¡Lejos!...¡es.LEJOOOooos!...

So we have successfully blown through an entire country without throwing a post up. Ooops..sooorry! So that I dont keep an eager reading audience *coughscottandpapacough*   :) waiting...Here it goes!

Tyler last wrote from Quirigua, Guatamala where we visited the final Mayan Archaeological Site of our trip. *tear* Five countries and 15 sites later, Las Ruinas de Quirigua is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and fosters the largest stela excavated in Mesoamerica!! If this paragraph makes me a total geek, then I am tapin up the glasses! Cause this was FANtastic. A very close first to a nice walk we had through a ton of banana plantations.Tyler pooped his pants on the walk home! Well..."sharted"..an accidental poo parading around as a casual toot.Anyway..I had to pretend like I was taking pictures of the mountains while people passed on the road so that he could clean himself secretly among the bananas. We were tearing in laughter..maaaaybe didn't boil that water all the way.

When we woke up the next morning we decided to ditch the Guat and rediscover Honduras! We planned on visiting Esquipulas, Guat near the border to see the Basilica. Once a year thousands of Guatemalans make a pilgrimage there to see the ''Negro Christo''  at the Basilica. Look it up! Turns out thats January 5th..the day we were rolling through town. Needless to say. We went, we saw, we ate and we elbowed. Then we went with a little old man in his taxi car mobile to the border. We spent the night in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras.

After Santa Rosa we hit the rode to Gracias, Honduras. Outside of town is the National Park Celaque. This park houses the highest peak in the country: Cerro de Las Minas. We stayed a few nights in Gracias and decided to go on a backpack trip up the hill! The cool and exhausting thing about the peaks here is that we dont have the Jeep to drive to the trailhead. So we took a good look from the hotel in town and started walkin! On the way up we passed through Villa Verde. My friend from college taught at a school there so I stopped in to drop some cookies off to her class. We also passed these guys to the right hauling a trailor..they were not fun and did not race us. That night we camped and summited the next day. AWESOME hike. Not much of a view from the top..super treed in..we hiked into town, spent the night and took off for La Esperanza. Nice ride through the mountains in the back of a truck.

Colored chicks sell better. the end.

La Esperanza was a nice, clean, brick road town flooded with markets..We got a TV in our room and decided to veg out ALL night! Seriously. We ate a WHOLE pot of rice to start. OH yeah..and Tyler had an allergic reaction to Mango before we left Gracias. Turns out his favorite fruit is a relative of poison oak..Who knew?? We do. Especially that little tike. He's hangin in..and was all evening in front of the tele watching Lampoons Family Vacation while I went for chocolate cereal and half and half in a bag to sooth his lips and heart and chase our rice buffet. We pretty much gained 14 pounds together and didnt buy a single piece of nutricious produce from the HUGE street market. Bam.

 We got up the NEXT morning and bussed over to Comayagua. Cute city. 5 churches. We visited 3. The Cathedral in the center of town ticks the oldest clock in the Americas. One of the oldest in the world. 2 man survey in. We like this number 4 better than the NEW *ugh* Roman numeral 4. ALSO! They had some street theater and artists around the park that evening. We watched for a while..i watched all the little babies eat waffle coned soft serve and scoffed out the outrageous prices and refused a cone. $1.30 my full moon. We spend our money on great things...like wicked mango. Here are some photos of the churches in Comayagua, the old clock tower is one the left.

Today we're in Nicaragua. I guess we got up at 4:30 this morning, in Honduras, and bussed all day. WOW..that seems like days ago..I can still smell the faint scent of fried chicken and french fries from the city..I swear thats all they eat.One might think rice and beans..very wrong..thats the Guat. We are in Somoto, right over the north western border, and are looking to descend into a huge canyon, a gaping whole in the mountains...odd...and wonderful. We'll pút up more photos as they are loaded. The first 2 up top are from the internet as we bunked out our memory card with a virus in Quirigua. waaaa waaaaa......

OH and milk. I accidentally bought half and half in La Esperanza.. not the first time. Tyler and I once chased a whole pack of cookies with what we found out was Baby Formula in the Western Highlands of Guatamala....The lip licking is a great time to find out you can't decipher the milk packaging very well.. oh tomorrow!!  -rachel.