copan to livingston/rio dulce

There are several options: You can either go to the closest border from Copan, which would be Agua Caliente, or the new one, which is close to the coast, called El Cinchal on the Guatemalan Side.

Copán receives shuttle buses from Guatemala, if they have space, you could take one of those and tell them you want to go to Rio Dulce, they will probably have connections to get there or at least drop you in the highway where buses to go there pass by. The other way is to bus it from the border to Chiquimula, from there to Rio Hondo, Zacapa and from there take any northbound bus that is going either to Rio Dulce proper or to Petén.

In the case of El Cinchal, I am unsure if there are buses in the area, you would have to travel from Copán to Puerto Cortés in Honduras and find transportation to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala from there. In Puerto Barrios you will find transportation to Rio Dulce.

Have a great trip

it is much easier to go through Guat. better roads and more transportation.

When I did exactly that trip earlier this year, we went into Guatemala for most of the journey.

That is, collectivo (minibus) from Copan to the border crossing at El Florido (maybe half an hour from Copan), where you change to another minibus to Chiquimula. In Chiquimula you have two choices:

(1) Get a bus (not a chicken bus, a bit more upmarket than that, but not luxury either) to Puerto Barrios, then from Puerto Barrios get a boat across the bay to Livingston. This is what we did. The buses from Chiquimula to Puerto Barrios go every hour (on the hour, I think) earlier in the morning, but don't start your journey too late because according to the timetable I saw there are no buses between 10am and 1pm. Maybe we were lucky, but we had wonderfully smooth connections all the way (never had to wait more than a 1 minute at every changeover point).

(2) From Chiquimula get another bus or minibus to the main highway at Rio Hondo, from where you can get a bus straight through to Rio Dulce. Then if you want to go to Livingston you can get a boat downriver.

It might also be possible to get a tourist shuttle - I don't think there are any direct tourist shuttles from Copan to Rio Dulce, but they may be able to drop you off in Rio Hondo and arrange for a connection to another shuttle (say, coming from Antigua). Ask around in Copan.

thanks all, journey done and dusted as recommended!
am sad as we´re leaving Guatemala for Belize tomorrow!
bring on diving....