Copan Ruinas

Our final stop in Honduras was Copan Ruinas. So named for the ruins of Copan just a minute outside the town.
We arrived here at night as well because the bus schedules here are really more like guidelines...
However, our tuk tuk taxi driver was friendly, and we found a place to stay which turned out to be pretty nice.

(The street from our hotel door. And a guy in a stetson. Obviously.)

We knew that night, that we would at least kind of like the town when we passed a row of street food stands roasting meats and making tortillas.
By day, we changed our minds, and decided we really really did like this town a lot.
The streets are all cobblestone, all the men wear stetsons, and everything is pretty. The shops, the central park, the jewelry tables set up down one of the streets.

(Central Park in Copan Ruinas)

We took a walk down a cobblestone pathway next to the highway that took us all of 5 minutes to reach the entrance to the ruins. A little more expensive than we've been used to at $22 a person for ruins+museum minus the tunnels but so worth it. At the entrance, scarlet macaws fly from tree to tree just above your head, and sometimes directly AT your head, as we found out on our way out...
The museum houses most of the original stelae (four sided carvings on tall column like stones) in order to preserve them. This is unique to Copan so far, and as disappointing it can seem to know that you're looking at replicas in the actual ruins, its nice to know they're being taken care of.
They are breath taking.

Its amazing to me, just how much work went into them, and that we can look at them today. There's something chilling about standing in front of something that was carved my someones hands so long ago.

(One of the macaw heads used in the ball games. The idea was to hit one of them with the ball using only your hips.)

These people had already been long gone by the time the Spanish conquistadors even arrived. The Mayan history has been so fascinating to read about, that even after we saw the ruins, I found myself reading everything I could find on them.

(Stelae)

When I was younger a movie came out called, "The Road To El Dorado" Not a Hope and Crosby film... Actually I think its Dreamworks. Two Spanish brothers stow away on Cortes' ship and accidentally find El Dorado, the city of gold. Music by Elton John. Yeah. All the animation is done in the style of the carvings that people have found at the ruins. The people they meet in the movie are actually Aztec, I think, but stick a pin in that for now.


This movie was the first thing I really knew about the Mayans and the Aztecs, and while it may be a kids movie, it taught me a lot about that culture. For a kid, I mean.
When we went to the ruins, I kept saying, "We have to watch The Road To El Dorado!" and Ryan would roll his eyes and ignore me, but I was serious! I wanted to compare things because it was amazing to me how similar the architecture and carved faces looked to the movie (That poster is not an example of that), and I found myself already knowing some of the things on the info plaques from watching that movie. This made it all even more exciting.


Similar to the first time I saw the real Notre Dame cathedral after seeing Disney's The Hunckback of Notre Dame as a kid. SO. Awesome.

Hey, Disney movies introduce kids to things, ok? Not like I would base all my knowledge on them, but if it weren't for The Road To El Dorado, I would NOT have known how to pronounce Xibalba and know that it was the spirit of the underworld.

Anyways, back to present day Mayan ruins, if that can even be a sentence...

(These steps are the all covered in hieroglyphics. Its something like the longest display of written language in any ruins. My facts might be slightly off, but you get the idea. Lots of writing. Its a big deal.)

We didn't take a tour guide, and somehow left the books at the room, so we didn't have anything to really tell us what we were looking at besides whatever I could remember from my books. Not that I could match the info to the object, since there were no pictures in my book...

(Detail of a brick in a carved wall.)

ANYWAYS MY POINT IS that even without being able to analyze everything we were looking at, I still got chills walking across what used to be the streets of Copan, or sitting where the ruler used to sit and watch the ball game, or running my fingers across a carving in a wall. It also helped that we ran around making things up and re-writing Mayan history off the tops of our heads. Ryan is particularly good at it.


"You probably can't understand these hieroglyphics but..." and he would show me the block of "Mayan apartments" and answering my questions without hesitation. I bet you didn't know that the Mayans had a Starbucks located conveniently outside their apartment complex....

(Yeah that's Ryan popping up from investigating some ruins.)

The only thing I really wanted to know for sure was where they did the sacrificing because that just freaks me out so much, but at the same time I kind of wanted to see it.

I think we did, because I Googled it when we got back.

Also, the Mayans must have had killer calf and quad muscles because they had a LOT of stairs. Really big stairs too, not those pansy ones we have in our houses these days. Judging by the sizes of everything else, the Mayans were probably kind of little but man could they hike up a pyramid. Seriously, each of those steps are like the length of my lower leg, and I'm probably significantly bigger than they were.(Yep. A lotta steps.)

If you find yourself perusing the internet looking at lame things, stop that and do some research on the Mayans.
Here are a few sites that sum it up pretty well:

Wikipedia
About.com
UNESCO

Make sure to read about the rulers themselves.

The next day we took a little trip up to a place called, "Macaw Mountain", a bird sanctuary and rehabilitation center for the ones who have been somehow hurt or unable to survive in the wild on their own. They live here until they are ready to be released at the ruins. The birds are amazing. (Blue Macaws)

(Toucan!)

The colors on them don't seem real at all.

We took a walk along a path that led through the park, looking both at the birds, and plants which are so foreign to us in North America. Coffee, Cacao, strange pink things...

(That coffee in the middle, I don't know what the other things are...)

At one point on the path they have a center where the birds hang out on branches and chill with some employees who, if you stop to look, will eventually end up placing a few macaws on your limbs. This was awesome, and a little unnerving. Nothing like a big strong beak just a few inches from your face...

(Ryan with some buddies.)
(Me, also with some buddies. The red one is taking a break from trying to eat my bracelet.)

Honduras actually is really beautiful, and if we had more time and no valuables with us, I would definitely have wanted to explore more cities. For now, I am happy with what we did see. I've been a big fan of the "leave while you're still having fun" concept lately. I think it keeps us excited and motivated to keep going.