Richard and Jetti's Land Trips in Central America
Trip 2 - Honduras
Our second trip, a few weeks later, was into neighbouring Honduras as we wanted to see the Mayan site at Copan. At the site entrance was a flock of macaws, the first we had seen outside pet shops. Once again, whilst trying to take photos and videos, I was reminded of the phrase, "Don't work with children or animals." Footage seen on TV always makes it look so easy.
As in Tikal we used a guide, without whom we'd have just wandered around aimlessly. The Copan temples were much smaller than the ones we'd seen at Tikal, and once again some structures had been renovated and some left as they had been found. But what made the site special was that it was full of amazing carved stones or "stellae." The lower photo shows a typical one that was about 10ft (3m) high.
The Mayans played a game somewhat akin to soccer. Five players a side would try and hit a rubber ball onto one of the carved macaw-head targets, using knees and elbows instead of feet. Apparently a similar game is still played in some areas today, although I doubt whether the losing team is sacrificed to the gods as they sometimes were 1500 years ago..
Every stone on this 100ft (30m) high stone stair case, below, is intricately carved with symbols telling the history of Copan which had not been properly translated when the staircase was first reconstructed. Now archeologists realise they assembled some of the stones in the wrong order. We were told that it is the biggest such carving in the world, bigger than anything in Egypt for example.
Many of the stellae are considered too precious and delicate to stay outside, so a visit to the museum was essential. An imaginative entrance led us down a "serpent's body" tunnel to be faced with a true scale replica of the Rosalila Temple, found in 1989 buried under the central building of the Acropolis. It was dedicated to Moon Jaguar, Copan's 10th ruler in 571AD. We learnt that most of the Mayan structures were originally painted with this bright red paint. They must have looked very dramatic when first viewed in the jungle.
All around the museum walls were amazing carvings. It seemed incredible that the Mayans had no metals, so everything was made using flint and obsidian tools.
After dragging ourselves away from the museum, we spent the night at the Hacienda San Lucas. This family home of the local Spanish "Grandees" had fallen into ruin in the 1980's. It was restored 4 years ago, had only two rooms, no electricity and only a wood powered kitchen. But the food and service were wonderful. Jetti and I tried making tortillas, much to the amusement of the kitchen staff. Like many things it's much harder than it looks.
There was a fantastic view across the valley to the Copan ruins, but another reason for staying at San Lucas was because on the grounds was a "Birthing Stone". It proved impossible to photograph the almost worn out carvings, but it was a stone labour couch used by Mayan women for centuries. Our young guide took us through the woods and showed us a parrot's nest, coffee bushes, and was clearly very knowledgeable about everything around him. He was also very confident talking to strangers, not bad for someone who left school at 4th grade - he is now about 14.
Given the options, it's better to be rich than poor, but I still can't decide whether it's easier being poor in a poor country or a rich one. And there's no doubt about it, Honduras is a poor country, even more so than Guatemala. Eclipse is on the Rio Dulce, which is the rich man's playground. It's quite common to see helicopters fly in to private landing strips on a Friday evening, and see large powerboats roaring down the river at weekends.
But we have also seen fathers doing a "school run" across the river using dugout canoes. These are still a major means of transport in all of Central America, but it looked a bit incongruous when we saw a lone paddler suddenly stop, reach into his pocket and pull out a cell phone. Likewise, Antigua has ASDL internet access, something we don't yet have in Millbrook.
Its hard to appreciate the poverty in the countryside until you've seen it. We heard that a US school offered a local school its old computers when they upgraded theirs. "Great!" was the reply from the teachers, "but it may be a little premature, we'll need electricity first. If you want to help what we'd really like is some plywood and nails so we can make walls round the classrooms and thus keep the pigs out." And this in a region Ronald Regan thought so threatening to US security that he authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations in order to subvert the governments.
Why bring this up? Well, our guide showed us his "house" in the jungle. Elsewhere it would have been condemned even if it was used as a garden shed. Water came from a stream 200m away, obviously there was no sanitation or electricity, indeed it didn't even have watertight walls, but it's where he and his sister had lived all their lives
I said in an earlier report that travelling by bus was a life enriching experience. Well that's certainly what we had leaving Copan. At the time the details were hazy, but piecing it together later we decided that the driver of the pick up truck ahead of us fell asleep. He then swerved into the oncoming traffic and hit a 10ton truck carrying oranges. The truck ran off the road and the pickup stopped in front of us and was hit by our coach.
Oranges went everywhere, the truck was probably a right-off, the pickup certainly was and our coach wasn't going to go anywhere in a hurry again. But of course more serious were the injuries to the pickup's occupants. Fortunately one passenger got out unaided, but covered in blood. We dragged another one out of the back but he was clearly seriously hurt. That left the driver. It took 5 of us 20 minutes to get the door off to try and reach him, but it was obvious that he was still trapped and in considerable pain.
An ambulance with cutting gear arrived about 1/2 hour later, but by then we had left in a replacement bus which took us to Gracias, the original Spanish capital of Central America. Somewhere we don't really want to visit again - but the drive to and fro made up for the grimy town. The castle behind the hotel was relatively new and was probably built as a country home for the local commandant rather than as a proper fort. The small church looked well kept though.
A different route home took us to another border crossing and then through a high, dramatic mountain pass to Chiquimula where for the first time we stayed in a real backpacker hotel. It was very cheap and basic (12US, 7GBP for our double room).
We felt very sorry for the backpackers. They have to stay in places like this every night, eat strange food in dubious restaurants every day and can't go "home" in the evenings. Furthermore they have to carry everything with them, so they must always be short of the right clothes and of course they cannot buy any souvenirs. So it was somewhat surprising that many of the backpackers we met were not school leavers but couples in their early 30's taking a year off work to see the world. It certainly made us realise how lucky we are to be travelling by boat.
And so back to the boat, heat and work.
