Copan: The Adventure! Part I

Copan is about 3 hours by bus from San Pedro Sula, unless you are traveling on a Friday afternoon. My bus, which was a luxury bus (better than Greyhound) with comfy seats, movies, snacks & drinks served by a 'host', left at 2:30 and arrived at 6:30PM. After a brief taxi ride (see taxi below) I arrived at Via Via - a cute and comfortable hostel about two blocks from Parque Central. For $12 American dollars a night I had a clean room with a very comfortable bed, private bathroom and hot water! The hostel is a Belguim chain and served great hamburgers & fries - my dinner Friday night. What a treat!! The only odd taste was the ketchup which was sweet.

Saturday morning I ventured out early. Belkis had recommended La Casa de Todo - The House of All/Everything! It's a perfect name because they have a gift shop, laundry, dining room, book exchange, internet service, and more! After checking email I had a wonderful breakfast there. The tour book mentions their homemade breads and yogurt, and I can attest that both are delicious! Now, I'm not one to take photos of food, but breakfast looked so amazingly delicious to me that I needed a picture!!

I walked up to Parques Central about 2 blocks uphill and took a taxi to the Copan Archaelogical Site, about 10 minutes out of town. From my tour book:

"Honduras has only one major Maya ruin, but it's a true gem. A Unesco World Heritage site since 1980, Copan archaeological site is known for its remarkable sculptures, especially the enormous and intricately carved stelae depicting former leaders. The site is not as lofty or grandiose as say, Tikal or Chichen Itza but the artisanship is impressive."

"The most famous monument is the Hieroglyphic Stairway (see previous post), the work of King Smoke Shell. The flight of 64 steps bears a history - in several thousand glyphs - of the royal house of Copan; the steps are bordered by ramps inscribed with more reliefs and glyphs. Unfortunately, when the archaeologists uncovered the stairway, its upper section had collapsed. The bottom 15 stairs are in their original position, but the rest of the stones were jumbled and replaced with no way of knowing the correct order. As a result only about 45% of what's written on the steps is decipherable, and the overall story is far from clear."