Ruins and Massages!

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3rd Jan 06
Lazy day on the Caribbean island of Roatan! Did a bit of snorkeling and watched a movie. Ate lots of food!

4th Jan 06
Long travel day from Roatan to Copan Ruinas, the town very near to the Copan Ruins. Copan is a very charming town with colonial buildings and cobblestone streets and little ¨tuc tucs¨ for transportation - small 3 wheeled vehicles with no doors.

The journey was beautiful and full of amazing scenery. I still haven´t gotten used to it yet, this is a very beautiful part of the world.

The town has a great vibe, like St. Kilda on a boiling hot night, and we ate dinner out on the balcony of a local restaurant. The locals were everywhere, out visiting or just standing on their porches, watching.

5th Jan 06
In the morning we visited the Copan Ruins, which is basically a town left behind finally in the year 1200 AD by a bunch of Mayans. Actually, it was declining from a couple of hundred years earlier. The Mayans were doing their best work from 250AD to 900AD.

I read up about the history before going but nothing really prepared me for what you feel when you walk into an ancient city of around 3500 buildings. It was pretty amazing for anyone with a tiny bit of imagination. I mean, this city is more remote in time from us than the year 3000.

Those Mayans were pretty brutish people. They cut up their faces, tongues and genitals and collected the blood, which they then burnt so the smoke would be carried to their Gods. They also sacrificed the best looking people to their gods by cutting off the poor person´s head. In addition they had a game like soccer except with a 5kg ball. If a match was classed as political, the loser was killed, but if it was classed as recreational, the loser survived.

Strangely, the Mayans didn´t demolish buildings - they just buried them and built on top of them. It is pretty fascinating to imagine that under the visible ruins there are more ruins. They think it will take 100 years to find them all. Already there are some tunnels underneath the ruins.

Later in the day we took a bus to Antigua, Guatemala. We went through Guatemala city which is not worth more than the time it takes to pass through it.

At night we arrived in beautiful Antigua at our little Spanish colonial hotel. Like all the commercial buildings here, they look just like the houses - the doors are closed and there are barely any signs by comparison to Aus. You have to knock to go into a lot of the shops. When you enter our hotel you go through cast iron gates and enter a large tiled area with a central open air courtyard and garden. Our room is so cute.

Night - dinner at a nice restaurant and the new people joined our group. Now there are 6 Aussies in our group - or half the group - which is pretty amazing considering our population size and remoteness. Actually there are heaps of Aussies here, and everyone you meet from other countries will tell you Aussies are big travelers. Very few (any?) Americans, not sure why as they are so close.

Anyway I sat next to Hugh at dinner, he is in his 60s, and I sang songs I made up about him to him all night and he kept getting the giggles.

Jan 6th 05
Toughest thing I did today was to book a massage. It was $8 US for a full body, one hour massage. They even crack your toes and massage your face and bottom. She kept clicking her fingers and I started to wonder if she was cursing me or putting a spell on me. Andrew loved his massage too.

Otherwise we have been exploring Antigua and my god, Mum and Dad, if you were here you´d think you´d have died and gone to heaven. The textiles are vibrant and beautiful and the architecture and cobblestone streets are so sweet, with a back drop of huge mountains. Every building is a different bright colour. It is gorgeous!

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Photos

Maddy at Rivas Bus Station
Ahh, chaos! Welcome to Nicaragua! Here we are in Rivas on our way to the ferry port for Ometepe.

View of Isla de Ometepe
My attempt at being artistic. Lago Nicaragua is shown here with the volcanic Ometepe as backdrop.

Drinking Nica Rum at Ometepe
Here we are indulging in Flor de Caña, the local rum. Behind us is lago Nicaragua blowing in a warm breeze. Yep, life´s tough!

Gorgeous Ometepe
This photo speaks for itself!

Bell Tower, Iglesia de Merced, Granada, Nicaragua
Shown here is the view from the bell tower of Iglesia de Merced at Granada. We convinced the maintenance dude to let us up for a ¨donation¨. It was more than worth it, as you can see.

Street of Granada, Nicaragua
This captures the hustle and bustle of a street in the first Spanish colonial city of Nica. Other streets were very quiet.

Bus at Nica-Honduran border
In keeping with using buses that are a minimum of twice our age, here we are on the most decrepid bus of our trip. It had to be roll started.

Fantasy Island Resort, Honduras
We used our mini motor bikes to drive to this resort and pretended to be guests.

Scootering around Roatan, Honduras
We hired mini motor bikes and as you can see we are natural born bike people who are clearly extremely cool.

Maddy at Copan Ruins
I was very wet here and it was raining this day for the first time our whole trip. I am standing on top of a pyramid looking over the ancient city.

Street of Antigua, Guatemala
Welcome to beautiful Guatemala! Shown here is a street typical of beautiful Antigua with the arch and mountains in the background.

Comments

[Lauren]

I am dying of jealousy!!
Hey guys, It looks fantastic over there! Wish i was with u! Hope u r both well, and looking after yourself (don't drink 2 much of that flor de cana- hehee!) Love lauren. xoxox

[Mum and Dad]

wow
Hi Maddie and Andrew... what a fascinating place. Love the pics. More soon in an email, Love, Mum and Dad.