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Expedition to Honduras (Copan), the coast of Belize and Guatemala (Tikal).
Thursday, April 24, 2003--Miami to San Pedro Sula, Honduras and Copan
Two Yellow Cabs turned up at the appointed hour (8 am) at our Ft. Lauderdale apartment building and fought over the honor of driving us to Miami International for our flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. MIA was a zoo with the newly installed bomb-sniffing machines taking up most of the baggage check-in area. The unions of American Airlines are voting on their re-consideration of wage concessions following disclosure that the top execs at AMR had voted themselves big bonuses and pensions. No one is sure whether the airline will be flying when it is time for our return in two weeks. Nevertheless the flight, AA 941, departed on time and had a comfortable 2˝-hour flight to San Pedro Sula. We were met by a hired tour guide for Lindblad (Miguel) and bussed to a local restaurant (Sam's) for a pasta lunch. After lunch, the mini bus took the 16 pre-cruise extension travelers on the 2-˝ hour road trip to Copan.
The road is a well-paved two-lane concrete strip with concrete-lined gutters. A certain "biggest has the right of way," pecking order prevails. Branches in the road indicate that there is an accident site ahead. We quickly left sugar cane fields behind and climbed 1100 meters into forested hills following the riverbeds of several streams. Houses and businesses line the side of the road, often no more than a few meters off the road. The people appear cash-poor, but they are reasonably well fed (lots of small fruit and vegetable plots could be seen adjacent to the homes, Brahmin beef cattle in the fields and small dairy herds.) They are very clean--washed laundry hanging in front of most houses. Lots of school children in school uniforms. Primary school (grades K-6) is mandatory. To go to high school, 6-12, some families must move to a larger town. Some towns were having markets. We'd followed a small pickup overloaded with oranges until we found an opportunity to pass him. After a 20-minute pit stop at a Texaco station we resumed the trip and at the next town, saw the pickup, oranges half gone, in the middle of an active market. Houses were quite small, one room affairs. Many windows lacked glass, but had wrought iron bars for security. It is the dry season now. And hot. Our guide assured that when the rains come, they had glass.
Our hotel, Posada Real de Copan (Best Western), is modern looking but proved a disappointment. The A/C units (White Westinghouse) proved temperamental. They would only work in the "air" position, not A/C, and then only in the "high" fan setting. The TV was inoperative. Nobody spoke English.
Honduras is two hours behind the Eastern Time zone (Central Standard Time - without Daylight Savings) so our 5 pm arrival corresponded to 7 pm. While we were freshening in our room, suddenly power failed in the wing where the 16 of us were quartered. Getting no reaction from the staff, we all decided to go to dinner. We found our tablemates to have been an adventurous and congenial group. Many had been to Antarctica, Galapagos and Baja. Power was still not back on when we finished, so we retired to our room to get ready for what promises to be a busy day, tomorrow. The electricity is back on. A/C, too.
Friday, April 25, 2003-- Copan
The next morning did not prove much better for this sad hotel. No hot water. We took cold showers at 6 am to prepare for breakfast and a lecture before going on to the ruins, about 3 km away.
The lecture was an excellent 1-hour computer/projector presentation by Dr. René Viel, a French archeologist (reneviel@hondutel.hn). Suggested text: The Mayans, by Robert Sharer. Dr. Viel took us through the time line of the Maya in Copan and compared their presumed politics to that of the French and Spanish Kings in Europe, 1000 years later. (Copan flourished from 650 - 822). One possible explanation for its decline is a peasants revolt against a succession of 16 kings, the last of whom apparently needed to invoke an image of his lineage to the first in order to demonstrate legitimacy.
A short 3-km bus ride took us to the archaeological site itself where, beginning with a model, our guide, Miguel, pointed out the major features unearthed so far. Colorful (and noisy) macaws greeted us at the entrance. There are hundreds of unexcavated mounds, many overgrown by huge kapok trees, under which are stone buildings presumably invaded by their roots. Many buildings are, themselves built on top of earlier structures. The Maya apparently believed in a 51-year cycle of renewal and would rebuild temples and buildings in layers. We previously saw this at Uxmal on the Yucatan peninsula. The Mayan cities of the Yucatan, Uxmal, Chitzen Itza and Tulum, flourished several hundred years after the decline of the Maya of Copan. Some of the pyramid-like structures had structures (buildings or altars) on their top. These were made of stone with mud and limestone for mortar, and protected from the weather by a stucco coating. When the civilization that created them declined or moved away, the stucco crumbled, the mud-mortar washed away and the upper structures crumbled. Miguel pointed out that the stone blocks at the bottom of the pyramids were the remnants of these altars.
Another site of interest was the hieroglyphic stairway whose stones also collapsed over the years. Archeologists from the Carnegie Institute tried to fit the blocks back together as best they knew how in reconstruction efforts. More recent translations of the glyphs and better understanding of Mayan syntax indicate that the stones were perhaps not re-installed in the correct order. The archeologists make detailed drawings of each glyph and then rearrange them as they achieve a better understanding of the language. The lecturer estimated that they could now translate about 35% of the glyphs. The stairway is the longest known text left by the Maya. Ruler number 15, known as Smoke Shell, erected it and is a lineage tree recording the ascension and death of all Copan rulers from Yax-Kuk-Mo to Smoke Shell. There is an enormous tarp covering the stairway to protect it from further erosion. For us, it was a welcome bit of shade. Sawn logs provided a place to sit and listen to our guide.
We climbed over monumental-scale arenas, a huge plaza, numerous temples and the famous ball court. There was an underground tunnel, leading to the buried Rosalila Temple, which Rosemarie would have liked to enter, but it was not on our agenda. There were numerous steles with very elaborate carvings and glyphs representing the name, birth date, the ascension to power date and date of death inscribed using the accurate Mayan calendar. One square-sided altar, known as altar Q, depicts the 16 kings of the classic period, with the last king receiving the emblem of office from the first. It is a sort of ancient political advertising billboard. It is well preserved with many intricate details. Our morning lecture covered Altar Q (picture next page) in considerable detail. Many of the more delicate carvings are sheltered from the elements by various makeshift shed roofs. Others are completely exposed. Some of the steles are in the place where they were found, others have been replaced by replicas (so-labeled) and the originals are in museums.
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