Photo by Corey Petrick
By Shea Parton
Our cinematographer, Corey Petrick, has logged the most driving miles between us and regretfully feels like he’s going to have a hard time acclimating back to the now unimpressive rush hour roads of Los Angeles. Chris Owens had to depart today, having much on his plate for next week’s opening of Handsome Coffee Roasters in downtown Los Angeles Arts District. Corey and I sadly bid him farewell and then turned our focus onto building our tally of reaching over 550+ miles on the road within 24 hours. Our 5am departure to the Mayan Ruins of Copàn was unsurprisingly met with more entertainment on the road, including double line blind turn passing and countless close calls.
By 9am we safely found ourselves in a valley in Copàn (2,300 feet above sea level), home to some of the Mayan Ruins and an entertaining Honduran tour guide named Fidel. His stories included exposing his tendency to periodically dream of being a Mayan king while asking his wife to feed him chocolate and honey from his hammock, but he also shared some unique insights on tourism for the Mayan Ruins in Copàn. Traditionally the annual tourism average is around 50k people, but with the 2012 calendar phenomenon they estimate to see well over 200k tourists, all seeking to experience the ruins before December comes around. My favorite quip on job security came from Fidel as we were leaving, “I’m sure the Mayans made a clerical mistake, come back next year!”
We got back on the road by lunchtime and during our long return drive we stumbled across a local river crossing. A suspect homemade bridge was sitting 20+ feet over the 75-foot wide river. We weren’t sure why we thought this was a good idea when we got halfway, but in the spirit of memory-making, we both shared a couple of laps on the sketchy bridge.
We made it home right before dinner and immediately crashed with tomorrow being our last full day. We’re looking forward to touring and documenting the stories of the ninety year old shirting cooperative in Choloma that we have partnered with over the last couple years to produce the majority of our shirting assortment.
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