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A Long Day, Well Worth It

Copan, Honduras


(September 2) Once again, we were up well before dawn. Amazingly, so was the staff at our wonderful hotel, who had prepared us breakfast at 3:30 a.m.! Now that's service.

Shortly after 4 a.m., Gustavo, our driver for this leg of the journey (too much to do in one day by bus) arrived and we loaded up, heading for Copan, Honduras. Ellery and I slept for the first few hours, but eventually woke up for a second roadside breakfast around 9 a.m. During this break, we had time to chat with Gustavo, an adorable guy who spoke terrific English, thanks in large part to his having visited his sister in Atlanta every year.

Crossing the border into Honduras was fairly straight-forward, owing in large part to the fact that visitors to Guatemala often make this journey to Copan. And it is definitely worth the side trip.

Copan is very different than Tikal, and we had a great guide, Juan Carlos, to show us around. Because the stone in Copan is hardened by the lava of the volacnoes, unlike Tikal, much of the carvings are in terrific condition. So, while the scale is not the same, the quality is supurb -- Mayan kings, serpants, and jaguars all come to life on the massive stones. Just as facinating is the history of the excavations, including the diversion of the Copan River, which had been erroding much of the site. Copan also has a fantastic on-site museum, where many of the sculptures are displayed.

After about 3 hours in Copan, we proceeded to Puerto Barrios, on the Carribean coast. Again, the landscape changes were very evident as we returned to the land of tropical plants, cowboys and thatched roof huts. Still, not all was unfamiliar -- at Ellery's request, we stopped for lunch at a McDonald's.


permalink written by  shoshtrvls on September 2, 2009 from Copan, Honduras
from the travel blog: Belize, Guatemala and Honduras (2009)
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Welcome to my travels. On this site you'll find recent trips and some very old trips. You'll note that for some trips I wrote very detailed reports (at least in the beginning), for others, I didn't even take notes of where I was on what dates. Nevertheless, I've done my best to document, to...

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