Friday
Todd, Erinn, Ross, Kelly and I set off early for our 6-hour drive to Copán, which was exciting in a “will we fly over the side of the mountain while evading other drivers” sort of way. Copán is famous for its Mayan ruins, and the town we stayed in, Copán Ruinas, was pretty charming with its cobblestone streets, colorful stores and houses, and friendly people. Todd and Erinn dropped Ross, Kelly and me off at our hostel before continuing to their hotel. Then Ross, Kelly and I set out to explore the town (which wasn’t such an ambitious undertaking, since everything in the entire town was within about 8 blocks from our hostel). We also checked out the central park, which was a small, cute paved area with a fountain at the center, and did the mandatory touristy things like jumping on what looked like hopscotch squares in the middle of the park and taking pictures pretending to dunk each other’s heads in the fountain.
The three of us ate dinner in an open-air restaurant, and when we were caught in a torrential downpour with water blowing in on us from all sides, pounding on the tin roof and dripping from all the lush green vegetation surrounding us, Kelly said, “Well, I guess we’re in
Saturday
Saturday, we were on a mission: tour the Mayan ruins at Copán. The Mayan civilization at Copán existed around the 400’s-800s AD, and the archeological digs began in the 1800s, at after the discovery of the ruins. Our tour guide, Julio, had participated in archeological digs over the past two decades, and it was so interesting to hear about how, even though excavations have been going on there for over a century, they were still making major discoveries at the site. In 1989, for example, they found a well-preserved temple buried underground, with the original paint still intact, and that they are still trying to piece together how these people lived, what their temples and other ornate stone structures were used for, and what their sculptures and hieroglyphic carvings mean. The original city consisted of stone buildings painted red, with stucco-paved courts and paths, and included temples, altars commemorating Copán’s rulers, a hieroglyphic stairway with 63 steps that immortalize battles won by Copán’s kings, a sacrificial altar, and symbolic statues and sculptures depicting things like life stages, gods and the underworld.
There was also a ceremony and game arena, with bleacher-style stone seating, that included a narrow ball court with two sloping stone structures on either side. Archeologists have guessed that players had to keep a hard rubber ball from touching the ground without using their hands, feet, or head, possibly symbolizing the sun’s battle to stay aloft in the sky or some other religious concept. Points were scored when the ball successfully hit the stone statues of macaw heads at the top of the slanted stone. There is also a sacrificial altar next to the ball court, complete with grooves carved into the stone for the person’s blood to run down. They think either the winners or losers of the ball court game were put to death at the altar—they’re not sure if this society considered the sacrifice to be an honor to reward the game winners.
The majesty of a tradition that dates thousands of years ago.
Us tainting said tradition.
And once more, for good measure.
Another thing I found interesting was that there is a well-engineered Mayan plumbing system with stone gutters intact and running through the site, which Julio said helped protect the ruins from serious flooding during Hurricane Mitch in 1998. A lot of the buildings, and particularly the sculptures and carvings, have also held up well over the centuries –the red paint has worn off and the grass has grown over the ground, but it’s still easy to see the basic layout of the city. There are also many underground tunnels and structures buried under the newer structures that we weren’t allowed to visit.
Julio started our tour by leading us on a path into the forest, where he stopped on the dirt path to pick up the pieces of red clay that were lying at our feet. He informed us that they were pieces of ancient Mayan pottery, broke the pieces in half to demonstrate that they were in fact clay, and then tossed them back on the ground like it was no big deal. The five of us figured he and the other tour guides planted them there, so that he could impress the tourists.
He also stopped at a ceiba tree to explain to us the importance of ceiba trees in Mayan culture—they believed the high-reaching branches represented the gods in heaven, the trunk represented the earth, and the roots represented death. Julio put a lot of emphasis on the tree and its roots, which led to the following exchange a few minutes later, when we finally arrived at the ruins and Julio began explaining the stone carvings.
JULIO: When we die, where do we say we go?
ERINN: To roots?
JULIO: No, we say heaven, but the Mayans said into the ground. And what do we reach under the ground?
ERINN: Roots?
JULIO: No, water….
The ruins supplied a steady stream of photo opps, including one of Erinn, Kelly and me artistically positioned on the steps of some of the ruins. Ross noted that it looked like an album cover and Todd added that it should be our Honduran punk band’s album cover. Since we now needed a name for our just-formed band, Kelly suggested Smoke Monkey, the name of Copán’s 14th ruler, because it just sounds kind of cool.
There was also a great shot overlooking the ruins from a hilltop, and Julio said he had a picture of it that he could sell us from 2 lempira, and promised us that it was a good one. He then pulled out a one-lempira bill, which featured that view of Copán, and offered a trade.
After finishing our tour and taking a picture with Julio, we walked through “El Bosque” (the forest), where archeologists believe common people in Copán’s society lived. We then checked out the museum, which contains some of the original sculptures that archeologists needed to protect from the weather, as well as replicas of what some of the original structures looked like. It was really interesting, and provided a great opportunity for Ross to share his new game with Kelly and me—it was called “stop pushing yourself,” a variation of the classic, “stop hitting yourself.”
After visiting the ruins, we headed to a restaurant that was supposedly having a “gran concierto de rock” that night. We got to watch the band set up, and when it looked like it was going to rain, we observed them draping a blue tarp across the top of some trees in the courtyard to protect their “dance floor.” We also amused ourselves by feeding the restaurant’s cross-eyed cat.
We spent the afternoon wandering around the city and shopping for souvenirs. Todd had to buy a Jesus wood carving that he broke in a shop, which was one of the major purchases of the day.
We also had a Hot Honduran Cowboy sighting as we were exploring the town. He wasn’t wearing the typical cowboy hat all the other men in town seemed to be wearing, but he made up for this by not wearing a shirt. By the time I turned around to see him, it was too late—I only saw him from the back—but Kelly was salivating and I took a picture of the guy’s back. This set off a weekend-long quest to find Kelly a shirtless Honduran cowboy. Erinn reprimanded Todd and Ross for not springing into action to delay the cowboy, and “forcing us to play this game of hide and seek,” as we wandered the streets in search of the guy.
We all stopped for a little while in a coffee shop whose menu featured background info on their coffee. Kelly read it aloud, and the part about the “coffee growns in
1. Should she get a machete with decorative carvings, or will they just get worn off with all the slashing she’ll be doing?
2. Tassels or no tassels?
3. What should be emblazoned on the knife or its sheath? Her name? A family motto, like “Safety First”? Our walking club tips (“90 degrees”) and pillars (“fellowship and nature”)?
4. Should her knife have a name? Because if she gets into a confrontation, it would be cool if she could pat her trusty knife and say, “I’ll have to see what Old Blue thinks about that.”
5. Do they make Swiss army machete knives with a plus-size magnifying glass or corkscrew?
6. Should we film a documentary on machete knives where our interviewees wear t-shirt like “Don’t ask me, ask my machete” and “My grandma went to
Kelly was also debating getting dreds and told Erinn that if she gets them and hates them, Erinn can cut Kelly’s dreds off with her machete.
Back at the hostel, Ross, Kelly and I noticed for the first time that our hostel had swinging saloon-style doors, so we took a picture of Ross making an intimidating old-west entrance. We also established our room as the Brain Trust of the hostel with conversations like he following:
JESSI: I have 500 lempira in my pocket, and
ROSS (singing in a falsetto voice): Together, forever, you’ll stay in my heart…”
KELLY (returning from bathroom): I’m going to shower now. Will you sing something for me?
ROSS and JESSI: Any requests?
KELLY: Anything loud enough for me to hear.
JESSI: Let’s sing her Happy Birthday…and let’s sing it IN A ROUND!!!
ROSS: That’s like the worst song ever to sing in a round, because it’s all the same line.
KELLY: Maybe we should keep the door shut so we don’t let skeeters [mosquitoes] into the room.
ROSS: Skeeters sounds like a disease in its own right. “This is a bad case of skeeters.”
JESSI: Remember the skeeters epidemic of ’83?
(later)
JESSI: I guess I don’t need to wear my flip-flops across the floor in our room.
KELLY: You never know…
ROSS: You don’t want to get SKEETERS.
Playing good cop/bad cop: Ross and Kelly interrogate Jessi.
(Ross=bad cop, Kelly=good cop)
KELLY: Where were you on the night of...tonight?
JESSI: Hanging out with redundant people?
ROSS: I BETTER GET SOME *$%#@&* ANSWERS!
KELLY: We’re working together here and just need some answers from you. Would you like some coffee?
ROSS: YOU WON’T BE GETTING ANY COFFEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING!
KELLY: That’s the best threat you could come up with?
(3 minutes later, after Kelly and Jessi are finished ridiculing Ross)
KELLY: Should we try again?
ROSS: No, I got promoted to captain.
KELLY: Would you like some coffee?
ROSS: What? I couldn’t hear you from my OFFICE.
KELLY: I need a “bad cop” and I hear you’re the best in the biz, cap.
ROSS: Call me cap’n.
KELLY: But then I feel like I should add “arrr” to the end of that.
Sunday
On Sunday, we hit up a thermal spring near Copán Ruinas. It wasn’t very far, but it took us an hour to get there because
1. The roads were winding and unpaved
2. We came across a super-puddle in the road, and Erinn and Kelly had to get out of the car and poke the puddle with a stick and ask some local kids if it was too deep for us to drive through
3. We had to slow down a bunch of times to ask for directions and point out shirtless Honduran cowboys to Kelly.
The thermal spring was definitely worth the drive—it was a picturesque river with rocks, and you could alternate between sitting in the refreshing cool water and sitting inside this hot bath-size circle of rocks that people have pushed together inside the river, where the hot spring empties. Alternatively, if you want the best of both worlds, you can sit on rocks in the part of the river that’s mostly cool water but has currents of warm water running through it, like I did. In a proud moment of agility for our group, Kelly managed to get herself stuck half-underwater between some rocks she was crawling over. But, aside from that, it was really relaxing, like an outdoor spa.
We had a picnic by the river, which was plantain chips and exquisite peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We forgot to bring a knife to make the sandwiches, but luckily, we had some stale tortillas that were hardened enough to do the job.
Then two puppies who were the size of my foot came bouncing over to play with us—they belonged to a Honduran family that was taking a vacation at the hot springs, so we talked to the kids for a while (they were 15, 8, and a toddler), and we played with their puppies. A local 9-year-old boy who had been talking to us when we were in the river also joined us in our puppy-playing.
The black puppy was clearly the troublemaker of the two dogs. After they would wrestle, they’d both stand up as if calling a truce and then as the black one walked past, it would dart its eyes to the side, nip the white one in the butt, and scamper off.
The drive back to Copán Ruinas was an adventure, since the dirt roads were turning to mud. We had to plunge through a few pond-sized puddles that had formed in the road, not even knowing if they were too deep for the car to handle, which made us feel very Indiana Jones. As we were driving, we noticed that among the lush green mountainsides there were some huge mudslide patches. Erinn remarked, “I wonder if that’s a little Hurricane Mitch action,” and Todd replied, “I hope that’s not a little yesterday action…”
Back in Copán Ruinas, we drove up the mountain to Erinn and Todd’s hotel for some relaxation in the hammocks on their hotel’s porch and a tasty dinner of traditional Mayan foods in the hotel restaurant. While we were having a drink on the restaurant’s lawn before dinner, admiring the view of the city, Erinn commented that Kelly should have her honeymoon here. But Todd pointed out, “Yeah, but her shirtless cowboy may want to go somewhere else for the honeymoon, since he’s lived here all his life.”
Dinner was delicious and was spiced up even more by the entertainment the hotel owner’s dogs provided. Luco, the younger, more energetic dog, liked to antagonize the older, calmer dog, the more intelligent of the two. At one point, a loud bang rang out from inside the kitchen. Just as the older dog jumped up, barked, and ran inside to investigate, Luco shot out of the kitchen, barking ferociously at the yard. Ross narrated, “Just in case they’re coming around the back—Plan B is foiled!”
After dinner, Todd and Erinn drove Ross, Kelly and me back to our hostel, where we discovered that the rain had turned all the running water a muddy brown. Luckily, the nice ladies who ran our hostel gave Kelly a supply of tap water they had collected earlier which only had the normal level of contamination, for us to use when we washed up before bed.
Monday we drove home, but not without a stop along the way at a prison famous for the hammocks it sells. Erinn bought one as a souvenir of our glorious Copán weekend.
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