Every Country

Unfortunately the town of Copán Ruinas didn’t live up to my expectation. I was under the impression that it was a worthy town in its own right to visit, however on arrival I found it to be like many other towns built around a tourist attraction; pleasant but boring. Quite a small place, everything is in walking distance of each other and can be explored within an afternoon. A good cafe to stop for a coffee is Casa Ixchel and for lunch, Comedor Mary sells typical Honduran food and does a decent size meal for L90-100 ($7 AUD and delicious watermelon liquados, which are very refreshing in the stifling heat). After a day and a half in Copán I was ready to catch the 7am chicken bus out of there. The town’s main highlights are:

Fragile Memories (free)
An art gallery off the Central Park (in a badly signed convention centre) has a great photo exhibition of the early archaeological expeditions to Copán at the beginning of the 20th century. A good place to go before the actual ruins themselves because you get a lot of useful information that you don’t get at the site (unless maybe if you pay for a guide).

Copán Ruins (L300 or $15 USD)  

This was our first stop in the ‘ruins tour’ that happens in Central America so we were pretty excited for it. The gates are open from 8am – 5pm but because of the heat it’s probably best to go in the morning or later in the afternoon (when the park is a lot quieter as well). The site is an easy 1km walk away from town on a sandstone path that runs along the main road. Once inside the complex, you can turn left towards the ticket booth and the Principal Group entrance or right to the restaurant and Museum of Sculptures. Walking towards the ticket booth you will pass the Guide’s Hut where you can arrange a guide for L600 ($30 USD) for up to five people. We were disappointed with the lack of signs within the site so a guide may be a worth while investment, however based on the tours that we chimed in on along the way the guides seem to be a bit hit and miss. Some of them seem to really know their stuff while others just talked for the sake of it without actually giving much interesting information away!

There is evidence of civilizations living in the Copán Valley from 1500 B.C., however this particular site dates from 427 A.D. when the Maya leader, Yax Kuk Mo, arrived from Petén (in the Tikal region). He started a dynasty of 16 rulers that transformed Copán into one of the greatest cities in the Classic Maya Period. The Principal Group consists of the Acropolis and surrounding plazas. The Great Plaza contains a number of stelae and alters that depict the kings prominent during this dynasty. South of this is the Great Plaza where the Ball Court (competitors play a game where they had to keep a hard rubber ball in the air without using their hands) and Hieroglyphic Stairway (63 stairs with over 1,800 individual glyphs tell the history of the kings in the longest known Mayan inscription) are located. The Acropolis made up of the Eastern Plaza (location of the 13th King, 18 Rabbit’s, throne building that has a serpent mouth doorway and sculptured jaguar figures on it) and the Western Plaza (bordered by two temples, one with an altar at its base where underneath a sacrificial vault held jaguar and macaw remains). In the very south of the complex is the cemetery group, where ruins of royal residential houses and human remains were found next to each house, hence the name of the group. 

Included in your ticket is entrance into Las Sepulturas, a compound of 40-50 buildings where the elite members of society including the King’s Scribe used to live. To reach this area you will need to go back to the main entrance and then walk right along the flat 1 km path to get there. We were the only ones at this site and after seeing the Principal Group, could easily be missed.

Rosalila Tunnel and the Jaguars Tunnel (L300 or $15 USD) 

In 1999, archaeologists opened up tunnels that they have made during excavating and researching the site, to show the public structures below the visible surface buildings. We decided to give this a miss due to the price and because Rosalila is an extremely short tunnel and the Jaguars Tunnel has been reduced to only 80 m when originally it was 700 m. 

Museum of Sculptures (L150 or $7 USD)

A worthy museum to visit, however Xave and I couldn’t agree on if it’s better to go before or after the Principal Group. After entering the museum through the mouth of the snake it holds original and reconstructed stelae, statues and alters that once belonged in the main complex. The centre piece of the museum is a full-scale replica of the Rosalila temple which was found almost intact in 1989 under Structure 16, the central building in the Acropolis. I thought it was better to go after the Principal Group, like we did, because we had a visual imagery of the site and could then get a good idea of where the artifacts originally sat. Xave believed we should have gone prior to the Principal Group especially as we didn’t get a guide because there is a lot of information in the museum not found at the site, which would have given us more knowledge of the area when walking around it.

Antigua to Copán: From Antigua we decided to treat ourselves to our second shuttle in Central America that we booked from a local tour agency. It cost $20 USD, picked us up at 4am and was quite a pleasant six hour trip despite encountering some road work that made the trip longer. It is possible to make the trip on chicken buses but it takes eight to nine hours and you have to change a number of times.

Copán to Utila: We got a 7am chicken bus to San Pedro Sula (L140) main bus terminal that took four hours. From there we caught an 11:30am direct bus with Mirna to La Ceiba (L121) which took three and half hours and got us there in time to catch the 4pm ferry to Utila (L523) one hour away. You need to take a taxi to the pier from the bus terminal which for us from Mirna was L40 per person.