Copan Ruinas
Yeah, our shuttle bus turned up!! Nick & I woke at the slightest noise outside our window all night, but finally our minibus showed up at around 4am and we were out of Guatemala, heading towards Honduras. I’m not sure what we would have done if it hadn’t showed up…probably try and find various local buses to the border, which would have taken much longer than our 6 and a half hours at a no holes bared pace set by our driver!
The town of Copan Ruinas is a pretty little village just 10km in from the border. It makes a change to be in a town which is actually close to the sight associated with it (only a 10 minute, pleasant, walk to the ruins themselves.
After bing disappointed with Tikal, we really enjoyed Copan. It felt very different from other sites, very relaxed and tranquil, and structurally it was also different to those we’ve visited before – no big pyramids to climb, but instead lots of intricatly carved stelae. These tell the stories, and date the time they were carved, of the rulers of the time, to give us a small understanding of Mayan life. There is also a staircase of hieroglyiphics, which would give us more of an insight, but the archeologists have only been able to decipher 35% of it, and, above the first 15 steps, they don’t know if the stones have been put back in the right order when it was restored!
It seemed fitting that the national bird of Honduras, the macaw, could be found at the entrance, but unfortunately the birds aren’t wild and live there. Despite being semi-tame, they did not comply to our demands of sitting on a stelae, so a tree/fence had to sufice!
We spent an extra day in Copan and visited a local woman in a nearby village. Here we learnt how to make maize tortillas (take cooked maize, rinse, put through a mincer, grind some more on a flat pestel & motar-type arrangement with some water, take some paste & try & make it tortilla shaped…cook on a hot griddle over wood burning stove), which actually tasted nicer than we were expecting, and got to try out some pottery skills – completely lacking on my part. Although we have walked through lots of local viallges in Peru we had never been inside one of the houses, and so it was interesting to see how they were set up. The kitchen bascially consisted of a huge fire range on which there were various pots bubbling away (we got to try some of the contents- chicken stew, coffee and frijoles (black beans). The lady there is basically self sufficient – chicken from the back garden, fruit & vegetable plot and coffee down the valley. I think we were both slightly jealous! It was a little bit odd, but she made us feel very welcome and it turned out to be an interesting 2 hour visit.
Tags: Copan, Honduras, Travel
Jenni
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