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I have seen Maya ruins in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize so why not start our visit to Honduras in the same fashion. Copan Ruines is a small Honduran town that on the map looked pretty simple to get to from Belize via Guatemala. I was soon proved wrong, a boat, a taxi, a bus, another taxi, a night in a San Pedro Sula and another bus and we finally arrived at Copan a day later than planned. On top of all that, I had come down with some sort of stomach bug and hadn't been able to keep any food down for two days.
Copan was very picturesque and Tuc-Tucs zip up and down its cobbled hills and around the Parque Central past the Cathedral. In a lot of ways the town reminded me of Flores in Guatemala.
We stayed in a very nice and well organised hostel called 'En La Manzana Verde' where for every night you stay you get a free drink in a local bar! Very generous we thought until we realised that drinks cost about 97p here! Awesome!
On our first full day we decided to take the short walk to the Copan Ruinas, not on the same scale as Tikal but in some ways more interesting. The site boasts lots of the stelae, sculptures and a fabulously preserved Ball Court.
When a Maya leader took power from his predecessor (usually his father) it was common to build a new bigger temple over the old one resulting in an inaccessible 'Russian doll' of pyramids. Archaeologists at Copan have carefully dug tunnels through some of the temples to peel away the layers of history. One Temple named Roselia, was so sacred that rather than being turned to rubble before being built on top of, it was left complete. Encased for hundreds of years, archaeologists have been able to build a life size recreation of Roselia in Copan's museum. The replica towers through the roof in the open air museum, decorated in bright red and white plaster just as it would have been when the Maya city thrived. It really helped in picturing how many of the Maya sites I have visited would have looked. After a long day of walking in the heat, Liann and I caught a Tuc-Tuc back up the hill to our hostel. That night we went for some drinks with an American couple called America and Hanen and we decided to book onto an early morning 3 hour horse ride for the next day.
Heading off bright and early on our trusty steeds (actually they were pretty small and I felt a little sorry for mine) we meandered up the mountain side above Copan and up to 'Hacienda San Lucas', a ranch style restaurant, for some Honduran Coffee and then on further to a tiny village with an even smaller Maya Site which basically consisted of a few boulders carved into the shape of frogs. Frogs were seen as good luck as they brought the rain! I wondered if maybe it was the other way around but who am I to correct thousands of years of culture.
Saddle sore and insect bitten we returned to our hostel, cooked up some food and sat down to a bottle of Flor de Cana while we planned our exit and onward journey to Utila.
- comments
Emma Good stuff John Boy! x
Mum and Dad Not sure if its us but have you put the wrong date on this ?You know how easily confused we are!