Saturday, January 14, 2006

We finally went to the ruins today. They’re are a pleasant, short walk from the town (LP says 1.5 km on the map and 1 km in the text) and the road there starts right around the corner from our hotel. We crossed a short bridge over a stream and walked on a stone path under trees along the highway for about fifteen minutes.

The entrance fee was indeed $10 (payable in US dollars), as the Canadians had been complaining. I’m not going to say this is too much – a rare ancient ruin for less than the price of a movie in NYC - but I will mention that you could pay for both Teotihuacan and Palenque with $10 and still be able to buy a snack at each place. And it’s another $12 USD if you want to go into some tunnels that allow you to view temples which have been preserved but built over by the Mayans. So it’s definitely pricey.

One unique thing about the Copan ruins is the giant macaws that hang out by the front entrance. They are fabulous birds, gaudy red, yellow, and blue and constantly squawking and either fighting or making out with each other. I have never seen such amazing birds outside of a cage before. There are also some adorable giant Doubtful Guest-looking rodents called agouti who ran around the same area but were much more shy.

We did not hire a guide, although several of them offered themselves to us, but we did eavesdrop on a couple of other tours here and there. Doing that kind of made me wish we had our own guide, because you really do learn things that you wouldn’t figure out otherwise. Like for example that when Copan was an active city, the ground of the main plaza was not grass as it is now, but white stucco, and all the structures and stelae, now gray stone, were painted red. But it was hard for me to hear about the structures built by King 18 Rabbit without imagining pyramids being built by almost twenty bunnies. ("Come on, we have hrair stones to move!")

We rambled around doing our usual ruin thing – finding a good spot and sitting for a long time absorbing the view before walking to the next area, examining it, and then sitting some more. It was a soft, cloudy, humid day, and everything was green. Not the deep, rich, indecent green of the jungles of Palenque, but soft, shy gray greens against a gray sky. It was very pretty. It drizzled at times, but this was fine with us. It cooled us down, and – to beat a dead horse – it’s so great to not to have to worry about covering my hair against water.

Eventually we came to the $12 tunnels. We peeked down the stairs of the Jaguar tunnel, and when we turned away, some guy was coming towards us. We thought he was going to warn us that we couldn’t go in without a ticket, but he actually wanted to sell us a ticket and talked us into going over to the entrance to the Rosalila tunnel to see a photo.

Once there, when we said we thought $12 was too much to pay, he drew us into the tunnel, put a finger over his lips and told us we couldn’t tell anyone but that he could give us a deal. He said normally it’s $24 for both of us, but he’d let us in for $12, or 100 lempira each, which is even less than $12. So we said what the heck, and paid him the lempira. I felt a bit guilty having scorned the Canadians for complaining about prices, but there you go.

The Rosalila tunnel was short, and only offered two views of buried buildings, both behind glass, which was made semi-opaque by the rain-dampness. The Jaguar tunnel was better, though the entrance was frighteningly narrow and hard on my claustrophobia. Once inside it was sufficiently wide and it had good unobstructed views of carved macaws that had formerly been the base of previous temples.

Plus it was cool to wander around in the dank, humid stone tunnels of ancient temples like Indiana Jones. For $5 each, it was worth it, but for $12… I don’t know. If you’re just going to Copan because it’s there, or if you’re on a tight budget, I’d say skip the tunnels. But if you love archaeology or Mayan history, or are on your trip of a lifetime, go for it.

Copan was nice, but not my favorite. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of ruins now, so I’m a little choosy. I loved Palenque best, with its tunneled Palacio and long climbs and howler monkey soundtrack. If Copan had been the first Mayan ruin I had ever seen, I would have liked it better. I even almost feel like I must have missed something, though I think we hit everything on the map. But the carvings were awesome and you know I like carvings. Oh, and there was not a single souvenir-seller inside the grounds.

It’s raining now. It’s been raining a lot lately, and before this past week we had only seen rain once on our trip. Tomorrow we plan to move on to Gracias (where Michael will keep us continually amused with his “de nada” joke) on our way down to El Salvador.

 

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Macaws at Copan Ruinas.

Approach to Main Plaza, Copan.

Stela 4.

Stela B.

Stela A.

Inscriptiones (protected by a tarp.)

Ball Court.

Copan Ruinas.

Agouti at Copan site.

Michael under the crazy Copan tree.

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