Copan Ruinas--The town, not the Mayan antiquities

Casa de Cafe

It is such a treat to wake up to Howard and Angela’s delicious Honduran coffee, served in a big, big white mug out on the patio overlooking the loveliest of tropical views. I am the only one out here at 6 a.m. It was Party Central last night with everyone celebrating a wedding at a huge, outdoor fiesta, complete with fireworks and rock music to the wee hours. And until after we went to bed the block next door held a fund-raiser to pay for a new street, featuring its own dance music. We caught a glimpse of the wedding party  in the little square downtown, and we dropped in on the block party, which consisted of little kids dancing their heads off and adults serving  tostadas with your choice of toppings for 20 limperas a serving (a little over  $1) It was all served steaming hot (or in the case of the salad, nicely chilled) from the top of picnic tables pushed together. It looked like more food than the crowd on the block  could possibly eat and I wondered how they could ever raise enough money to repair a street. Here are a few in the process of repair:

I have a great shot of a lady in a nice dress and a pair of strappy extra-high-heeled shoes going down this street, but I can't find it. Makes me so sad~ :-(

Casa de Cae is the second building on the right. It is amazing to watch young men mix up concrete and throw in the big cobblestones.

This is a new cistern under construction by the side of the house.

Streets are a major focus for attention in Copan Ruinas, which is located in Honduras’s most mountainous region.

Antigua’s streets are mild, civilized cobblestones that only jar your teeth if you are silly enough to ride the tuktuks (a sort of motorized golf cart conveyance) a lot. A pair of leather-soled shoes would probably last a year and I rarely saw small boulders trying to trip up or sock the ankles of the folks walking on them. The rough, tough, straight-up-and-down, slipprey, crumbly  nature of Copan Ruinas’s cobblestone streets are in a whole new league. A person could live well with a shocks-and-brakes repair shop as a source of income. Ouside this little city, people buy cars third-and fourth-hand, and repairs are a hoped-for, not an assumed, part of ownership, according to books I’m reading. But the cars in Copan Ruinas (mostly pickups, actually) are nearly all new and in good condition. This seems to be a prosperous community without the obvious begging of Antigua.

Which is not to say that Honduras is better off economically and socially than Honduras. The statistics would say the opposite. But this little town prospers because of the remains of the Mayan  civilization that handily left some of its best artifacts right nearby. We are starting our two-day visit this morning in a couple of hours. It is chilly this morning and yesterday was cool and overcast—very unseasonable weather and I’m loving it—I vastly prefer this to the hot, humid climate we expected to endure while seeing the ancient Mayan cities.

Like Guatemala, the area around Copan was captured by Pedro de Alvarado, who has the dubious honor of being considered one of the most ruthless and exploitative of the band of similarly-behaved conqerors sent by Spain in the first quarter of the 16^th century. They got rich, the local populations got squelched and they have never recovered.  The history of the place is one of invasions, of course. The Mayan ruins did not spring from the locals but was probably the result of a powerful leader from Teotehuacan or Quiragua (that’s my phonetic spelling), Mexico. The city prospered and grew from around 425 to 825 AD. Then it was apparently a victim of its own success and could not support its population as a result of a variety of kinds of environmental degradation.

We hiked up a steep hill yesterday to see a small children’s museum describing the Mayan civilization of that period. It was wonderfully simple and charming; Here are a few nuggets:

Only five civilizations ever developed written language independenly: Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Harrapian, and Maya.  They wrote on paper, wood, stone and pottery, among other things.

The Mayans were great mathematicians and seem to be the first to master the concept of a place-holde "zero." They worked with a base 20 system, which the museum explained as "being like counting on your fingers and your toes, not just your fingers."

The Mayans had a clear understanding of celestial objects and used them as guides in setting up many of their cities, such as Copan.

The Mayans' success led to their downfall when environmental degredation made it impossible to support the population.The poster listed many of the same problems with deforestation, water pollution, land erosion, etc., today and asks what will happen to the Mayan territories now?

Here are a few photos from a local butterfly preserve--also a few interesting factoids: Mayan warriors were thought to turn into butterflies when they died, and (several centuries later) butterfly is the term for male homosexual in Honduras. These photos are also of the flowers.

As we were walking to the preserve we came on this sad sight of carnivorous birds making a meal of a dead dog.

This is a happier photo--the weekend market.

Note the lack of indigenous dress. The most commonly noticed item of dress is cowboy hats on men.

This little girl was quite apprehensive of strange-looking characters and her mom was sweet about trying to get her to say hello to me.

Tuk-tuk plus cobblestones equals a bouncy ride.

The bright building in the background is the color that many of the classic Mayan buildings were circa 400-800 or so.

Old fort on the hill

Views of the neighborhood from the hill.

Symbols of six important gods from Mayan history: Sun, Moon, Corn, Mountain, and two that I don't remember. If you pull the ball, they identify the symbol and tell you a little bit about the god's powers.

Here we are back at Casa de Cafe!