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| If you're in Central America you'll probably travel long distances to explore deserted Mayan ruins. It's one of those days for us. This time we caught a bus at 5:00 AM in San Pedro Sula which carried us halfway to a chaotic town called La Entrada, nowhereville, and then we made the mistake of boarding a local bus that stopped for every pedestrian on the road. Because there are no bus stops, people stood ten paces from one another, strung out along the road like buoys on the water, and the bus stopped for each one..start, stop, start, stop...the ride used enough time for me to grow a beard. Finally we jumped off at Copan Ruinas, an unmissable site if you're an archaeologist. | |||
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| In Copan you can see the hieroglyphic stairway, built by King Smoke Shell. Glyphs cover the stairs and tell the course of local history, from AD 200 to 800. Next to the stairway is the Great Plaza that showcases mammoth stelae in the shape of Copan kings like Moon Jaguar, Smoke Monkey, or our favorite, Great Sun Lord Quetzal Macaw. | |||
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| There's a ballcourt where
the Mayans played their mysterious form of basketball. The loser was sacrificed
to the gods. (And our athletes complain about a salary cap). | |||
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