Lucas hotel?

If Hacienda San Lucas is out of your price range we can also recommend Hotel Patty. Located right in downtown  Copán Ruinas, the basic rooms are clean with bathrooms and TV, there’s a  big secure parking lot, the WiFi works and the owners are friendly. Rooms start at US$25 double occupancy.

The best microbrew in Central America?

Your new hero: Thomas, owner and brew master of Sol de Copan Brewery in the town of Copán Ruinas in Honduras.

One of the best microbrews in Central America at Sol de Copan in Honduras.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Fabricio. He’s a local customs officer who we met when we crossed the border from Guatemala. If he hadn’t told us about “the big German making beer” in Copán Ruinas we might never have found Thomas Wagner.

Thomas is serious about beer. Serious enough to drive 10 miles for his spring water. Serious enough to wear a lab coat while he brews. Serious enough to import all of his equipment and ingredients from his native Germany. He is not, however, very serious about signs. His tiny brewery and mini German beer hall is located down a residential side street with no more than a small sign right at the entrance. Ask anyone in Copán Ruinas for directions to the Sol de Copán Brew Pub (closed Monday and Tuesday), then look for the building with wacky castle-like turrets just a few blocks away from downtown.

Thomas, who has won awards for his beers in his native Germany, makes strictly German-style beer and you will find two different brews on tap along with a short menu of German dishes (spetzel, schnitzel) made fresh by Thomas’ bubbly Honduran wife. Their schnauzer, Sammy, usually makes an appearance too. Locals fill the place. Laughter spills out into the street–mostly Thomas’ laughter. He is visibly thrilled every time someone takes a sip.

It’s a good thing Thomas is getting joy out of his beer because he certainly isn’t getting rich. At 55 Lempiras (less than US$3) for a half liter of the delicious stuff, Thomas’ handcrafted beer is only slightly more expensive than a liter of Salva Vida, the ubiquitous but mediocre beer of Honduras.

We are happy to report that microbreweries are gaining a foothold in Central America (more on that in future posts) but we can say with certainty that the stuff Thomas is making in tiny, remote Copán Ruinas is by far the best microbrew in the region.

The only thing we loved as much as Thomas' excellent German-style beers were his tattoos.

Hot springs worth the splurge

We set aside just a couple of hours to visit the Luna Jaguar Spa hot springs located in the town of (surprise, surprise) Agua Caliente about 12 miles out of town over a pretty rough dirt road. The US$10 per person entry fee seemed like a whole lot at the time, however, as soon as we walked through the gate, over a hanging bridge and into a series of atmospheric pools, falls and dipping areas artfully crafted into nature over a trail-laced hillside the fee suddenly seemed worth it.

The wonderfully natural Luna Jaguar Spa hot springs near the town of Copán Ruinas in Honduras.

None of the crystal-clear pools are sizzling hot, but they do the trick. There’s even a pool that includes containers of therapeutic mud which is high in minerals and great for your skin. Another area has a small circular path lined in smooth river stones and filled to ankle-level with hot water. Walk around it and you get a free foot massage! We could have soaked all day.

Eric and his brother Jeff getting their money's worth in the hot springs at Luna Jaguar Spa near Copán Ruinas in Honduras.

Eric's brother, Jeff, trying out his moves on his sister-in-law. That's hard to do while covered in mineral-rich mud...

A special note for drivers: If you’re driving to Copán Ruinas be prepared for the town’s cobblestone streets which are very narrow, sometimes steep and brutally bumpy. Parking is also tough. We had some tight squeezes in our truck.
 

Related posts:

1. Inside the Sculpture Museum of Copán – Copán Archaeological Site, Honduras
2. Old Copán – Copán Archaeological Site, Honduras
3. The Beverly Hills of Copán – Las Sepulturas and El Puente Archaeological Sites, Honduras

Crossing international borders is never easy, especially when you’re driving across in your own vehicle as part of an overland road trip. We hope the information, below, helps you get prepared and get across smoothly with or without a vehicle.

Date: June 8, 2011

From: El Florido, Guatemala

To: Honduras

Lay of the land: This border crossing, referred to as El Florido on both sides and used primarily by big rigs and day-trippers visiting the Copan archaeological site, is dusty and quiet. No touts, no hassles, no services, banks or other facilities. The immigration office on the Guatemala side is well-marked and efficient. A brand new immigration and customs building has been put up on the Honduran side. A charming Honduran customs agent named Fabricio handled our truck importation with an absolute minimum of hassle. He barely inspected the vehicle at all but he was a bit of a Chatty Cathy which ate up some time. Before we drove away Fabricio gave us his cell phone number in case we had any questions or problems in his country and he tipped us off about a German man making excellent small batch beer in the town of Copan Ruinas just a few miles away.

Elapsed time: 1.5 hours (mostly spent talking to Fabricio)

Fees: $3 per person for a Honduran visa; $35 for temporary importation of the truck into Honduras

Number of days they gave us: 90 days for us and for our truck. See warning below regarding CA-4 regulations for overland travelers.

Vehicle insurance requirements: We were not required to show proof of Honduran liability insurance and there was no place to buy insurance.

Where to fill up: Fill your tank before you leave Guatemala. Fuel is much more expensive in Honduras. If you’re headed to the El Florido border from Chiquimula, Guatemala the best place to fill up is the Shell station about a mile and a half before you reach the turn for El Florido. There’s no fuel immediately available on either side of this crossing.

Duty free stores: None

Need to know: Police officers in Honduras are serious about seat belts and you are required to carry reflective emergency triangles and a fire extinguisher in your vehicle (as is the rule in most of Latin America). We were pulled over about three miles into Honduras by cops looking for our front plate (we only have a back plate because a front plate won’t fit underneath our winch). The cops were not hassling us at all nor were they looking for a bribe. Once we showed them the temporary importation papers we’d just been given they explained that all vehicles registered in Honduras are required to have front and back plates then sent us on our way.

CA-4 warning: In 2006, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras joined together to create the so-called CA-4 (Central American 4) group of countries all honoring and enforcing one CA-4 visa which is good for 90 days in any of the four participating countries. Sounds great, but you cannot exceed 90 days in total in any combination of those four countries without severe penalties. The clock starts ticking on your CA-4 visa the moment you step foot in any of the CA-4 countries.To complicate things further, Honduras recently stopped honoring CA-4 regulations and started issuing its own 90 day visa. Theoretically you can now spend 90 days in the other CA-4 countries then enter Honduras and receive a new 90 day visa for that country. However, unless you are flying out of Honduras or taking the boat to Belize this will lead to serious problems. Since Honduras is completely surrounded by other CA-4 countries the only way out overland requires entering a CA-4 country.  Because the other CA-4 countries still abide by the 90 day limit and starting when you first entered Central America which they still define as including Honduras even though Honduras has opted out of CA-4 regulations. That means if you’ve used up your 90 Honduran visa you’re going to have to fly or boat out of Honduras or pay a large fine and get just a few days to transit overland through any of the surrounding countries and get out of the CA-4 region. Overland travelers need to plan stays in Honduras carefully to ensure that there is enough time left on the visa to allow overland travel through other CA-4 countries before the CA-4 visa expires.  We learned this the hard way after we spent almost three months in Guatemala, entered Honduras and got another 90 day visa and then tried to enter El Salvador which denied us entry because we’d (unwittingly) overstayed our allotted 90 days as defined by the CA-4 regulations.

Border rating: Excellent. The El Florido crossing between Guatemala and Honduras was smoothly run, hassle-free and relatively quiet despite the presence of quite a few big rigs.

No related posts.

Tsé bighánílíní. That’s the Navajo name for Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Indian Reservation outside Page, Arizona. The phrase means ”the place where water runs through rocks” which is appropriate since this photogenic slot canyon was formed by water and continues to flood during seasonal rains. Clear skies and sun greeted us during our visit to this amazing natural formation allowing Eric to capture this dramatic shaft of light.

Like what you see? Eric has started putting his very best photos of our very best Trans-Americas Journey adventures (including this one) up for sale on our new online photo store. Choose the photos you want then pick the size and have them professionally printed on traditional photo paper, canvas, thinwrap or even metal. Finished prints are delivered to your door.

If you see a shot on our website or blog that you want but you can’t find it on our online store just let us know and we’ll get you a print of the exact shot you want.

Related posts:

1. After the Flood- Havasu Falls, Havasupai Reservation, Arizona
2. Grand Canyon Slideshow Surprise
3. You Can Get There From Here – Copper Canyon, Chihuahua, Mexico

We just celebrated the five year anniversary of the Trans-Americas Journey. Our little road trip has now completed more than 1,825 days of travel, road tripping and reporting our way through the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

That’s terrific, except that we budgeted for three years not eight or 10 or however many it’s going to take for us to ultimately fulfill the mandate of our Trans-Americas Journey and explore and write about all 23 countries in North, Central and South America before the road literally ends in Tierra del Fuego. So far we’ve managed to stay on the road for nearly twice as long as we’d budgeted for by being frugal (a fancy word for cheap) and creative. But that’s only going to take us so far.

We could really use your tips

During the previous five years we’ve given our readers hundreds of insider tips about the destinations and activities we’ve covered in our blog posts and our magazine and newspaper stories. Now we’re asking you for a tip.

If you love what we’re doing, if we’re your go-to distraction at work, if you’re living vicariously through us, if we’ve inspired your own travels, if you want to be part of every mile of our Journey please consider making a contribution to our Trans-Americas Journey Tip Jar.

 We don’t need much

Question: Do you get at least ten cents worth of value out of what you read and see on our website and blog every month? Our website gets more than 17,000 visitors per month. If every visitor dropped even a dime into our tip jar once a month that would fund our travels for that month.

Of course, not everyone can or will contribute. But if you’re able, please put what you can into our tip jar by using the widget below. Or you can send your support to us directly from your PayPal account to ours at contact (at) trans-americas.com.

They call it the  Darien Gap for a reason

All tips of any amount will be used to help us cover the impending expense of shipping our truck from Panama to Colombia around the Darien Gap, a dense expanse of jungle that’s never had a road through it. To get around this impenetrable break in the Pan American Highway we have to put our truck into a huge container and ship it around the Darien Gap. Though this boat trip takes just a few days it’s gonna take a massive bite out of our already dwindling budget. If we can’t afford to ship our truck around the Darien Gap we literally won’t get to South America.

We have incentives!

We recently started putting Eric’s very best shots up for sale online, making it easy for you to purchase custom prints of the pictures you love from our site including those adorable penguins in Antarctica, cool cowboys at the Calgary Stampede, fireworks over Mount Rushmore and hundreds more of our best moments captured in our best photographs. See a shot you want on the site but it’s not on our online store yet? Just holler and we’ll get you a print of the exact shot you want.

• Stuff $25 into our tip jar and get 15% off one print of any of Eric’s photos
• Stuff $50 into our tip jar and get 15% off your entire order
• Stuff $75 into our tip jar and get 20% off one print of any of Eric’s photos
• Stuff $100 into our tip jar and get one free 8″ x 12″ print (valued at $35 & up)
• Stuff $125 into our tip jar and get 30% off one print of any of Eric’s photos
• Stuff $150 into our tip jar and get 30% off your entire order
• Stuff $200 into our tip jar and get one free 12″ x 18″ print  (valued at $100 & up)
• Stuff $250 into our tip jar and get 40% off your entire order
• Stuff $300 into our tip jar and get two free 12″ x 18″ prints (valued at $100 & up each)
• Stuff $500 into our tip jar and get 50% off your entire order
• Donors who give $1,000 or more are invited to meet us anywhere during our Journey and spend a few days traveling with us in our truck complete with chauffeur (Eric) and tour guide (Karen)

Our heartfelt gratitude goes to everyone and every amount.

Are you a company (or do you own one)?

We’re also looking for a corporate sponsor–one company with vision (and some loose change) that’s interested in getting its product or services in front of our unique audience of passionate, independent travelers looking for real-world advice and inspiration as they plan their own adventures. Consider our inbox, at contact (at) trans-americas.com, open to any and all suggestions and leads!

Related posts:

1. Rear View Mirror: Travel Tips and Observations After Four Months in Guatemala
2. Rear View Mirror: Travel Tips and Observations After 2.5 Months in Belize
3. New Month, New Stuff

We spent a total of 140 days traveling in Guatemala during our Trans-Americas Journey road trip. We trekked through the jungle to El Mirador archaeological site, witnessed drunken horse racing in Todos Santos, returned to lovely Lake Atitlan again and again, got robbed while camping at a lake inside a volcano and fell in love (again) with Tikal.

Here are a few parting notes from Guatemala.

The word Guatemala means “land of forests” in one of the local Mayan dialects. Ironic, since deforestation is such a problem in Guatemala. We wonder what a Mayan word for “land of mudslides” is…

The impossibly technicolor quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala. It’s also the name of the country’s currency and a really great reason to start planning a visit to Guatemala right now.

This male quetzal emerged from its nest inside a hollow tree trunk and posed for us on a nearby branch in the Chelemhá Cloud Forest Reserve in Guatemala.

The awesome ceiba, sacred to the Mayans, is the national tree of Guatemala. The thing starts its live covered in enormous spikes and can grow more than 200 feet (70 meters) tall.

Guatemala is part of the Mundo Maya (along with southern Mexico, Belize and Honduras) and home to Uaxactun archaeological site just a few miles beyond Tikal. We’ve visited more than 60 Mayan archaeological sites since the Journey began and Uaxactun is our top spot for anyone interested in being part of authentic, less-crowded ceremonies marking the mysterious end of the Mayan long count calendar in 2012.

In the most recent Presidential election the wife of the then-sitting President  of Guatemala divorced him so she could, in her words, “marry the people.” This was widely seen as a blatant attempt to get around constitutional rules against family members of an outgoing President taking over the post. It took months, but Guatemala’s Supreme Court eventually saw it that way too and ruled that she had to abandon her campaign for the Presidency.

Postage to mail a postcard from Guatemala to the United States is a whopping 6.5Q (about US$0.84).

In October of 2011 Guatemala City introduced a few women-only buses.

San Pedro volcano across Lake Atitlán.

We appreciate the no-nonsense language of our Lonely Planet guidebook to Guatemala in which the author wisely reminds readers that his guide (or any guide) “is not God talking.”

There’s a division of the Guatemalan Tourism Department called PROATUR and their sole job is to assist tourists with questions, problems and conflicts. We can tell you from first hand experience that this unique program gets results.

Antigua, Guatemala was settled by the Spanish as the capital of all of Central America. Today, the UNESCO World Heritage Site city just outside Guatemala City is famous for its Colonial charm and for its Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions and pomp. It’s the largest Easter celebration in The Americas and a must see for the religious or the just plain curious.

Colonial architecture lines a cobblestone street in Antigua with the Agua Volcano--one of three that ring the city-- in the distance.

Guys reflexively put their thumbs inside the mouths of their beer bottles and pop them before drinking. As if your thumb is cleaner than the bottle???

It’s far from a foodie destination but for some reason you can get great pesto sauce in Guatemala. Go figure. Also, they do a mean fried chicken and we had some of the best ceviche we’ve ever had in the midst of Guatemala City.

Guatemalans use the ancient “libra” measurement which weighs the same as a pound and is actually the Latin word from which we get the “lb” abbreviation.

Topes are called tumulos in Guatemala and these speed bumps in the road are just as ubiquitous and annoying as they are in Mexico and the rest of Central America.

We thought the Mexicans were crazy for fireworks and noise makers but Guatemalan festivals out-boom anything we ever saw (or heard) in Mexico. Don’t believe us? Check out our video from the Festival of Santo Tomas in Chichicastenango.

Costumed dancers representing Spanish conquistadors strut their stuff during the annual Festival of Santo Tomás in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.

Guatemalans have butchered Mexican food–perhaps even more so than we have in the United States. US fast food chains, on the other hand, are amply represented in the cities.

Spanish is the national language in Guatemala, but words that are common in Mexico are not used here and vice versa. As if our language skills weren’t struggling already…

Guatemala is so small and sparsely populated that there’s only one area code for the whole country. And everyone seems to have a cell phone.

The grounds of the Mayan sites in Guatemala are extremely well-kept. We watched busy, busy caretakers literally sweep the paths at Yaxha (where a season of Survivor was filmed, by the way) and even remote and rarely visited sites like Dos Pilas (which averages about 30 visitors per month) were totally tidy and free of jungle debris.

Temple 1 in the Gran Plaza at Tikal archaeological site in Guatemala.

In Guatemala City, motorcyclists are required wear helmets and reflective vests with their license plate number on them. It’s also illegal to carry a passenger on a motorcycle in an attempt to thwart a favored mode of transportation for thieves and assassins targeting people stuck in traffic.

Gas prices vary by up to 40 cents per gallon, so shop around.

No related posts.

We spend a lot of time getting excited about the wild animals we see during our Trans-Americas Journey but there have also been some pretty spectacular trees along the way including Sequoias in California and ancient Bristlecone Pines. In Central America, it’s all about the ceiba (pronounced say bah) and we fell in love with this magestic, mighty and possibly magical tree.

This stately example of a ceiba tree greets visitors to the Tikal archaeological site in Guatemala.

A mature ceiba tree.

A ceiba is usually the tallest tree in the jungle and can grow to more than 200 feet (70 meters) tall. The trunks are branchless and very straight, making them a favored tree for canoe making. A large ceiba trunk can yield a canoe large enough to hold 40 men.

All of a cebia’s branches are at the very top of the tree where  they radiate out like the ribs of an umbrella. The whole massive thing is held upright by wide buttresses at it’s base.

The ceiba is the national tree of Guatemala where it’s actually illegal to cut one down. This explains why its so common to see one giant ceiba looming large in the middle of an otherwise cleared field full of crops or cows.

The ceiba starts off its life with spikes that look a bit like shark’s teeth covering its trunk. As the tree matures, the spikes disappear.

A young ceiba tree--it loses these spikes as it matures.

These twin ceiba trees are at the Caracol archaeological site in Belize.

Karen dwarfed by a ceiba tree at the La Florida archaeological site near El Mirador in Guatemala.

Though the ceiba is the national tree of Guatemala it’s found in Mexico and throughout Central America.

Ceibas are also known as cotton trees, named for the fluffy white stuff that comes out of pods which grow on the tree. The fluff used to be used to fill pillows and mattresses. One species of ceiba is also commonly called a kaypok tree. 

Buttressed above-ground supports like these help keep massive ceiba trees upright, even when they grow to 200' or more.

This ceiba tree is as old and stately as its home, the historic Hacienda Uayamon hotel in Mexico.

The ancient Mayans believed the ceiba was the Tree of Life connecting heaven, the terrestial realm in which we live and the underworld (Xibalba). If you look at the tree’s shape it’s easy to see why: long straight trunk (terrestrial realm) capped with branches reaching for the heavens and secured to terra firms with an intricate network of roots headed for the underworld.

A small observation platform suspended 100' up a ceiba tree at Jungle Camp lodge (operated by Belize Lodge & Excursions) provides one of the best bird watching and rainforest observation points in all of Belize.

In 1963 President John F. Kennedy planted a ceiba in front of the Foreign Ministry building in San Jose, Costa Rica. Sadly, it had to be cut down in 2008 after it became unstable and threatened to fall on the building.

This giant ceiba at the Shawandha Lodge on Costa Rica's Carribbean coast is over 205 feet (63 meters) tall and is believed to be the second tallest ceiba in all of Costa Rica.

A ceiba tree painted on a the side of a school in southern Belize.

A ceiba tree continues to grow in the middle of the bathroom in one of the rooms at Hacienda San Jose hotel in Mexico.

Cotton Tree Chocolate in Punta Gorda, Belize borrows another common name for the ceiba which produces pods that are full of a cotton-like fluff.

Related posts:

1. Photo of the Day: Red-Eyed Tree Frog – Costa Rica
2. Hungry Hummingbirds Photo Essay – Chelemhá Lodge, Guatemala
3. Hacienda High Life -Yucatan and Campeche States, Mexico

Thanks to our SPOT Satellite Messenger you can see a map of our exact Trans-Americas Journey road trip driving route for the month of February 2012. And don’t miss the time-lapse video of our travels created using pictures taken every 10 seconds by the GoPro Hero HD camera mounted on our windshield.

We started the month of February outside of Turialba, Costa Rica where we visited the Guyabo archaeological site and the Irazu Volcano. From there we headed over to the Caribbean Coast, stopping at Rainforest Adventures just outside of Baraulio Carilo National Park. Then it was off to Tortuguero National Park, which is only accessible via boat.

Next we were drove down to the Puerto Viejo de Talamanca area to explore Costa Rica’s beautiful Caribbean beaches – Cahuita, Puerto Viejo, Cocoles, Punta Uva and Manzanillo. We ended the month with yet another border crossing (our 38th so far), this time heading into Panama (country 10 on our Journey) to explore the Bocas del Toro archipeligo.

We’ll blog about it all soon. In the meantime, see what we saw! Our entire driving route in Costa Rica and Panama in the month of February 2012 has been condensed into the short video, below.

And here’s our exact road trip driving route on a map generated using GPS data gathered by our Spot Satellite Messenger.

February 2012 Driving Route – Costa Rica and Panama

No related posts.

After our own sort-of-miraculous recovery from our campsite robbery, we packed up and traveled onward to the town of Esquipulas. Now, Esquipulas is not the only town that has a church which features a depiction of Christ as a black man, however, the sculpture of Christo Negro (Black Christ) in the Basilica of Esquipulas is credited with miracles and has become a major pilgrimage site even meriting a visit by Pope John Paul II.

The gleaming white Basilica of Esquipulas in Guatemala is home to one of the world's most revered images of a Black Christ.

Tens of thousands of devout Catholics cram into Esquipulas during the annual celebration of the Black Christ which happens on January 15th. They come to pray and ask for help in front of a religious icon which has been credited with miraculously curing Pedro Pardo de Figueroa, the Archbishop of Guatemala, from a serious illness in 1737.

The Black Christ, or Cristo Negro, in the Basilica of Esquipulas in Guatemala.

A copy of the real Black Christ of Esquipulas behind candle offerings from the faithful.

Perhaps an even more impressive miracle is the fact that Esquipulas was the site of a Central American peace summit which laid the groundwork for what became the Guatemalan Peace Accords of 1996 which ended the country’s ghastly 36 year civil war.

The Basilica de Esquipulas is such a major religious site that Pope John Paul II paid a visit in 1996 to mark the 400th anniversary of the church which the Pope is said to have called “the spiritual center of Central America.”

The church itself seemed weirdly extra-white and the Black Christ, which is carved from a nearly black piece of wood, looked just like White Christ. Other than the darker color, the features, hair, facial expression and general angst-ridden pose is exactly the same as every other depiction of Christ that we’ve ever seen. Not sure what we were expecting, but our first Black Christ was kind of a let down.

Milagros (tiny metal offerings left by those requesting a miracle) collaged together in the image of Jesus at the Basilica of Esquipulas in Guatemala.

A sloped walkway leads up to the image from a side entrance and allows worshipers to walk a 360 degree circuit around the sculpture which is placed behind the main altar. The trip up this ramp can literally take all day during the festival in January, but we moved along quickly with just a few other families. One woman was singing beautifully and everyone knelt and prayed intently when they reached the front of the Black Christ, each clearly asking for something specific and important. There were tears.

Then each person stood and slowly backed away down the ramp, never turning their back to the image that has come to mean so much to so many.

Karen and our friend George in front of the Basilica of Esquipulas in Guatemala.

Related posts:

1. Ancient Mayans and Black Jaguars – Ek’ Balam Ruins, Yucatan State, Mexico
2. Presidents’ Day and Mount Rushmore National Memorial – Black Hills, South Dakota
3. Troubled but Trying – Guatemala City, Guatemala

Happy Anniversary to us! Or should we say “road-a-versary” (thanks Julie)?

Today is day 1,825 of our Trans-Americas Journey road trip. That’s five years of active travel on the road not counting a couple of stretches when we were unexpectedly stuck in one place for reasons beyond our control (looking at you, Chevrolet).

We’re not very good at math

Our initial description of the Journey predicted three years and 75,000 miles to cover North, Central and South America from the Arctic Ocean to Tierra del Fuego. We reached those totally unscientific guesstimates on our living room floor where we looped a piece of string back and forth along roadways shown on the maps for North, Central and South America in our National Geographic Atlas of the World, then measured the amount of string used against the atlas’ mileage key. Some of you may even have one of our original business cards with those profoundly outdated numbers on it. E-Bay!

An early milestone on the Trans-Americas Journey occurred on Day 155 when, after days of heroic never-say-never pestering, we managed to get ourselves to the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean) above Deadhorse, Alaska. The photo, below, was taken by the  British Petroleum (BP) Prudhoe Bay oilfield police officer who was finally authorized to escort us to the “beach” so we could say we really had reached the Arctic Ocean. The guard had to momentarily put down the shotgun he was wielding to fend off cranky polar bears in order to snap the shot…

Somehow we are now celebrating our five year “road-a-versary.” We’re proud that we’ve blown our original estimates out of the water and not at all embarrassed that it’s taken us five years just to reach Panama (country number 10). We haven’t even dipped a toe into South America yet and there are still 13 countries, at least  70,000 miles and who knows how many more years in front of us (but you know how we are with numbers).

As we look forward to the road ahead, here’s a look back at some more milestones from the first five years of the Trans-Americas Journey.

Five years on the Trans-Americas Journey road trip, by the numbers:

• explored 10 countries including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama
• made overland crossings of international borders 36 times
• got turned back at one border (El Salvador eventually let us in)
• dipped our fingers into the Arctic Ocean once
• spent at least one night on 27 different islands
• spent at least 300 nights camping
• spent $27,963 on fuel (by far our biggest expense)
• visited 87 archaeological sites
• drove 132,185 miles (that’s 5.3 times around the earth)
• drove 1,548 of those miles in Belize and 1,555 of them in El Salvador (anyone else find those numbers eerily close?)
• saw 73 types of animals in the wild that we’d never seen before (and those are just the ones we could i.d.)
• craftily foiled six shakedowns by Latin American cops
• had five flat tires
• got stuff stolen twice (and returned to us once)
• visited 250 national parks (and counting)
• visited 57 UNESCO sites (and counting)
• spent 3,840 hours behind the wheel
• appreciated every minute of it

There are plenty more Facts & Figures from the road on our website.

Today, on day 1,825, we celebrated five years on the road not at a frigid northern sea favored by polar bears and stubborn oil company executives but on Starfish Beach in Bocas del Toro, Panama (below) where starfish and lucky us enjoyed the warm Caribbean waters.

Related posts:

1. July 4th: A Trans-Americas Journey Retrospective
2. Best Of the Trans-Americas Journey 2011 – Best Hotels
3. Best of the Trans-Americas Journey 2011 – Best Food & Beverages

Sure we’re careful. But we’ve also been lucky. After many, many years of traveling on the road we have only been robbed once when some  *#!!*&^  stole the side-view mirrors off our truck in Guadalajara, Mexico. That lucky streak came to a screeching halt in Guatemala, however. It all started when we decided to go camping with our friend George (perhaps the coolest guy in Guatemala) on the shores of Ipala Lake in the dormant crater of Ipala Volcano.

Driving to Ipala Volcano

Ipala Volcano is more than 5,400 feet (1,650 meters) high which is pretty dramatic. But what makes this dormant volcano really special is the lake that’s formed in its crater. Ipala Lake sits at 4,898 feet (1,493 meters) and is more than half a mile (1 kilometer) in circumference. It’s also pretty nice to look at.

You can hike up to the lake along a scenic trail (about two hours) but if you’ve got a high-clearance vehicle you can drive to Ipala Lake as well. Emphasis on the high-clearance part. The road up from the town of Agua Blanca is steep, rutted and rocky. Forget it if it’s been raining.

Lovely Ipala Lake in the crater of the dormant Ipala Volcano in Guatemala.

Volcano camping

The slow, rough drive behind us, we were rewarded with a stunning lakeside camping area with flat, grassy sections for tents, four picnic tables under sturdy shelters with adjacent makeshift bbq grills, a relatively clean row of toilets and no other neighbors save for day trippers (locals and tourists) and some random horses and cows who wandered down to the lake to drink (something you should not do). All for 10Q (US$1.25) per person.

A local woman even sold us some firewood and homemade tortillas.

The bright blue, nearly perfectly-round Ipala Lake is part of Guatemala’s Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas (National Council of Protected Areas) or CONAP for short. This organization protects more than 150 location in Guatemala by keeping poachers and polluters out and ensuring that many of the areas remain open for recreational and tourist use.

The lake did look inviting, but at nearly 5,000 feet it was a bit chilly for a swim. Instead, we got busy setting up camp. As we were finishing a Peace Corp volunteer showed up so we invited him to dinner and he filled us in on the slow but steady progress he’d made in the area in terms of teaching the villagers about environmental practices and all the reasons why being more ecologically minded (not poaching crabs and fish from the protected lake, for example) is ultimately good for them.

Then the sky opened up and it rained like mad. George’s tent was leaking, so he spent the night in his car a short distance below the camping area. We woke up at 6:00 am the next morning to clear blue skies and another, less pleasant surprise.

Hey, where’s all our stuff??!?!

As we emerged groggily from our tent and wandered around camp getting ready to make some coffee and wake George up, something just didn’t seem right. That’s when we noticed that our Coleman camp grill and stove was gone. So were our two collapsible camping chairs. And our huge Coleman cooler. We’d been robbed!

Feeling distinctly violated, we woke George up and told him what had happened.

ASISTUR/PROATUR to the rescue!

Did we mention that our friend George happens to work for ASISTUR (now called PROATUR)? That’s a division of Guatemala’s department of tourism and the sole function of PROATUR is to assist and protect tourists.

Rental car broken down on a deserted highway? Want to visit an area of the country where it seems wise to have an escort? Having a dispute with a cab driver or tour operator you think is trying to rip you off? Had your camping gear stolen on the shores of a volcanic lake? Just call 1500 and PROATUR operators (who speak English and Spanish) will register your problem and send an agent (like George) to help ASAP. They do this 24/7. Totally free. No questions asked.

Yeah, it’s not good that visitors to Guatemala have these problems in the first place, but this stuff happens to travelers all over the world. How many countries can you think of that have created a division of government staffed with field specialists who solve and avoid tourist-related problems for free? Exactly.

Needless to say, when George realized we’d been robbed he sprung into PROATUR action–and by action we mean he and Eric rallied the stunned and outraged CONAP officials (who believed that a local crab poacher who visits the lake pre-dawn after a big rain probably snatched our stuff shortly before sunrise) and they literally tracked the thief through the forest.

Burdened with heavy, awkward and super-conspicuous stuff (it’s tough to look normal when you’re hauling a cooler, two camp chairs and a camp stove) the idiot had started slowly ditching his ill-gotten booty soon after he fled the camping area. What was he planing to do with the stuff anyway? There’s no ice for the cooler way up here and he’d failed to grab the fuel for the stove or vital parts. The chairs might come in handy…

Anyway, first Team PROATUR recovered the cooler (with a few beers still inside). Then they found the stove. Next, the chairs turned up. Since CONAP were the local authorities and they believed they knew who to blame for the robbery, George reluctantly left the catch and convict phase of the operation in their hands.

Then we all enjoyed some well-deserved coffee and a relieved laugh at the expense of the most inept thief in Guatemala. Thanks PROATUR!

Our tent (pre-robbery) on the shores of Ipala Lake in the crater of the dormant Ipala Volcano in Guatemala.

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