Ok, so i have somehow made the blog dates retrospective in order that the map is correct (im getting pretty anal about the map..) Also, you should assume from now on that the picture featured in the blogs is never actually one we have taken and may well not be from the place described either, as is the case here, but this site is weird and our current hostel wont let us upload anything from our cameras for some reason, which is a shame as eventually we will post the coolest video ever of an enourmous spider catching, wrapping up and then eating a butterfly. Its just that this video requires at least a post-1998 computer in order to upload it!

So, monday we crossed the guatemalan-honduras border and arived in Copan Ruinas, approximately 10km into honduras. The town exists purely because of the Mayan ruins from about 600AD that lie just outside the town. These were our first ruins and they were fantastic, we couldnt afford the guide so we had to conjure our own stories as to what exactly the bizzare stela´s meant (kind of an 8 foot stone totem pole carved with amazing detail made by the mayan kings that lived here - many pictures just cant get them on yet). Back in the day Copan was home to 20,000 mayans, and it was cool to imagine the goings on, sacrifices, ritual games etc (mainly the sacrifices, because blatantly thats the only thing about history anyones interested in... isnt it!?) that used to occur here. We climbed our share of temples, looked out over amazing views of the forest from the top of the highest point on the ruins and had our picnic (Copan is currently the winner of the game ´best place to eat a bag of weird crisps´).

From there, determined that we would squeeze an entire day out of the rather extortionate entrance fee, we turned our attention to the nature, as this was basically the first time in central america we hadnt been in a town. Half an hour spent attempting to capture on film one or two massive ants i found felt rather stupid when we hit the bathroom and almost walked right into a huge path of soldier ants; literally thousands of them crawling all over the place, you really wouldnt want to get in their way! Kate also narrowly escaped death washing her hands as there was a mean looking tarantula lurking by the taps. We then went on a nature trail, which seems to have been cut through the forest primarily to ensure the more curious visitiors leave completely eaten alive by mosquitos (our DEET was sadly sitting somewhere in hostel). We didnt find much other than a gazillion spiders, of all shapes and sizes, but mostly bigger than a safe-looking size! As previously mentioned we were lucky enough to spot a massive red and yellow legged spider catch a butterfly in its web and we watched dumbstruck as it wrapped the enitre thing in its silk and proceeded to eat its head.... we felt pretty itchy and crawly after that!

We sampled some traditional honduran cooking in the evening, something called anafre which is a kind of fondue made of beans meat and cheese, actually really good! We have had beans 3 times a day for 3 weeks now, also many many bananas (they seem to have bananas coming out of their ears, they fry them for breakfast, make chips out of them for lunch, make crisps out of them for snacks, and then fry some more to have with dinner).