'the staircase' - alot of the stones fell and the archaeologists are still figuring out exactly where they go - they have writing and pictures on them that go in certain places

5/22 - 24/08 Inland Tour

The night before we left for 10 days we had our 1st proper rainstorm during the night. It was good that we were there to batten down all the things that were not secure. It was still raining lightly the next morning so we 'got to' bring the dinghy up on deck in the rain! Ironically this was the 1st time we were able to see the volcanoes off in the distance.
Jim & Kay of sv Grace were our lovely traveling companions. We first stopped in San Salvador at the ATM's and for yummy papooses. Had a nice ride to Copan, Honduras arriving around 3 pm. Jorge our guide and driver, told us a lot of interesting things about El Salvador: that the schools close during coffee harvesting season (Nov. & Dec.) so the kids can help, how coffee was discovered as having caffeine in it; some Shepard's feed it to their herd and noticed the animals got a little hyper, details about the civil war that ended in 1992, that sugar cane leaves are poisonous like poison ivy so they burn the leaves off before harvesting the cane and how the locals don't like the stronger taste of the all the coffee they grow & export so they mostly drink instant. The scenery was green, green and lush with some hills/volcanoes to drive over. Copan is a quaint, small, hilly, cobble-stoned street town with pretty buildings. The big attraction is the near by ruins and some language schools. We opted to check out the ruins the next day so we could take it easy in our new surroundings. It was a good thing we did since Scott noticed his ATM card was missing! After a few frantic phone calls he canceled the card and calmed down enough to check out the Mayan museum (which had some printed English explanations) and then the town with us. The restaurant we went to had waitresses that balanced beers and food on their head - very impressive! And a 'stove' that was a brick grill that had a huge bellows that blew air on the fire to heat up the grill! Local language is Spanish and their money, the Lempia, was L18 to $1 US so figuring out prices was interesting. Considering how books were 2x's the regular US price, 18:1 meant little.

The Ruins- The Copan ruins are one of the most decorative (with carvings). The Mayans have 200+ gods that they made sacrifices to. Our Mayan guide said the people felt it was a great honor to be sacrificed and even the royal family sacrificed members. They also sacrificed prisoners and the captain of the winning team of a type of ball game they played, which is too hard to describe and seems really hard to play. They buried their dead under their houses and later dug them up to paint their bones to help them in the after life. It took them a week to move one stone for all the stone buildings they made and cut them by hand with tools made from stone. The average life span was only 30 or 40 years from all that work. The latest idea of why the civilization collapsed was because of starvation.

The other really good thing about going to the ruins for me was that my visit rejuvenated my soul. I just go over what seems to be my 'every 6 year fight' with my older female sibling, this is the 3rd time we've done this, maybe it will be the last. I have to figure out how to stop her from effecting me so much, until then it's a good thing we come to these places.