Copan to Santa Rosa de Copan

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I really need to try & stay up late one of these nights so I won't wake up at 6am.... with the Honchos of the area.
Last night was noisy. The parties lasted until well into the morning. I'm glad there's only one Saturday night in the week. Such old fogies.

This morning we cleaned up, packed up, kept the streak alive & headed to the ruins. First we had to have some free coffee. Love a hostal that gives you free coffee. For breakfast we went a little healthier & had some toasty o's with chocolate milk (solely because it's kept in the fridge & the rest of the milk is kept on the shelves with dry goods, I wanted cold milk for a change).

Caught a tuk tuk & went to the ruins. We got to the window to pay for our entrance & had a Tikal experience. We didn't bring enough money. Awesome! Shouldn't we learn from our prior mistakes? You would think, but clearly not so much. We at least had enough money to get into the ruins, but not enough for the musuem where they house several artifacts from the ruins. The good news is that the tuk tuk ride was only $1 & we're sooo close to town. Otherwise, we might have self destructed! Or, I might have anyway.

The ruins were beautiful. Copan has the most carved hieroglyphs of all the Mayan ruins. There were so many. There's also the Hieroglyph Staircase that one of the Kings commissioned that documents Copan's history from its beginning to his time. It was incredible. What may have been the best part was the Scarlet Macaws that we saw. At the entrance of the park there were about 8-12 of them flying & squawking. They make a lot of noise when they fly. No wonder Francisco at Red Bank knew we wouldn't see them, they make their presence known. They were so stunning. The colors of their feathers are so bright it almost seems fake. It was beautiful. When they fly they literally shake their tail feathers. I loved everything about it & tried to get some good pics. Beautiful.
Again, the ruins seemed like they were there for just us & a few others. We went right at opening at 8am, since I was up anyway & it was great. The pyramids have all kinds of relics still retained inside of them. All kinds of burial tombs. You can't go in & see them but they've made exact, to scale, replicas in the museum. So we're excited to see them. By the time we left the ruins, to get more money for the museum..., there were busloads of tourists heading in. At least part of plan was good!

We headed back into town on our tuk tuk. The driver offered to take us on a horsebackriding trip. Like boat trips were offered in Lake Atitlan, horsebackriding trips have been offered here. Everyone offers them. Geoff's latest response is that he doesn't like his butt to hurt. I'm not sure everyone understands but we get a good laugh anyway & the occasional odd look. So, we declined again & got to the hotel & retrieved more money. Slow learners... We grabbed some lunch at a different Comedor (little restaurant) in the market. We had empanadas. I had cheese & chicken, Geoff just chicken. Yummmy! With shredded cabbage & salsa. Que Delicioso! We randomly keep seeing different people that we've seen along our travels. It's funny to randomly recognize people along the way. Although the amount of Gringos around here is far less than the other towns we've been to. There's a lot of Honduran tourists here. Lots & lots.

The other thing about the Hondurans, they are a very fair skinned people. More like me. They are not dark skinned like the Mayans. It seems like there's a lot of money around this town too. We've seen so many SUV's & nice cars. Although it is Valentine's Day weekend & I was told there are more tourists here now than the usual weekend.

Back in another tuk tuk & back to the Copan Ruinas. We spent some QT in the museum where they store many of the artifacts that were found on the site. Some of the stone carvings still have some of the original paint on them. From over 1500 years ago. Pretty amazing. There is also a to scale replica of a tomb that is buried beneath one of the pyramid like structures. It is huge! And beautiful. I would love to climb in one of those pyramids & see it myself.

Caught another tuk tuk back into town, grabbed our backpacks, said goodbye & headed down the bus "terminal." Which is a corner of one street that is basically a parking lot, where all the buses pull in. We paid our fare, $6, to the ticket distributor who was a woman with a purse sitting on a plastic chair by the fried chicken stand. But we got a ticket, so that's really all that matters. We had some time to kill so I got a Melon Licuado, my fav yet & we just hung out in the little cafe & downloaded pics.

On the bus, another US kids school bus, though not decked out. We got our own seat. Woohoo! After the bus was packed with people we headed out. After driving about 1 mile, the driver pulls over into a gas station, proceeds to jack up the front of the bus with all of the passengers still in it & replaces the front tire. Geoff saw the replacement tire & said it was completely bald, not a lick of tread on it. Comforting, especially because it's raining. But shouldn't we have gotten off the bus to ease the tire change? Or, couldn't he have changed it during the last 2 hours the bus was sitting empty in the parking lot? What do I know... These people have their ways that is for sure.
We were dropped off in La Entrada where we quickly had to figure out where to catch our next bus. They're not as helpful here in letting us know when we arrive at our destination. I guess it's assumed you should know where you're going. I just kept asking people around us what town we were stopping in. We almost missed our stop here though, I wasn't really paying attention & it was a cluster of people on the bus at this point. A bit overwhelming & crowded. We found our next bus by asking someone on the street where to go. We have great bus catching luck & walked right up to the corner & there was our bus. The bus drivers are all quite impatient & while we were putting our bags under the bus, with the help of the bus helper dude, the bus driver started slowly moving forward & honking the horn. Subtle hint. They do it to everyone, it was just our first time. A bit stressful, especially the helper dude yelling at us to hurry up the whole time & manhandling my bag right off my back. But we made it.
On the road again, driving like crazy. We made it to Santa Rosa De Copan pretty quickly & thankfully in one piece. It's drizzly, cloudy & rainy. We haven't seen the sun in days. And super muddy everywhere because of all the moisture. It's kinda gross.

Caught a cab to the hotel that we wanted to check out. Because it's Sunday, the town is asleep. Off the main drag, the streets are empty of traffic & people. It's always so peaceful to arrive in a town on Sunday. I love it.
Our Hotel is called Hotel Alondras. It's super simple & cute & clean. Best things ever. $15 for the night & we are set. We walked down to "Weekend Pizza" & had the best, most delicious salad I've had since home. Not as good as Kathie's Caesar but soooo good & fresh. I miss vegetables. We had a flatbread pizza that was super yummy too. While eating this young fat kid at the window outside caught my eye & was gesturing to the pizza & asking me for it. Given his size, I really don't think he needed any pizza. Weird!

At the Hotel we watched The Grammy's in Spanish. The songs they didn't dub over thankfully so it was fun. I love Usher! It was fun to watch. Like a little treat from home.

I fell asleep after Eminem's amazing song. Wowzers! He should have won for sure! Or did he win? I wasn't awake....
Geoff says I need to try to stay awake past 9:30 so I'll stop waking up at 6am. I'll give it a go tomorrow. Still fighting this cold. Keeping Kleenex in business singlehandedly! You're welcome!

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Photos

Our first Scarlett Macaws!
Not a bad way to start our day.

Hieroglyphic Stairway
Details the history of Copan.

"El Cementerio"
Housing of the royal family.

A Guanacaste tree
& Kassandra.

Kassandra chillin'
above the "Plato de los Jaguares"

View of Structure 16
& the West Plaza.

Scale replica of the Rosalia temple.
Original is completely intact below Structure 16.