Blogs from Copán Ruinas, Western, Honduras, Central America Caribbean - page 27

On April 10th, James and I left lovely Roatan and sadly parted ways. We took an early flight (a scary propeller flight again) to San Pedro Sula, a grubby hole of a town on mainland Honduras (nice airport though). I had a bus to catch in the city centre and James decided to tag along as he had time before his next flights to Costa Rica. If you can believe it we both hopped in a taxi to take us to the centre and about 10 minutes in James said something about our bags and I realised I´d left my rucksack AT THE AIRPORT! I had totally forgotten to get it from the luggage pick up!!! WHAT AN IDIOT! So the driver turned back and I had to convince the security guard to let me back ... read more

We left Antigua on our second try this morning...at 4:00 am! the shuttle bus didn't come to the right address yesterday, so we stood out in the cold and dark for an hour and then got into a fight with the tour agency rep who accused us of lying (and not being up in time). After some table pounding and threats, the owner found a smaller lie that enabled him to save face, and we rebooked for the next morning. We are now in the very charming small town of Copan Ruinas, just a kilometer from the famous Copan Mayan ruins. We arrived this morning and walked to ruins around 11:00..it was already very warm...and we are not used to the heat after being in cool Antigua for a month... The ruins are on a much ... read more

We had to leave the Island on Wednesday 15th, which was a great shame, would love to have spent more time here to hire a moped or a Jeep, and look around the Island. I took a flight from the local airport, which was delayed by 3 hours due to a road strike in La Ceiba, which meant cancelling a load of flights. As we were just about to board the plane, to my horror, I realised my camera with all my pictures on it was not in my pocket. It wasn't anywhere, it had fallen out of my pocket in the taxi I took to get to the airport at 7am that morning. I was devasted, but could do nothing about it now. The flight was 35 minutes to the town of San Pedro, most ... read more

This is Part 2 of the Crowning of the Queen of the Copan de Ruinas Fiesta. Part 1 is entitled: 'They like 'em young and Sexy'. It was now time for the 'Evening Gown' portion of the beauty pageant. The little girls came first. Most were in sweet Cinderella type gowns in shades of ice cream- vanilla, black raspberry, strawberry, pistachio, lemon sherbet. But one, you guessed it, Miss Tiny Gold Bikini, was in a form fitting, off the shoulder white dress. Again, she was blowing kisses and sucking up to the audience. The crowd went wild. Then the big girls came in slinky, sparkly, tight fitting, black or maroon or brown dresses. The judges needed time to make their decision so the boy dancers came back. This time dressed in white shirts, with the sleeves ... read more

Copan de Ruinas is called 'the Athens of the Maya World'. While some other sites have more structures, Copan has the best preserved ' stellae' - stone panels with intricate carvings. A crude comparison would be to liken them to native American totem poles. It also has one of the tallest stairways lined with heiroglyphics ( spelling ?) that leads to altars and other structures built even higher up. Unfortunately , no one has the key to what the carvings say. And to make matters worse, much of the stairway tumbled down during an earthquake. When it was rebuilt no one paid much attention to the 'writing'. So now it is a complete jumble.They have found a picture taken almost 100 years ago and hope to restore it- someday. The Mayan culture shows evidence of having ... read more