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Published: January 18th 2011
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We arrived in Copán just after dark, and walked 50m from the bus stop to the hostel we had picked out called Los Gemelos. A lovely old lady greeted us and showed us the rooms, it costs about $5 per person. The rooms are basic and clean and fresh with a shared bathroom and a lovely courtyard full of flowers to look out on. We were pretty hungry and went in search of the Parque Central, where a lot of the eateries are. We found women cooking over hot embers with a grill making dinners for very cheap, so we had 2 carnitas each... a carnita is basically a kebab they have cooked over the embers (beef). They serve it to you in a plastic basket covered by a plastic sheet, the meat is taken off the metal skewer and served with 2 tortillas (handmade), a handful of freshly shredded cabbage, tomato salsa and frijole paste... delicious!!! we got our drinks from a little shop across the road, banana licuado (smoothie) and a strawberry licaudo, so yummy! our total dinner cost inc all drinks etc was about $6AU. Because it was a saturday night, there was a night club going off
with very loud music that we could hear from our room that night, it cost 50L to get in (about $2.50) but we were exhausted so just went to bed.
Next morning we saw the real Copán... cobble stone streets, colonial houses and buildings, beautiful town square with a Mayan artifact theme. We had a sleep in and a late breakfast in a cute little cafe, the lady who ran it had a very cute pet parrot in a large cage. Pancakes and toast. We then grabbed our camera and headed to the Copán ruins that are about 1km walk out of town. The entry is $15US. We bumped into a guy we had met on Utila and a few others walking there and we all shared a guide for the ruins. They were very beautiful ruins, they are renowned throughout mesoamerica for their sculptures and engravings. Apparently Copán is described like the Paris of the Mayan civilisations and Tikal is like NY city with all the tall buildings. Our guide was named Juan Carlos and was quite knowledgeable, it was nice to hear that all the general info we had learned from our guide in Tikal was told to
us here too... it means we assume it to be correct 😊. The ruins themselves are split into 2, this half that we saw, and another half that is a rich suburb that has been excavated north of these main ruins. We only saw the political-royal ruins. We also went to the museum which is fantastic! A lot of the sculptures and facades have been brought into the new museum to protect them from the weather and replicas have been put in their original spots. One of the large temples was built upon other temples. The archaeologists found this out by digging small tunnels into the structure of one of the temples and found another, fully preserved one they named Rosalila. IT is the only one found anywhere that is still fully intact, including its stucco and painted outside decorations. Normally they just build on top like its the foundation, but this was specifically preserved and there is a full size replica in the museum (its too dangerous to go into the tunnels... plus its expensive to just see a tiny bit of the real one).
By the time we got back into town it was 3.30pm and we found
lunch of baleadas and a licuado to share at a restaurant called Picame. Lucky for Darío they had a Barcelona vs Malaga match on the tv. After lunch and the football we walked around town a bit looking for the advertised free museum, didnt find it so went to a cafe for a coffee and free wifi! We managed to skype my parents which was lovely. That night we had more street food and headedfor bed early.
Next morning we got up at 6am to grab the 7am bus to San Pedro Sula. Then changed buses to go to El Mochito, we got off before the destination at a place called D&D microbrewery on Lago Yojoa.
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jessmason
jessica mason
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