Copan and the Mayan Ruins

Sunday, September 8, 2002

014-46.680 N
088-46.140 W

This is an inland travel report from the BlueJacket. We just got back from a wonderful 3 day trip to Copan, Honduras which is about 250 km from the Rio Dulce where BlueJacket is docked. We used OttoTours, a local tour company, to drive us there. The drive is beautiful taking you through the extremely mountainous countryside of Guatemala and Honduras. The vast majority of the highways in both countries are single lanes in each direction, but the roads are maintained very well.

 Crossing the boarder is quite amusing. Each country has a small hut where you clear in/out with a metal lift-gate that they open for you once you've gone through immigration & customs. You then drive 200' to the other countries gate, and go through the reverse process. I guess that they couldn't decide who would pay for paving the section in between as it's unpaved. The buildings and the characters hanging around the boarder looked like they could have been cast in a western movie.

On the way to Copan we stopped at Quirigua, a Mayan Ruin site in Guatemala. This site, although much smaller than Copan, was extremely well preserved and had some beautifully carved stellas, which are square rock pillars about 20-40' high. There was also relatively small stadium where they used to play a ball game, where the results were truly a matter of life or death!

Upon arrival in Copan we found that our reservations had been lost and that the hotel was full. After a bit of a scramble we ended up in the Marina Copan, which is supposed to be the nicest hotel there. While it wasn't great by American standards, it was nice and had good sized bright rooms. While looking for a new place to stay we were befriended by Jesus, a local tour guide. He spoke great English and told us that we should think about horseback riding into the mountains or going to some hot springs. He also pointed us to the best restaurant in town, which played great American music and had decent food.

While we were eating lunch the clouds got darker and darker and we decided that going to the museum in town sounded like the best plan of action for the rest of the afternoon. We made it just before a torrential downpour began. The museum was interesting, but the English language guide was very poorly laid out, making it hard to follow the exhibits. Midway through the lights went out and there were no emergency lights. In the pitch dark a guard found us and told us that we needed to leave! We stumbled out and ran back to the hotel in the pouring rain. The rain lasted all night but cleared by morning.

In the morning we were met by an English speaking guide named Julio who took us through the ruins at Copan. Julio has been a guide for 15 years and really knew his stuff. He gave us tons of information that we would never have gotten elsewhere and he seemed to enjoy the fact that we asked lots of questions. These Mayan ruins are immense and only the temples and elite living quarters having been dug, restored and preserved. They have over 1000 structures identified, but only a small portion have received attention.

One thing that I had never realized was that the Mayan's used 2 cycles, one of which was a 52 year cycle. Every 52 years they felt that they tore down all of the old structures and rebuilt over them. As a result the archaeologists have to tunnel through the interior of the ruins to see what the previous rulers had built during prior periods.

The tour of the ruins took until early afternoon. Over lunch at a very local place we decided to go to the hot springs. Jesus arranged a van for us which drove us about 20 KM into the mountains through lots of small coffee plantations. Believe me, we got to see a side of life that most people don't see. Lots of small huts and houses clinging to the sides of the mountain. The hot springs are literally boiling hot water springing from the side of the mountain and eventually mixing with a cold river coming form the mountain. You can sit in the river where the two mix and get your body treated to hot and cold eddies. It was great. While we where there we could see that quite a storm was brewing towards town. On the way back to town the river that we had been lounging in got bigger and bigger with as streams containing rain water mixed into the main river. At one point the road became a river when a stream overflowed onto it. The driver was very nervous as the water was 2-3' deep and moving very fast over what had been a dirt road. We made it through it, but it was exciting!

Log ID: 294