Copan Ruins
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2007
1
29
39
Trip End
Sep 16, 2007
Copan,
Honduras
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
We stopped for breakfast around 8 AM at a pretty good little restaurants. By then most of the other passengers had slowly come to life and where I got to talk with Travis and Karmen. Two recent graduates going on a whirlwind adventure through central america before starting their new accounting jobs in two weeks. They are hitting five countries in about 2.5 weeks. More for the fun of getting the stamps in their passport :)
The bus arrived at the Honduras-Guatemala boarder and crossing went very smoothly. An exit fee of 10Q to Guatemala and an entrance fee of $3 USD to Honduras and we were done
Bird
. I changed by Quetzls for Leimpres (19 Lemp= 1 USD) was good to go. We arrived in Copan Ruinas Town and all opened our guide books to find a place to stay. I ended up in a triple room with Travis and Karmen at the Copan Classica. The hotel was simple, but clean and most importantly, near the corner where all the buses leave from. This would make it easy for the three of us to leave the next day. Them to El Salvador and me to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. We arrived in the town by late morning and by lunchtime, we walked to the Copan ruins. The ruins were a peasant 15 minute walk along a raised footpath that runs parallel to a major road. While Copan ruins is not on the magnitude of Tikal, it is known for having some of the best preserved stelaes and alters. Copan was once an important city on the southern fringes of the Maya world. In fact, it was one of the most geographically isolated cities of the Maya region.
One of the more interesting structures at Copan is the Hieroglyphic Staircase. This stairway taes up the entire face of one of the temples. Each and every stone is carved to form part of a glphic sequence. It is currently the longest known Maya hieroglyphic test. However, the attempted reconstruction has left some gaps in the interpretation of text and currently there are several interpretations.
We went through the ruins much faster than we had thought and were done in a few hours. (We had all underestimated how much smaller the grounds were, compared to Tikal.) On our way out of the park, we stopped and were easily amused by five brightly colored parrots
Check Point
. Our walk home was good, until it started to rain. We were too far from the hotel so we just resided ourselves to getting soaked, very soaked. Back at the hotel we dried up, showered and decided food was in order. An meal that was satisfying, but not necessarily good was eaten. As we were about to leave, the heavens opened up this time and it REALLY began to rain. (i guess that is why they call it the rainy season...) The rain was so deafening and we had to literally shout at each other to be heard. Eventually, it became a hassle and we sat in silence and watched the restaurant cat eat the rest of my spaghetti. We ended up having to sit out the rain for a good 25 minutes before even attempting to make our way back to the hotel. The afternoon was spent reading in the hotel room and talking.
