Day 32 11.08.15
Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep well tonight. Unlike the others I slept through the screaming cockerel and chickens but still woke up feeling really tense and unrested. Nevertheless, we got ready to head out to the main attractions of Copan, the Copan ruins.
For breakfast I had some porridge with banana and soon after our Indiana Jones guide called Juan Carlos appeared to take us down to the ruins. We walked from our hotel, (that’s how close the ruins supposedly were) but then walked a lot longer than I thought we would. We entered the archaeological site and followed Juan Carlos’s stick with a feather that helped him to point at the fragile statues.
As we were sort of promised yesterday we saw the flocks of the macaws flying around the site.
At the time we entered, it was their feeding time and so we could find them sitting around munching away on papaya or flying about in groups of 3 to 5, soaring over our heads. It was quite impressive listening to them screaming away, sometimes even fighting several metres high hanging on to a liana.
We also saw some symbols of the Mayans depicting the macaws. You straight away know what they images are supposed to represent, and still the Mayans added little features, such as having a person sitting inside the birds beak being the culprit for its screams.
The path opened up to a large plaza, the main plaza of Copan. The plaza was setup like a large stadium, being able to hold 27000 people. In the centre there are several statues, and a little pyramid, used mainly for sacrifices and as a seating position for the throne of the king. The statues are all positioned facing the sun during the whole year. So one statue will be positioned to face the sun from January to March, one will be positioned to face the sun during the summer period, one during autumn months and so on. The statues all depict the same king. The narcissistic king 17 rabbits. He ruled several years and under his reign there were several parties, sacrifices, spiritual meditation and not a lot of work (such as farming or constructing periods etc.) less work leads to more thinking and that ultimately lead to 17 rabbits death – assassination by a neighbouring town that were fed up of having to pay taxes to the king for his lavish parties.
The statues all represent 17 rabbit, however all in different forms such as him as a ballplayer, him as the rain god, him as the wind god etc. Archaeologists know that these statues represent 17 rabbit, as they are all “signed” by him. On each stone you can see different numbers depicting number 17 as well as his symbol of the rabbit. The Mayans used an interesting number system, where lines represented the number 5 and dots the number 1. So 17 rabbit would have been 3 lines, 2 dots and the symbol for rabbit.
The way he has engraved himself in these stone statues supposedly shows how vain he was, thinking that he was not only a ballplayer, but also the god of rain for example, and therefore could guide his people better than any other ruler before him.
The statues are really well kept and you can see the different engravings perfectly. Be it the image of a sacrificial stone looking like a turtle, a statue of the king with a crocodile representing fertility, you can really identify the images well even – even with untrained eyes such as ours. Oh, and apparently the Mayan Viagra was a mixture between crocodile meat and chocolate, called chocodrile.
The stadium was fully equipped, leaving space for markets, supplying a full functioning toilet area with especially designed drainage systems (therefore located at the top of a plateau), and the necessary seating for public and for the king and other VIPs.
We moved on a little further and saw another ball court with locker rooms. Whereas other civilisations in Tikal for example would play with a rubber ball and would have to shoot this ball through hoops, the ballplayers would have to smash the ball onto stone gargoyles to score points. The ball could never leave the air, if it were to touch the ground, the other team would win a point. The rubber ball could be up to 4 kilos and could only be passed on using elbows, hips or the shins. The feet and hands and the head could not touch the ball. The winner would then be sacrificed to the gods.
Right next to this ball court is a Mayan “library” or better said a set of stairs built by a reigning king covered in hieroglyphs depicting the legend and the ancestry of the reigning king. It shows the dynasty of the family, including how long he ruled, what happened during that time etc. It is one of a kind a very well preserved. These stairs cause Copan to be a cultural heritage site.
It is said, that whereas Tikal could be compared to New York, with all its very temples and pyramids, Copan is rather comparable to Paris, with more detailed pyramids, more carvings, more colour and statues.
Moving away from the plaza and up the hill, we could see a large and impressive ciabre tree that had grown on the very top of the highest pyramid, weaving its roots through the entire pyramid, the roots being nearly as big as normal trees. Archaeologists have thought about cutting these trees down to be able to excavate more of the pyramids, whereas ecologists have pleaded not to in order to preserve these impressive trees, and to avoid erosion and more wearing down of the actual stones used for the construction of the pyramids.
We moved on to another smaller plaza that represented the sea, with large stone seashells positioned on the pyramid, the god of wind protecting it. It even had a roof looking like a crocodile, however this collapsed and now is shown in a museum.
We then moved on to look at a necropolis. These were very beautiful, as they looked very similar as to those from Palenque. Here again the kings were buried and another set of stones and temple built over them, seeing as the Mayans believed their ancestors went to a higher place (to heaven) and therefore were divine as that was the goal of the living Mayans.
We climbed a neighbouring pyramid to get a better view of the entire complex. We passed an excavated tomb that had been victim to grave robbers that had been active before the archaeologists were able to retrieve the contents. We also got to marvel at the work the archaeologists from abroad are doing to this site. For example right next to the site there was a river coming closer and closer to the site, threatening to undermine the ruins and to take the pyramids with them. Therefore, some archaeologists from a university from the US financed the work of redirecting the river to a position further away from the ruins. They also tried to rebuild the parts that had been already been washed away and to provide more support for the rest of the stone structure.
From the top of this pyramid arrangement, we had a great view over the entire central plaza.
This apparently was were all the VIPs would mingle with the king and where great parties were celebrated.
We thanked Juan Carlos for his amazing tour! He was just great, giving us information on all ruins, answering our questions and throwing in the occasional joke. I think it was the best tour of ruins I have had up till now.
We then had some time for ourselves and I decided to sit in the shade and let the ruins work their magic on me. I love to imagine how life would have been like back in those days.
We returned by tuk tuk (now knowing how long it would take to walk back) and decided to head out straight away for lunch. We went to a lovely little steak place in the town centre and then split up as we all wanted to do different things like getting a hair cut, or in my case, getting my shoes mended (again !), and finding a bank that would accept my travellers cheques, and finding a place for a manicure and pedicure, I was in dire need!
Getting the shoes fixed was quite easy and very very cheap! Finding the bank was also possible, however I had to go back to the hotel to retrieve my cheques and a second time to retrieve my passport, an essential part of this process. I signed my cheques and got handed out the money not in dollars (as the cheques were set out as) but in Lempira. Oh well, I will just have to change them into the Nicaraguan currency as soon as I leave the country.
I also found a place for a manicure and pedicure, however I was disappointed, as she didn’t quite do what I wanted her to do, meaning that I later had to redo most of it. Oh well, I should just not forget why I tend not to have them done, even at home!
I even got to post some postcards and head to a supermarket to buy some snacks for our ride up to Roatan Island.
I headed back the mountain via tuk tuk, I really shouldn’t be getting used to this, but my knees thanked me for it.
I enjoyed some internet, and then got ready for dinner.
Again we went to a grill place, where the food was just amazing! We started off with a shared starter of “Arafne”, I hope I spelt it correctly, pretty much a stone pot containing a paste of refried beans, mixed with chorizo still boiling hot. Delicious!
For my main course I had some pork chops, which were to die for! Very tender and even more tasty. After dinner we headed back home and fell asleep straight away.
