Wow, these early mornings are killing me! My bus from Antigua picked me up at 3:30am. WHY?! I don’t know. Needless to say, I slept like the dead for the first few hours. Anyway, my trip took me far northeast to the Honduran border where I crossed into the next country on my list, Honduras. The officials at this border crossing have the routine down to a science, both immigration offices are in the same building. The whole process only took about ten minutes. About twenty minutes after getting the next stamp in my passport, I arrived in the tiny little town of Copán Ruinas.

After checking into the Hotel Escalinata, I took a little stroll up to the old Spanish fort on the hill and got a birds eye view of my new home for the next few days.

There’s really not much to the town of Copán Ruinas. It’s a very small, very quiet, and convenient base to visit another very famous Mayan site, Copán. The Parque Central in Copán Ruinas isn’t quite the hubbub of activity seen in other towns.

There are a lot of little hotels and restaurants around, though, catering to the steady stream of tourists that trickle through. Other than the supposedly really amazing Mayan Museum here, which turned out to be closed for renovations (grrrrrr!), the big attraction seems to be this staircase, Las Graditas.

I told you in an earlier post that I wasn’t quite done with the Mayan ruins just yet, so here we go. Copán is only about a mile walk from town, so I got up and had a nice walk there. About halfway on the side of the road are these two awesome stelae. The fun has started and I’m not even there yet. They’re only known as stela 5 and 6.

Finally in the park with my ticket in hand, I officially started my day. The shaded trails are really pleasant, but it’s significantly hotter here in Honduras than in Guatemala.

This part of the world is red macaw territory. They were very important to the Mayans, as we’ll see later, and currently they’re the national bird of Honduras. The entrance to Copán has a bunch of resident Macaws that were saved or bred by a nearby rescue and are now free, even though they tend to stick around for the free food.

I started off in the area known as Grupo Principal. Copán really isn’t that big a place, at least not the excavated part. Also Copán’s temples and structures seemed relatively modest compared to some other Mayan sites. Where Copán really shines though, is in the astonishing amount of really well preserved carvings. The Grupo Principal had intricately carved stelae just all over the place. It was really overwhelming!

Each stela is dedicated to a different ruler from Copán’s history and tells the stories of their accomplishments. Many offerings were also found near all of these things. How they managed to stay so intact is beyond me. There were also amazing pieces just scattered and lying around all over.

Right behind the Grupo Principal is the Maya ball court. This Maya ball court is a little different though because each side is decorated with three macaw heads.

There’s also this magnificent depiction of a macaw left on the side. Just awesome!

The biggest temple at Copán is home to the Escalinata Jeroglífica. These 63 steps are carved with thousands of glyphs telling the history of Copán. As you can imagine they are really trying hard to preserve this thing as well as they can. There’s really nothing else quite like this in the Mayan world left today.

The stela at the temple next door was pretty incredible as well.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these things with the base carvings still intact.

Behind those temples was a staircase up and over to the next section. I’m glad I stopped halfway up to take a look around otherwise I would’ve missed this next guy. As much as I’m seeing here at Copán, I have a feeling I’m forever going to wonder how much I also missed.

The next two groups of buildings were called Plaza Oriental and Plaza Occidental. They were both just covered with beautiful, intricate carvings. Like I said, this place was completely overwhelming!

It was hard to determine where Plaza Oriental ended and Plaza Occidental began, but I think it was at this point, not that it really matters. It was so hot this day, I was starving because I forgot to bring snacks, and my water was now almost boiling, but I didn’t care.

Copán really is an incredible place. The area has been inhabited since about 1200BC, but most of this awesomeness is from the 7th and 8th centuries. I have no idea why the people here were so much more skilled with the carving than in other areas, but holy crap! In the end Copán just got too big for it’s own good. Too many people led to strained agriculture, deforestation and erosion.

I finally finished up at the residential area at the far end of Copán.

Wait, did I say, “finished up”? What I meant was I finished up with the main site. About a half a mile away is the tiny Las Sepulturas site. It’s believed to have been the residential area for the royalty and well to do. Only a very small section has been excavated though.

That half a mile walk back after Las Sepulturas was a pretty long one in this heat. I’ve put on a lot of miles today, but I’m still not quite done. There’s a giant sculpture museum at the main site too. In case you don’t overdose on all the amazing stonework at the ruins, you can gaze on even more amazing stuff here.

In addition to all the statuary, they have complete and nearly complete building facades taken from the structures and brought here for preservation. I don’t think I’ve seen Mayan artifacts this big at the other museums I’ve been to.

This guy below is a Mayan Death Bat, a spirit from the underworld. Scary!

The hieroglyphs on these stelae are so detailed!

And of course, the ever present Macaws here in Honduras. This is another one just like out at the Maya ball court. They look very fierce and dangerous in these carvings, but the reality is quite different.

The macaws in reality look more like this goofball seen below. Haha!

There’s another Mayan site further north, Rastrojón, and a Mayan museum in town that I had planned on visiting on my second day, but both turned out to be closed for renovations. Bummer! Instead I decided to visit the Macaw Mountain Rescue that I sort of mentioned above, why not? It turned out to be a much better experience than expected.

Their primary focus is the national bird, red macaws, but they also save great green macaws, blue and gold macaws, as well as parrots, parakeets, and several other species.

Most of these birds are rescued from the illegal pet trade, but they also have a very active breeding program. The birds graduate in stages as they learn how to fly and find food on their own, until they’re eventually set free to go wherever they want. In fact, all of the macaws that I saw at Copán started off here.

I discovered that most of the macaws end up staying nearby, probably has something to do with the free food left out for them everyday. Some of them apparently come back to the rescue to visit with friends that haven’t been let loose yet, like this great green macaw below. As you can probably imagine, the place is pretty noisy. There’s a lot of screeching and squawking!

As fascinating and cool as the macaws are, I was probably most captivated by the varieties of toucans they had.

These parrots were being really playful when I was there. I really spent a lot of time at this place, and not just because I ended up with a free day, it was a really cool experience.

There were a small number of random species of formerly mistreated birds that they’ve taken in as well. It was so cool to see this grey hawk up close.

Below left is a king vulture. Below right is an I don’t remember. LOL Sorry, my memory failed me, but he was really pretty.

I got really excited when I found this giant owl. I couldn’t get a decent picture of him though, since he was way too busy grooming himself. Finally I decided to move on with a plan to come back a bit later and try again. When I got back, he was doing this. Now that’s more like it Mr. Owl! Thank you!

Toward the end there was a bunch of all these pairs hanging out. I believe these are some of the breeding pairs, but I’m not sure.

It’s also unusual to see two different breeds attached like these two below. They were definitely an item though. Love was in the air.

Back in town I had dinner and got ready for my next bus ride to my next destination. I get to sleep in until 5am this time. Whoa! That’s also gonna wrap up my very short time in Honduras. Unfortunately, outside of Copán, Honduras is a pretty dangerous place. Gang wars, robberies, bus hijackings, and one of the highest murder rates in the world, a lot of things I don’t really want to deal with. The government is trying to get things under control, but progress is apparently slow. Hopefully, when they’re successful I can come back because there are other places in this country that I would really like to see. But for now I’m headed back to Guatemala. Stay tuned…