4 Delicious Restaurants in Copan, Honduras

Honduras food is unique and always good.  Here are 4 restaurants in Copan, Honduras that I recommend.  All four are kid friendly.

B’alam Café – Located at the Yat Balam Hotel. (which looked very nice)  We had the best breakfast during our trip here. 

Carnitas Nia Lola – I don’t remember what I had here, but it was good.  Check out the waitress above carry our appetizer to us on her head!

Asados Copan – One of the best meals I have ever had anywhere.  Click to see pictures of the delicious food we ate.  Their specialty is grilled meats. 

Elisa’s Cafeteria – This restaurant is located in the hotel we stayed in and was the first place we ate at in Copan.  It was very good.  We were with a lot of people and everyone ordered something different and everyone loved their food.  We had the best Copan grown coffee from here every morning while we sat in the hotel courtyard.

Copan Ruins–Honduras

Copan is a small town located in western Honduras, only 12 km from Guatemala and home to the Copan Mayan ruins.

The ruins were a short walk from Hotel Camino Maya, in the center of town.  It was less than a mile and our four year old was able to walk it with out a problem.  The Copan Ruins are kid friendly and a great activity for families traveling in Honduras.

At a small visitor's center you pay and get your tickets.  Tickets for children are $7 and include the museum.  Tickets for adults to go into the ruins and the museum are $22.Then there is a short walk towards a gated entry.  It's here that you will meet up with your guide.  The guides are inexpensive and worth it.  You pay the guide directly.  Once you get past the gated you come across a handful of macaw birds.  They are beautiful. 
There are many Mayan statues still intact.
You are allowed to walk on many of the structures.  This makes it especially fun for the kids.
 
The hole you see in this picture is just one of many.  They had underground tunnels and a water system.  There are over 4 km of tunnels and for $10 you can go into two of the tunnels. 

The hieroglyphic stairway holds the longest known text left by the Mayans. 

Hotel Camino Maya–Copan, Honduras

We went to Copan, Honduras over Easter weekend and stayed at Hotel Camino Maya.  It is on a busy corner across from the plaza and very easy to find. The street along one side of the hotel was filled with vendors selling all kids of goodies.  The other street had food vendors.  Overall the location was great.

Our room was good.  These are pictures of a triple room, you can see some pictures of their regular rooms here.  We had two double beds, a bathroom with a shower only, tv, bottled water, and most important air conditioning!  The maid service was good, we never saw them make up the room.  From what I could tell they cleaned and replaced everything daily, sheets, water, soap, and towels.  The tv had cable with some channels in English.  The lobby had 2 computers with free internet. 

The hotel had a bar, Lost Monkey’s and a restaurant, Elisa’s.  We of course had to try both.  We ate at Elisa’s the first night we got there.  I don’t remember much about it after the exhaustion of so much traveling.  I can remember how good the Honduran tacos looked.  The guy eating them said they were fantastic.  We had the room closest to Lost Monkeys so we were able to actually go to the bar and watch the kids in the room at the same time.  This was a first for us!  Lost Monkeys seemed like a popular hangout and was fun.

The hotel was built to where it has a big open courtyard.  I especially enjoyed sitting out there in the morning having my coffee.
When we were there the hotel was bright red.  If you look on their website it is yellow.  The bar also has a different name on the website.  Don’t worry though, you are looking at the right website!

Hotel Camino Maya info

(504)2651-4646 /4446/4518

info@caminomayahotel.com

http://www.caminomayahotel.com/

10 Things I will miss about Honduras

10 Things I will miss about our Honduras family vacation

1. Snorkeling

2. The beach on west bay in Roatan

3. Delicious food

4. Fresh tropical fruit

5. How cheap everything is

6. The friendly people

7. $4 manicures, $12 pedicures and $32 1 hour massages

8. Sunsets on the beach

9. Zip lining in Copan

10. The beauty of the entire country.

10 things I won't miss about Honduras

Highway in Honduras (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

10 Things I will not miss from our Honduras family vacation!

1. Living in a hooch with no bathroom and no running water.

2. Almost dying any time we set foot in any type of moving vehichle.

3. Riding in buses with no AC for hours at a time.  (if only I had come across these travel tips for riding buses in Central American a little sooner!)

4. Throwing up or having upset stomach every other meal.

5. No one speaks English. (I know I should just learn spanish)

6. Wondering what kind meat I'm eating.

7. Going 36 hours with no electricty.

8. Mosquitos

9. Termites

10. The way my hair looks in 100% humidity.

Honduras - Day of driving

Here we go again. If it isn’t bad enough we went for 18 hours straight yesterday, we now have to drive the two and a half hours to the military base. As previously mentioned there are no traffic laws and people drive however they like. My husband is driving us back in a huge van. Although he drove up yesterday this is more or less his first time driving in Honduras. He hasn’t driven a car since January 8^th! He would not appreciate what I am about to tell you, but he drove insane. There were moments I actually shouted. It was scary, but we made it.  I am beginning to wonder if this family vacation is worth it.  Maybe it should be our family expedition!
 
Once at base we see the hooch we will live in.  Now don't let this picture fool you.  It is not as nice as it looks.  This is the picture my husband sent me before we came down.  I asked him if he photoshopped it and he said no.  You can't see the holes in the door and walls in this picture!

We walked to the bathrooms, so we will know the way. We get a tour of things we need to be able to find: pool, tennis courts, rec center, laundry, bx, post office and the hammock shop. What more could you need. We went to the bx and got some pizza pockets for lunch. There’s a microwave in the hooch! We have just enough time to re-pack, because we are now catching a bus with 11 other people to the city of Copan, Honduras for a family weekend getaway.

When seeing the bus there are no happy feelings, but the inside is better than it seems. That’s my view from the back seat.  We get loaded up and Marcos our driver puts the pedal to the metal.  Marcos is intense, but pleasant. He is a short, plump man in his 40’s with a buzz haircut, thick eyebrows and a mustache.   Marcos doesn’t speak any English and he doesn’t mess around. It’s a holiday weekend and he is in a hurry to get home; which is three hours away from where he is taking us. His driving is so much worse than my husband this morning I can’t believe it.  By some miracle, I nor my children throw up.  Shockingly, six hours later we roll into Copan and immediately greeted by Cana Banana, our guide.

Cana Banana seems thrilled to see us. He was standing on a corner and our bus driver just pulls over and he jumps on the van. This skinny man with black curly hair and the darkest tan of anyone we’ve seen is going to guide us around. He too has a mustache and appears to be in his forties. In fact all the older Hondurans seem to have a mustache. He speaks good English.  He picked up English as a tour guide years before. Now he is the go between guy; setting up all of our activities, watching our things while we do those activities, translating, recommending restaurants and all that other fun stuff.  Everywhere we go the next three days he appears and everyone in the entire town seems to know him.

Mr. Banana walks us through the the central park to get to our hotel.  The park is incredibly crowded.  Everyone is watching the painting of the carpets.  Hotel Camino Maya is cute and we get checked in very quickly.  We go back to the plaza to watch the process of the carpets.  I have never heard of this process and I am unsure of what they are trying to make them look like.  Everyone is hungry so we head back to the hotel’s restaurant and enjoy a late dinner and call it a night.
Hotel Camino Maya                         
(504)2651-4646 /4446/4518
info@caminomayahotel.com
http://www.caminomayahotel.com/

Painted Carpets Copan, Honduras

Our family traveled to Copan, Honduras for Easter.  Here is a picture of the completed "painted carpet"  they at Easter. I will post soon with pictures of the whole process!