After enjoying two nice, relaxing days at a real family home, I thought I would try being a tourist again just for a weekend. However, rather than easing back into it, I jolted myself back into the lifestyle. I was forced to catch a bus at 4 A.M. because that was the only time that busses went to Copan from Antigua. WHY?????????? Why can´t bus companies adjust to people that are normal? 3:45 is not a normal time to get up! Anyway, I of course did not sleep well. It seems I am cursed when it comes to getting up early. For some reason the days I know I have to wake up at an ungodly hour also seem to be the days when I can not make myself fall asleep. So, after getting maybe an hour´s worth of sleep, I was squeezed into a mini-bus like a sardine. The bus was completely full and I was stuck in the corner where I had no room whatsoever for my giant gringo sized legs. Thus, I twisted my body into all kinds of strange contorted body positions as the van trudged to the Honduras border. Despite my extreme sleepiness,the uncomfortable ride made it impossible to sleep. So we rolled into the town of Copan, the beautiful ruins just a kilometer away waiting for me to explore them, and at that moment all I wanted to do was go to my hotel room and sleeeeeep. Not to mention my right eye decided to torture me and I was forced to take my contact out. My eye was extremely sensitive to light so I had to buy sunglasses so I could keep my eyes open without crying. Since it is difficult putting glasses and sunglasses on at the same time and I did not want to cause my right eye more pain, I had only one option. I had to walk around half blind. Sleeping felt like such a good option but I knew I couldn´t. I came all the way there after forcing myself out of bed at 3:45 and enduring a very uncomfortable ride. By golly, I was going to see those ruins with my one good eye and I was going to enjoy it!
I grabbed my water bottle, poured a couple of tubes of zip-fiz in there (energy drink) and I was off. I walked wearily to the park entrance for 1,2,10 kilometers, whatever it was, bought my ticket, and then I was exploring. At first I was walking around like a sleep-deprived zombie, absent-mindedly taking pictures at whatever resembled a ruin. However, I think the zip-fizz started to kick in and I began gaining consciousness and I ended up thoroughly exploring every last centimeter of the site.
If I had never been to Tikal, I would have probably been enthralled at these beautiful ruins. However, I have been to Tikal, and the architecture at Copan is very similar and I thought the ruins were basically a scaled down version of Tikal. The site of Copan itself is considerably smaller than Tikal (you can probably fit more than 4 Copans into Tikal). The pyramids are also not as impressive or as big as the ones in Tikal. There was also less wildlife. I was dissapointed not to see one monkey as I walked through the forest (at Tikal they were everywhere…if you randomly looked up it seemed there was almost a 50% chance you would spot one). However, comparing Copan to Tikal is unfair since I thought Tikal was one of the coolest things I had seen on my entire trip.
There are basically 3 sections to Copan. The main plaza takes up about half of the site and is very beautiful but there are so many tourists milling about that it is impossible to have it to yourself. The Acropolis area has the most impressive buildings with 2 or 3 good sized pyramids and a cathedral looking structure. My favorite secion of the site, however, I like to call the tranquilo area. Beyond the acropolis section there are beautiful smaller mossy structures that not as many people venture out to see that are surrounded by trees. It is a lot quieter there and feels more mysterious. I liked it a lot and spent a good amount of time there just chilling. One aspect of Copan that I liked better than Tikal was the use of faces in the architecture. There seemed to be stone faces everywhere…very cool.
I somehow lasted almost 4 hours in the park before I decided I had seen and done just about everything there is to do there. I even managed to use all of my camera battery. I walked out of the archaelogical site and found a nature trail to walk on. Since I had absolutely nothing to do until I took a bus the next day, I decided to explore the trail as well. I have no idea how my body still was willing to go on after getting virtually no sleep in the last 30 hours. The zip-fizz is the only explanation (thank you dad!). So, I walked down the trail and although I did not see any jaguars, I still enjoyed it. It was also very educational as there were signs all along the trail talking about the Mayan way of life and such. There were dirt mounds everywhere indicating anceint ruins. At one point I came across a ruin that was completely excavated that used to be a Mayan playing field where they played some kind of sport with an 8 pound ball that was the size of a human head or something (I told you this walk was educational). I also sat and gawked for a while at the HUGE Ceiba tree. In Mayan legend this tree represents the connection of three worlds. The roots that go into the ground represent the underworld, the trunk represents the living world, and the branches represent the heavens as they seem to endlessly reach skyward. I really wish I could have gotten a picture of the Ceiba tree and the playing field but alas, I spent too much camera battery at the ruins. There were also some huge vines that I came across on the trail. I attempted to climb some of them but each time I would pull down a huge stick or something that would narrowly miss falling on my head. After a while I decided that maybe it wasn´t a good idea. After finsihing the 1.5 kilometer trail, I walked for 1,2,10,whatever kilometers back to my hotel. I ended up finding a good pizza place to eat dinner where I watched some good ol´ American college football. I spent a good 2 or 3 hours there as I talked with a girl from Germany and a couple raising a little tri-lingual boy (he counted to 10 for me in English, Spanish, and German). Yep…a 4 year old boy can count to 10 in more languages than I can! By the time I went to bed I had been awake for almost 40 hours straight. Needless to say, I slept good as I did not have to catch a bus until 12:00!
And that was the end of my Honduras adventures. I will hopefully have pictures of the ruins up by tomorrow. Peace out!
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