Day 43 – Copan
With a long day ahead of us, we rose early (partly because we felt a bit safer with the front curtain raised, but that meant we were woken with the sun at 6am). After a yummy desayuno tipico (typical breakfast), it was just a half hour drive to the Honduran border. We anticipated a good deal of difficulty with this border. It would cost us $35 to import the vehicle, even just for a day. Instead, we were hoping to leave the van in front of customs for the whole day, walk across the border, and take a bus to the ruins.
Now for the process. We easily exited Guatemala into the gated border zone. The lady told us that we would have to file a long form to have the vehicle temporarily leave Guatemala, but we ignored this and hoped for the best. Viki noticed that we did cross the painted line on the ground from Guatemala to Honduras. The Honduras side became rather complicated. First we asked about leaving the car parked for the day, with our biggest smiles, as we had no backup plan. Going through a few different people, this was accepted. We then had an issue with our Guatemalan exit stamp. When we had entered the country, the immigration officer must have made a mistake with the stamp, and stamped our entry date as October 25, 2016. We were held in the office for around 30 minutes while they verified whether we had illegally been in the country for the past two years. Eventually the head director approved us and manually changed the “6” to an “8” in our passports. We hope this doesn’t cause problems later.
Onwards. We caught our “bus” (a cramped rickety van with all the side panelling removed) and made it to the town of Copan Ruinas. It was then another 15 minute walk to the ruins themselves. The ruins according to Viki were the best we’ve seen this trip (I preferred Teotihuacan because of the taller pyramids). There were only a couple other people in the whole site apart from us and we saw many scarlet macaws and even what we think is a tapir (check the photos and let us know!)
Copan was a major Mayan city from around the year 250 to 900. A lot of the site discusses the 17 recorded rulers over the centuries and there are various stone stelae depicting the different rulers. Interestingly, they also had their own form of hieroglyphics which they used to detail their history. The best preserved portion is the Hieroglyphic Staircase, which is the longest known Mayan hieroglyphic text.
After spending most of the day wondering around the site and surrounding trails, we went back to the town for a quick liquado (fruit smoothie common across Central America). We then caught the bus back to the border and had a very easy time crossing back into Guatemala. The same officials as the morning were still there and they didn’t make us fill out the temporary vehicle exit paperwork.
