Luis showed up right at 9am and we headed for the ruins. There are 2 prices you can pay to get in, one just for the ruins which is $10 US and the other to enter a couple of archeaological tunnels that show some of the substructure and older buildings underneath, that costs $12 US additional. We passed on the tunnels, we'd read that one was semi interesting but the other not worth it. Neither of them are original but were made in order to reconstruct some of the buildings.

The first thing we saw as we got to the gate were about a dozen scarlet macaws hanging out at the ticket counter. They were free and there were several up in the trees but most of them were sitting on the kiosk or the chain link fence next to it or waddling around on the ground where there were food and water bowls for them. They come down and go into pens at night, probably mostly for their protection. They are very endangered in the wild and they are the bottom of the food chain as well. These were pretty tame and unafraid of people. It was nice to see them flying around and I understand the need to protect them from both human and wild predators. Mimi and I spent quite a while sitting around with them and getting our macaw fix. It's amazing how much they act and sound like our birds, particularly the sounds they make when they are comfortable and just hanging out - which from watching these and a few other wild macaws seems to be the main thing they do. I guess searching for food takes up a lot of time but other than that they just sit around alot and squabble with each other.

Copan is famous for a couple of things and one is the stelae which are in pretty good condition and with some of the original paint still on them.

Interesting info about this huge city state is that they settled in a rich river valley but as the city grew they built more and more temples and housing for the elite and eventually used up all the rich bottom land. Their food had to be grown on terraces on the hillsides and their health suffered from lack of nutrition. From examining bones they can tell that by the end the people suffered from malnutrition, even the elite. The guess is that this is one of the main reasons the city was abandoned.

In the ensuing years, the forest returned and it is once again a fertile valley. This is a picture from the top of one of the residential palaces looking across the valley. Maps show that there are the remains of buildings and roads across this whole area and up the opposite hills. It remains to be seen if the past will repeat itself and slash and burn farming will again wipe out this fertile land.

The other thing this site is famous for is a giant staircase in which the face of every step has carved writing on it. Unfortunately, when it was reconstructed they didn't know how to read mayan glyphs and they just put it together however it would fit. Now they have deciphered their written language, know that it is a true phonetic language, but only the first 15 steps were still standing and are in their original order - the rest is now gibberish.

Below is one of the elite residential areas, basically huge family compounds and temples.

Unfortunately the museum was closed and they appeared to be working on the roof. Inside is a famous reproduction of one of the temples as it would have appeared when the city was thriving. It is painted bright red with green and blue embellishment. I was really looking forward to seeing it, I did get a picture on a postcard. I'll scan it and put it up soon.

Once we were through with the ruins, we took one of the ever present Tuk Tuk's back to the town of Copan Ruinas. These little 3 wheeled taxi's are everywhere in Guatemala and here in Honduras. We looked around town some more, had lunch and then caught a collectivo van back to the border.


None of us wanted to spend another night in the dirt lot at the border so at 5pm we headed back towards the main highway. As it was getting dark we stopped at a large Texaco station we had seen on the way in and pulled down the street a bit to a large lot that seemed to have once been another gas station. There were some guys loading a truck there and they told me that the lot, the huge house in back of it and the Texaco station across the street all belonged to the same man and that I should ask at the house if we could park there.

I used the intercom at the gate and spoke with a woman who told me her husband was not home but that I should ask his employees at the station across the street. I first talked to a guy pumping gas, he said there was no security over there and it wasn't safe. He showed me another dirt lot with a high fence around it and said we were welcome to park in there with some gas trucks and that they had 24 hour security. I was sceptical and didn't want to stay in another dirt lot. He told me to go inside and talk to the cashiers. I went in and talked to one of the girls and she also said it wasn't safe across the street as there was no security. As I was telling her that we really liked it over there and didn't want to move into the dirt lot, the other cashier came over and got into the conversation also saying it is dangerous across the street, there is no security and you should come over here and park inside the fence. OK! OK!

I translated all this for Patti who was with me and we decided we had to take them seriously. As we walked back Patti told me that she had walked around inside the hotel next to where we were when we stopped here for gas on the way in. She said it was big and if we could fit through the arches there was a lot of room. So, in we went and it was much nicer than a dirt lot, had multiple swimming pools, restaurant, grass, and an armed guard. I went in the office and they said we could spend the night for $75 Quetzales which is $10 US. Yeah Baby! We're moving in!

We got through the arch, settled and level and we all jumped in one of the huge pools to wash off the dust of the truck lot and the dirt from the ruins. As we were floating around drinking beer we all agreed that this was our first time swimming with an armed guard. Señor Guard was standing a discreet 25 ft away with his shotgun slung over his shoulder. Outside of the one night we spent near the Tikal ruins, we've had armed guards wherever we have stayed in Guatemala. In the truck lot at the border, the border guards were armed and had told us they would watch us and our vehicles. In Rio Dulce the marina had several armed guards, a high fence and a gate boy. Here we had a guy with a shotgun making sure we were safe while swimming. I decided that I need to perfect a way to get them to also go get beer and walk the dogs.