Copan Ruinas

This past weekend we had a three-day weekend, with Friday off for Teacher’s Day. (yay!) I went to the Copan Ruins, Honduras’ only major Mayan civilization ruins. I went with Rae and Matt, Julie, and NJ, all other teachers at Minerva. (Rae and Matt are married.) NJ’s friends, Sam and Jess, who were visiting her this week, also came.

We left super early Friday morning, catching the 6am bus to the town of Copan Ruinas. We changed buses in Santa Rosa, which is about an hour from us, and is the big town we go to when we want to buy stuff not available in Gracias. From there we took a nice charter-type bus to the town of La Entrada. I sat next to a Mormon missionary who was eager to have someone to talk to in English. We swapped stories of life in Honduras. When we got to La Entrada, about 45 minutes later, we switched buses again, for the final leg to Copan Ruinas. This trip was a couple of hours.

When we got to Copan Ruinas, we found our hotel (NJ, Sam, and Jess were staying in a different hostel). It was only 11, so we got lunch at our hotel, then set out to sight-see. Rae, Matt, and Julie decided to go to Macaw Mountain, a bird sanctuary just on the outskirts of town. I met up with NJ and Jess and wandered around town for awhile. The town is really cute, but very much done up for tourists. There are lots of little cafes and restaurants, and lots of craft shops. We looked at some stuff, then I headed to Casa K’inich museum, and the girls went back to their hostel.

Casa K’inich is a very fine children’s museum at the top of an enormous hill. As you know, I’m a big fan of children’s museums, so even though I’m technically an adult, and was the only person there, I paid the very reasonable entrance fee ($1) and went around the museum. It is small, but all the exhibits are hands-on and work, which is impressive enough. Every exhibit was also written in Spanish, English, and Chorti, the local Maya dialect. And the English was perfect, not just awkwardly translated Spanish. I learned a lot about the Maya at that little museum. I recommend it if you ever go to Copan Ruins!

When the group got back from Macaw Mountain, we did some more shopping, and went to dinner at a cool place called Vamos A Ver. I had some delicious chicken nachos, it was only a bit strange because we were the only people in the restaurant the entire time. After dinner we all hung out at our hotel awhile, which has a bar and a ‘nightlife’ schedule, but we went to bed before the nightlife really began.

Saturday morning we got up early again, and got breakfast at our hotel, then walked to the ruins to be there by 8, when they opened. It’s really quite a pleasant walk, only about 15 minutes.

The ruins were great! At the ticket window we met these 2 older American guys, and they went in on a tour guide with us. Our guide, Julio, grew up in Copan, and when he was younger, assisted archaeologists on excavating and repairing the ruins. Now he had learned English and had become a tour guide. He was great, and had lots of information to share.

The ruins were really pretty, with lots of green grass, trees, and plants everywhere. The sun stayed behind the clouds all morning, and a breeze blew in off the river, so it was really pleasant and not too hot. The only other ruins I’ve been to were in Chichen Itza, and there were hot, hot, hot. Also at Chichen Itza, there were people everywhere trying to sell trinkets, and lots of tourists. At Copan, there were times when we didn’t even see any other tourists, and there was no one selling anything inside the ruins. It was a great time of day, and year, to go.

Copan had it’s heyday in about 600 A.D. Up to 20,000 people lived in the Copan valley, and these ruins were where the royalty lived, and ceremonies were held. We saw temples and statues, and the ball court where Mayan ball games were played. The Mayan people destroyed the environment and succumbed to overpopulation (a cautionary tale?) and abandoned the area by 850 A.D. There are still descendents of these Maya in the area, but all of the cultural history has been lost. The first Westerners to start excavating Copan came in the mid 1800s, and nobody living nearby knew anything about what the ruins were or why they were there.

After the tour, we went back into town, and had an amazing lunch at a little place called picame. I had a hot bacon, cheese, avocado, and tomato sandwich. Yum!! Of course everything we ate and did and bought in Copan cost about 3 times more than in Gracias, which should be expected, but was still hard to swallow. It’s different when you’re on vacation from a job in the States, because then 15 dollars to get into an ancient ruin might seem like a good deal, but for us it is a lot of money.

In the afternoon, we took naps, wandered around town some more, shopping and looking at stuff. We played cards in the hotel restaurant, and got information about buses back to Gracias in the morning. By the evening, the Central Park was hopping with locals, and I felt more like a tourist than ever, walking through a local party.

Saturday night we had another great dinner at a place called Twisted Tanya, which included homemade carrot cake! Then we went to a bar next to our hotel that was going to have a live band play. We waited more than an hour, then gave up and went to the hotel to go to bed. Or so we thought! Once in bed, the band showed up, and we could hear them well enough to know we weren’t missing much, but couldn’t avoid listening anyway.

Sunday morning, NJ and I took a direct shuttle-type bus from Copan to Santa Rosa, very early in the morning. That was a great little bus, it was worth getting up early. In Santa Rosa we did some grocery shopping then got on a chicken bus for Gracias. I have never seen a bus packed so full. Even the locals were getting irritated. NJ and I got a pretty prime seat, even though were close to being the last people on. We got to sit on the hump between the driver and the door, which was covered with a nice cushion and quite comfortable. Then about 12 more people squeezed in after us, with all their luggage. The bus emptied out as we went, but was still crowded, and we were glad to have somewhere to sit. I got home at lunchtime on Sunday, napped, unpacked, and got ready for school on Monday!

I'll post pictures when I have a better internet connection, or you can check them out at picasaweb.google.com/lauraeley