Copan - those clever Mayas

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Our last evening in Antigua was spent with our new travelling companions, 5 others plus a trip leader, ie. the man who´s going to book all the buses and sort all the hotels for us. That doesn´t mean he holds our hands and shepherds us around and we´ve got plenty of time to do our own thing too. I was still not feeling too good so was straight to bed after dinner for an early start the next morning. The minibus to take us just across the border into Honduras left around 7am. Luckily, being a small group we had quite a bit of room as it was a few hours to Copan Ruinas, a small colonial town (yes, another one!) just across the border, most well known for its proximity to Copan, another large Mayan site and at the southern edge of the Mayan empire. That evening we took a very bouncy 45 minute pick up ride to some hot springs in the mountains. However, it was incredibly busy due to being Easter Sunday so not quite the relaxing experience we had hoped for. Still, we had a barbecue and sat in the river where the hot water coming out of the mountain meets the cold flowing in the river and realised it could be lovely if it was a little quieter. The ride back was cold and bumpy but the sky was full of stars and an almost full moon.

We left for the site quite early in the morning before it got too hot and had a very interesting and enthusiastic guide, Saul, who wanted to tell us all about Honduras as well as the ruins and the Mayas. The site is not as big as Tikal and the temples are smaller but they have found a lot of better preserved decorations from the temples due to a harder stone being used to build them. There are lots of stelae with amazing carvings around the site, some original but some copies with the originals preserved in the nearby museum. There is also an amazing carved staircase up the front of one of the temples. The site shows the remains of a sophisticated water system whereby they collected rainwater in a huge plaza between buildings during the wet season and had an intricate series of pipes and irrigation channels to take the water out to the farmers and people living in the city. The plaza is decorated with marine animals which were apparently designed to look like they were floating on the surface of the water when it was full.

After the ruins we walked a short nature trail in the nearby forest seeing mostly butterflies, including the large blue morpho butterflies which are spectacular. After lunch we popped into the museum to see some of the carvings that have been taken from the site. Not content with all that activity, in the late afternoon we took a walk down the river and up a hill to a small restaurant/hotel which has great views over the surrounding area. Sadly, the place itself was closed for a private party so the man on the gate would only let us just inside to see the views.

An early start the next morning for a couple of uncomfortable and frustrating bus journeys taking us, eventually, to Tela, a small town on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. We found it a small, hot and dusty town with a slightly smelly beach and were staying in an uninspiring hotel with erratic water (never mind hot water) and all the lights went out for a while. This part of Honduras is, however, interesting because many of its population are descended from African slaves brought over by the British so they are very dark skinned and many speak English rather than Spanish. They are officially known as Garifuna which is also the name of their language. Dinner was excellent however, only marred by the heavens opening as we left the restaurant and we all got soaked getting back. And that was the start of our time in a tropical paradise.....

Still at least it wasn´t snow - hope nobody got stuck in their cars or fell off mountains...?

Lots of love

S + H xx

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[Helen]

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