As soon as we pulled into the Copán Ruinas station, hotel touts surrounded the bus. Considering how few people came off the bus, it was absolute overkill. I was drained from travel so I allowed a persistent man to sway me from walking to backpacker favorite Hotel Gemelos and taking a ride to Hotel Mar Jenny.

The hotel was quite nice, albeit more than I wanted to pay. I was shown 3 different rooms, but in my dazed state I didn't know what I should have been looking for and simply took the last one. $10 got me a well-sized private room with bathroom and TV, complete with towels and toilet paper; however, I'd be perfectly happy in a cheaper room without TV. Especially considering my TV didn't change channels and was stuck on awful Spanish-language music videos.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the hotel tout. He started out friendly enough, but for some reason I couldn't even be bothered to remember his name, as I didn't want to engage him any further. I decided to opt for a horse ride the next day, even though I felt it was overpriced. The tout also insisted on giving me a ride to the Copán ruins in the morning, even though I was pretty sure it could be quickly reached by walking, or cheaply by mototaxi.

He then showed me the view from the roof. Standing a bit too close, he proceeded to tell me—unsolicited—he'd once had an Asian girlfriend. Thoroughly skeeved, I ignored my lingering chill/sleep-deprivation from the day of walking through rain, and hit the town.

Ready for the Honduran specialty, I headed to Carnitas Nia Lola for baleadas and a couple of local brews—Imperial. Baleadas are basically beans, cheese and cream in a folded flour tortilla, just lightly warmed rather than griddled like a quesadilla. Tasty, hit the spot, but nothing particularly special.

Carnitas Nia Lola was very popular. The downstairs area was filled with locals having a drunkenly happy night out. An American couple at a nearby table discussed upcoming wedding plans in Roatán. At the table next to mine, three friendly Honduran men grinned broadly any time they entered my peripheral vision.

Eventually they used the time-tested technique of sending free beers my way. After a couple beers and some basic polite small talk, they cajoled me into joining them at their table. They were staying in the same hotel as I was, visiting from elsewhere in the country; beer erased my memory of where. After a fairly stilted conversation about travel and the US, they paid for my meal and drinks and offered me a ride back the hotel.

Copán Ruinas is tiny, and there's almost never a reason not to walk. However, I'd had five beers, the town had shut down by 10pm, and my hotel was on top of a steep hill. Perhaps it wasn't truly that steep, but in my general state it felt San Francisco-high. I might have reconsidered in a larger city, but with such pleasantly drunk men and only a 5-block drive, I thought, what's the harm?

The harm came after we arrived safely at the hotel. Although I gave the men the slip while they were parking, it was easy to figure out what room the sole Asian girl was staying in; one of the men proceeded to pound on my door screaming my name for 30 minutes. That's not normal, is it?

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