The Bird Park and Copan´s Colonial...Castle?

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Last Friday, on my way to my last class at the Copan Spanish School, I stopped by the "castle." It is this decrepid old building that kinda looks like a castle. Apparently it is the only piece of architecture that is considered colonial. But it is falling apart and not taken care of at all. Its pretty nasty. I wonder if there are some squatters living there...

Last Sunday I ventured up to the Bird Park (www.macawmountain.com) with Rebecca. We took a moto-taxi (lucky number 20!) up to the park. Oh number 20, how we do love you. Number 20 has a sticker of Che, a naked lady painted on the back, flames that say "Hot Wheels" and...my favorite.. a large sticker that says "www.playboy.com." I had been dying to take a ride with this guy and I got my wish as he and his compañero fought over our business. But it was a fine ride, no fancy tricks or anything. The bird park was great! Saw lots of scarlet macaws and toucans and other assorted..well, birds. There is also a shade-grown coffee finca there. After walking along the path with the birds and river we settled down at the restaurant for lunch. It was fabulous. I had shrimp kebabs with rice, platanos, steamed veggies and a limonada. Then we walked back up to the little coffee cafe and ran into Liz! So we hung out, talking, smelling the coffee roasting... A great morning! Then, because the gift shop took credit cards, I bought a bunch of stuff.

This morning I accompanied Rebecca to CRIA (the lab by the ruins) to drop off a piece of paper for Reina. Saw Andre--he suggested we all take a trip to a nearby waterfall in Santa Rita de Copan. Well, this sounded just marvelous to me--untill he mentioned that we would need to hire an armed guard because there had been some robberies (by machete) there lately. Of course, the discussion lead to talk of the Chorti leader who was hacked to death by machetes by the cemetary. Oh, and I walked by the cemetary this morning. It is NA-STY. I love cemetaries, but this one just didnt do it for me. It smelled, I guess, like dead people. And it was really ugly and sad. But ANYWAY. About the waterfall. It does sound like fun.. And I have great images of our armed guard (with an M16 no doubt) taking off his boots and putting his feet in the water. Maybe letting me hold his gun....

We´ll see.

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Photos

Macaw
The macaw was very interested in my fingers. They looked like a good snack, I guess.

Me at the Bird Park
Great hat, huh?