Honduras I – Copán Ruinas

From Santa Ana to get to our next destination, the Mayan ruins of Copán, the best route from El Salvador meant going back through Guatemala to get to Honduras. It was a marathon day of border crossing and bus rides! All was going really well until the 4th bus of the day dropped us off on the side of the road unable/unwilling to continue due to a road block further up the road. Turns out the locals of Jocotán were protesting against plans for a Hydroelectric Plant in the local dam by blocking the road with rocks.

After donning all the backpacks and being reassured by some locals waiting for a tuktuk it was only few kms to the border we set off. The road was lined with a queue of truck drivers on the side of the road all waiting patiently (some sleeping in hammocks under the trucks) for the road block to be cleared. An hour and lot of sweat later, we climbed in the back of a ute for a lift from the other side of the road block to the border and then the final bus to get us to Copán! Most complicated border crossing so far!!

Xavi & Dory about 20mins up the road from where the bus left us….still no road block in sight

After having already visited a few Mayan ruins in Guatemala and Belize, Copán ruins were the last on our list as we were nearing ruin saturation! However, they proved quite different from the others so it was well worth the visit.

Carved altar with the 16 kings of Copán

Copán was by far the most artistic of the ruins we saw, and instead of having really huge temples like Tikal in Guatemala, its intrigue was in the quality of the carved stone sculptures (petroglyphs, stalae, statues and altars) and its ceremonial centre.

Semi 3D carved Scarlet Macaw

The Real Scarlet Macaw – still livng in Copán today

One of the key attractions of Copán is a petroglyph staircase on the side of a 30m high pyramid, made of around 1,800 individual glyphs that apparently tell the story of the 16 kings of Copán. It’s said to be the longest stone carved inscription ever found in pre-Colombian America…only when it was being put back together during excavation/restoration, without knowing the story of the kings or the Mayan language, they went with a random approach…so they’re not really sure what it was meant for. What they have been able to discover has been who the kings were and I have to give it to the Mayans, they thought of some pretty cool names for themselves: Mat Head, Moon Jaguar, Smoke Squirrel and 18 Rabbit being up there with the best!!

Petroglyph Staircase – the blocks missing on the sides were taken for display in museums around the world.

Somehow a tapir (or maybe an elephant?) had something to do with the story…

The ball game court. Win and you’ll have the honour to be beheaded!

The other attraction are the stelae with the representations of the kings. They have been really well maintained and some of them still have some of the red paint used by the Mayans.

We were also lucky enough to have a chat with one of the workers in charge of the maintenance of the different ruins. His tools were a little toothbrush, a pencil and a pipe to blow air. Their main concern is the fungus that grows on the limestone, and they spend hours just to clean a few centimetres.

Lots of brushing will be required to reveal this pyramid!

Copán were the last ruins we visited in Central America, where the Mayans dominated. The next ruins will most probably be the Inca jewel, Machu Picchu, in Perú… but there will be plenty of countries and stories before we get there.
Coming next, we will need a few posts to cover our 2 months diving in Utila!!

Guatemala II – Welcome to the Jungle

We came to Petén, the northern most department of Guatemala, sharing borders with Mexico and Belize, to explore the Jungle and some of the more important Mayan ruins.

Templo del Jaguar

Tikal was in its heyday around 200 to 900 AD, the city was one of the largest in Mesoamerica and dominated much of the Mayan region. Due to a supposed combination of aggressive farming techniques (log a forest, burn, plant crops, harvest and repeat – not so sustainable with only a shallow layer of topsoil), overpopulation and maybe a meteorological drought Tikal was eventually abandoned and left for the forest to reclaim.

These days, apart from being an important historical site, it was made famous by George Lucas in the Star Wars episode IV movie.

One for the Star Wars fans..

Tikal is one of the most touristy Mayan sites around, however, for good reason. You walk through dense jungle paths spotting wildlife like venado (a type of deer), coatimundi and spider monkeys, and then come upon clearings with pyramids and temples that tower above the jungle.

Coatimundi

The Maya temples and pyramids are said to have been constructed using always steps in multiples of 13, because they believed in 13 levels of heaven. They also believed in 9 levels of the inframundo (underworld) which were connected with heaven by the sacred Ceiba Tree which is now Guatemala’s national tree.

The Ceiba tree is the only in the world whose 4 main roots mark the 4 cardinal points.

Quite the developed mathematicians, the Mayans used a vigesimal numeral system which uses 20 (count all fingers & toes) as a base instead of 10 as in the decimal system we use. This combined with the number 13 also links back to the Mayan calendar that we mentioned in the last post…interesting but very confusing!

Xavi checking the multiples of 13..

Temple V, steep stairs closed for climbing after a few fatal accidents.

After Tikal and some excellent reports from fellow travellers (thanks Mike & Ana!), we signed up to a 60km trek in the jungle over 5 days to see a much less visited site, El Mirador, just 6kms from the Mexican border. It predates Tikal, with occupation recorded between 900BC and 150AD and is the site of the tallest pyramid in Mayan history. We started off with a 4hr chicken bus ride from Flores to Carmelita, the village closest to the ruins. It was the first of many fun chicken bus journeys on this trip, complete with cramped seats made for Mayan sized legs, lots of stops, a bumpy, potholed dirt road and beautiful scenery!

Our first chicken bus!

Carmelita is a small village, in the national park, that subsists mainly thanks to the tourism & logging contracts. There is a co-operative of guides, cooks, arrieros (mule handlers) who lead treks out to see the ruin sites and ensure the tourism $ is shared across the families of the cooperative and community. The government have plans to build a train out to El Mirador, which is of great concern to the co-op members. The last time the government tried to push the plans, the locals threatened to burn the jungle down – a scary thought!

The trek was a great way to get a bit off the well beaten tourist trail and see a site in a state more similar to how it was when re-discovered in the 20^th century. Walking through the jungle, we saw howler and spider monkeys, toucans, pisotes, coches (wild pigs), wild turkeys, moths & butterflies, snakes, a scorpion and lots of small mounds which were Mayan burial tombs retaken by the jungle.

Spider Monkey – they peed or threw things at us from above when we got too close.

Sadly all the tombs have trenches dug into them by local tomb raiders who stole the jade, obsidian and other articles of value.

We also learnt loads about about the local flora which included Chicle trees (whose sap is boiled to make the base of chewing gum), Oak trees, Copal tree (its sap is burnt for incense in religious ceremonies) and Ramon trees whose nutricious seeds are used in smoothies and made into cookies, ice-cream etc and its leaves which were the mules favourite food. We also ate Sapodilla fruit found along the way and prepared a tea from the allspice plant (apparently good for the upset stomach!).

José, our guide and the love tree that strangles and takes over existing trees.

Each night we got used to quick pond water bucket showers, and climbing pyramids to get views the jungle and sunsets. In the mornings, Howler monkeys took the place of kookaburras as alarm clocks, with a scary cry/cough starting around 4am that sounded a bit like something from Jurassic Park!!

This is how a Mayan pyramid looks like before it’s uncovered

A recent exploratory dig at El Tintal, showing evidence of la calzada Maya, the ancient Mayan causeway that connected cities.

The American archaeologist Richard Hansen, leads the excavation project at the El Mirador site, but due to the logistical difficulties of the area, they are only working at the site during the wet season, July-Sept, when there is enough water for the 300+ workers.

The archaeologists base camp in the middle of the jungle is pretty well prepared

Only approximately 25% of El Mirador has been uncovered so it required a fair amount of imagination, however it was really cool to see the dig in progress. In another 10 years or so it will probably be the next Tikal or Machu Picchu (specially if the train goes ahead!).

Interesting parts of the ruins are mid-excavation, with black tarps or full-on roof structures to cover depending on the time of discovery & importance.

 

The legend says that the Maya hero twins rescued their grandfather’s head from the inframundo

Panel in the “Garras de Jaguar”

Temple in El Tigre complex

Highlights were La Muerta, a multi-layered temple used as tomb, el Tigre complex for monkey and toucan spotting and La Danta, the tallest Pyramid ever constructed by the Mayans at 72m high.

La Muerta from above

We entered La Muerta with headlight to find tight tunnels and lots of bats!

Mayans were reaaally short

The crew on top of La Danta!! Mel Gibson filmed parts of his movie Apocalyto here in 2005/6. He’s now a main sponsor of the ruins to try and make up for making apparent stuff ups in his representations of the Maya people.

Next up, there’s plenty more action to come from Guatemala as we start heading south.

Belize Part II – The Mainland

In between our trips to Belize’s Cayes, we have also seen a bit of the interior of the country which has a very different vibe and culture.

After Caye Caulker we ventured out to Orange Walk to visit the Lamanai Mayan ruins. The town is home to Belize’s biggest rum distillery (the local Alcoholic Anonymous group certainly wasn’t as full as it should have been!) and some excellent street food influenced by its proximity to Mexico!

It’s an amazing multicultural place, where you see Belizeans, Mayan, Chinese, Hindus and Mennonites all in a short walk around town where you can hear people speaking Creole, English, Chinese, German or Spanish as a first language depending on their background.

The Mennonites, the most recent group to migrate there, have been a welcome addition to the under-populated country, bringing farming and woodworking expertise (although they are also blamed for clearing forest for farm land). They are a religious people originating from Germany who create their own sustainable communities and most of them do not use technology. After migrating through various different countries (Canada, Mexico, etc) who didn’t fully accept their way of living, they have settled in Belize because the country allows them to exist outside the taxation system as they claim that they don’t benefit from the welfare. It’s easy to recognise them, men wear overalls, blue shirts and farmer hats while women stick to ankle length dresses.

From Orange Walk we visited the Lamanai ruins, which are reached by boat, after cruising through a complex series of tight and not so tight river bends, slowing only to pass local fishermen and spot wildlife, before arriving at the destination on the side of a large freshwater lake.

The temples in Lamanai are largely unexcavated, so are partially covered in jungle. We walked between temples along jungle paths with howler monkeys and even saw a snake and a toucan! The guides taught us the howler monkey call which has since proven handy in our more recent jungle expeditions (more on that in a later post).

The temples are thought to be solid structures used for religious ceremonies (temples with crest) and astronomy (flat roofed pyramids).

Contrary to popular belief, there is very little evidence to suggest that Mayans performed human sacrifices (except after ball games and if they discovered people counterfeiting the cacao bean currency with balls of dirt – there are a lot of conflicting stories around).

This is especially true in Lamanai as the abundance of water left the people no need to try and appease the rain god.

Before crossing the border to Guatemala, we visited the biggest concentration of Mayan people in Belize, who live in the Toledo Region in the South. To get there, we left the local bus heading South towards Punta Gorda at the turnoff to San Felipe and started to walk along the dirt road hoping to get a ride along the way. Our hitch hiking technique is a bit of a competition and involves us taking turns to stick out the thumb. After a few failed attempts, Xavi managed to hail us a ride ( Xavi 1 – Sal 0) holding onto the back of a red 4WD (that was already full inside) to San Felipe, our cacao farm destination.

After probably the best chicken, rice and beans of the trip so far (and yes there have been many!) which was all made with ingredients from the farm, we started our lesson in chocolate making and Maya culture.

The process of making chocolate while involving many steps is actually amazingly simple. Starting with picking the cacao pod from the tree, the beans inside are selected and, after separating them from the fruit around them, roasted, peeled, then crushed by hand using special stone tools.

From there we added the desired quantity of sugar for an 80% cacao recipe, crushed/mixed again before dropping into molds for refrigeration and voila! We were so busy enjoying the end product that we forgot to take pictures!

Apart from making chocolate, our host Juan also explained a few interesting details about Mayan history including the end of the Mayan calendar in Dec 2012. Basically the whole apocalypse scenario was all drummed up by Hollywood and foreigners. In reality, the ending of the ancient Mayan calendar signified the end of an era calculated mathematically and linked with the astrological cycles of the sun and constellations. Nevertheless, business owners in all Central America were really happy with the boost in tourism!

We visited another few villages in the area the following day with an ambitious plan to hitchhike to a local waterfall. It didn’t go quite to plan when after walking 45 mins on a really hot day along a road with no shade we still hadn’t had any success – at this stage I was having serious second thoughts about not having waited a few hours for the direct bus! But to Xavi’s surprise, he managed to get us another free ride with a local school teacher on long service leave (Xavi 2 – Sal 0).

To conclude our Belize chapter, we continued south to Punta Gorda, another seaside village, and caught a small boat over to Livingston in Guatemala. More adventures to come from there soon!

Lots of love,
Xavi & Sal