Copan, Honduras

June 29: to Copan
This morning we hopped on the El Mochito bright and early, because we wanted to catch the 10:20 bus from San Pedro Sula to Copan. When we got to SPS, we found out that bus was sold out, and that we had to wait until 3pm. So we spent the next 5 hours wandering the bus station, buying Phil some awesome flip-flops made from old tires (way more sturdy than Old Navy), reading, and interneting. Then we got on the bus, arriving in Copan around nightfall. We grabbed a ride to our hostel in maybe one of the craziest tuk-tuks we've ever been in (which is saying something after Asia...or maybe it's just been a while...). We checked in, and grabbed some street food for dinner.

June 30: Copan Ruins




This morning we got up and had some breakfast, during which we met some Canadian girls and arranged to share a tour guide for the ruins. It was about a 15 minute walk from the town, and when we got there it was quite empty since it was so early. We grabbed our tour guide, and started to check out the ruins. Copan is pretty small in size compared to other Mayan ruins, but it is well known for its carvings. Apparently 18 Rabbit (the 13th of 16 rulers at Copan) began the trend of beautiful carvings. Some of the first carvings we saw were stellae, most of them were 18 Rabbit himself. Then we moved onto some of the other temples, through the ball court and to the hieroglyphic stairway, which was really amazing. It is basically an entire stairway with beautiful carvings on each step. Apparently it was meant to be a history of Copan, but when archaeologists found Copan, most of the steps of the staircase had fallen down. The well-meaning archaeologists put the stones back up, but in the wrong order, so the entire meaning of the staircase is essentially lost. We kept making our way through the ruins, looking at lots of carvings including the old man of Copan and dancing Jaguars and intricate  carvings of the 16 rulers of Copan, etc. We also saw several tombs and learned that there were actually 3 other cities buried under the one we were looking at (apparently the Mayans buried their cities from time to time and rebuilt new ones). There are a bunch of tunnels running under the ruins that the archaeologist have used to look at all the covered structures. A couple of them are open to the public, but we had heard that they weren't really worth it so we didn't go. Later, however, we did see an awesome reconstruction of one of the buried temples. After the ruins, we checked out the museum, which had replicas some of the carvings we had seen and some of the ones that were buried. Next, we headed to the site called Las Sepulchras, a less well known site that gives a taste of the day-to-day life of the Mayans (basically it was where everyone lived). There, a Honduran dude started following us around and explaining in Spanish what all the different ruins were. He turned out to be extremely informative (more informative perhaps than the guide we had paid for, despite the fact that he was speaking in Spanish and not English) and explained the layout of all the ruins. There were apparently 4 distinct classes. The higher classes (scribes, etc) had one main house for the spouse, and a courtyard surrounded by smaller houses for the concubines as well as a separate kitchen. The lower classes only had one house, no concubines. Most of the houses had small tombs under the beds where they buried their loved ones. Our guide even showed us the tree the Mayans used to make their red paint. When you squish the green leaf, it starts producing a red liquid...so cool! We gave our guide a hefty tip and headed back to town, where we tried to check out the museum (apparently they had lots of jade items recovered from Copan, as well as several skeletons from the tombs) but unfortunately it was closed, so we napped and interneted for the afternoon. We sought out dinner at a local pupusa place, but it was not where our map indicated, so we ended up at really expensive restaurant called Twisted Tanya's, where the food was simply delicious. It was three courses: soup or salad followed by a main (we chose homemade pasta with shrimp and local veggies and chicken curry with mango chutney) and a desert (cheesecake with blackberries and a chocolate caramel torte thing). Not a very Honduran dinner, but delicious nonetheless.

July 1: Finca el Cisne aka horseback riding through a farm

 Some travelers we met along the way highly recommended this tour, so we decided to follow their advice and check out Finca el Cisne for the day. Basically, it is a gi-normous farm that has been owned by the same family since the 1800s. It was about 25km outside of Copan, or a very bumpy hour ride through the hills. Once we got there, the first thing we did was hop onto some horses for a tour of the farm. First we checked out a couple of shade-grown coffee plantations of different ages, then we went and saw some baby horses and cows, then to the tilapia farming ponds, and we even got to eat some starfruit. Basically, it was a three hour ride through the beautiful countryside, where we occasionally stopped to look at something interesting. I really enjoyed the three hour ride through the countryside (the horses seemed to really enjoy it too...they were all about cantering the whole way). Phil, on the other hand, found out that perhaps horseriding isn't his thing, but put up with it for the sake of my happiness. Regardless, we both really enjoyed seeing the farmland and different stages of coffee growing. After the horseride, we returned to Carlos' (our guide) house for a delicous lunch consisting mostly of things they grow on their farm. After lunch we headed up to the processing plant for the family's coffee plantation. Here the coffee is popped out of its fruit, fermented for 36 hours, washed, sorted and finally dried. Having learned just about as much about coffee as we could handle, it was time to soothe our muscles in a hotspring. The hotspring was pretty impressive, with several pools of various temperatures. Fully relaxed, Carlos drove us back to Copan. On the way, he mentioned that there was a German brewery, which became a unanimous decision for dinner. The beer was awesome (a pilsner and a semi-dark hefe), but the food was only mediocre. Tired, we called it a day.