¿Donde estan las turistas?

It is getting a little strange now. In San Salvador and La Palma there were no tourists. I was a little surprised, but figured we had ventured to places that didn´t really attract that many tourists. I was also beginning to congratulate myself on being such an intrepid traveller that I had finally left the gringo trail behind completely - all those gap year back packers wouldn´t dare to get into the ´real´Central America, like we had.

These were thoughts going through my head as we completed an all day public transport odyssey to get from La Palma to Copan Ruinas, where we are now. Our journey looked like this. Get a bus to the border (1 box of live chickens on this bus). Walk across the border, get a taxi to the next town. From there, a bus to La Entrada (At first no chickens, but when our bus broke down and we all piled onto another bus, 2 boxes of chickens). This was a three hour trip. Then, wait in La Entrada for the next bus. La Entrada merits the following description in the guide book. "an unattractive gateway town, known mainly for narcotrafficking. Something must have gone wrong if you have ended up in La Entrada" After a one hour wait, the bus headed to Copan Ruinas (two hours, and one box of indeterminate live animal - probably chickens)

But this is where my self congratulation about being an intrepid traveller ran into some problems. There is no doubt that Copan is firmly on the tourist trail. The town exists primarily because people come here to visit the Maya ruins outside the town. Every second store is a combined travel agency / internet cafe and in between them are endless restaurants offering happy hours and desayuno americano.
Despite all this, there are still virtually no tourists. There is no one else in our hotel, and each place we have eaten at has been empty. When we visited the ruins yesterday, which are about 4 or 5 acres in size, we were the only people there. It appears that going to intrepid places had less to do with not seeing other tourists than I thought.

Its all a little hard to explain. There must be tourists at some point, because something must be keeping all these places afloat. Obviously it must be low season, though the guide book never mentioned this, but there seems to be even more at play. The best I can come up with is that it must be a matter of recessions in Europe and the USA killing the tourism market. Maybe the fact that there have been no new arrivals from Europe for a week is also having an effect.

We did eventually run into one group of tourists - an organised tour of about 20 improbably good looking Danes, all aged around 19 or 20 in their year off between school and uni. They turned out to be a lot of fun, and it was the first time we´ve gotten properly drunk here. They have an interesting way of dancing where they put a chair in the middle of a circle and then people of the opposite sex dance around them in some sort of quasi lap dance style. I have never been more disappointed not to have my camera than when Kate was sitting in that chair. She claimed to be uncomfortable, but pictures would have shown she was loving it!

BTW people, don´t be shy to leave a comment or drop me an email - its always good to hear something from back home.