Copán Ruins

We woke up early this morning in order to get to the ruins right when they opened, all of us tired after having a rest day and staying up later than usual. Oh well, time for some coffee and leftover baleadas, heheh. We totally took those home with us!

We got ready quickly, preparing for an early arrival at the archeology site to beat the crowds. We had a plan for how much to pay for a Tuk Tuk, which our airbnb host told us: 15L/person, or 45L total. We decided that if the driver asked for and pushed for 60, we’d be okay with that. We start to walk towards the town square, and a Tuk Tuk beeps at us, and we ask him his price to the ruins, and he immediately says 15. Perfect! It was so nice not to have to haggle! Wow! We love this place! Lol. We jump in and away we go! We bop around the cobblestone streets, and before we know it, we’re arriving at the ruins. YAY! So excited! This is my first ruins visit since I joined up with Dana and Hayden and a new site for me! I always wanted to visit Copán while I was living in El Salvador, as it was “only” a 6 hour ride from San Salvador, and now it’s finally happening! 🤗

We pay our entry fee, and take a quick walk through the free museum, and scurry down the stairs and towards the path to the ruins. As we’re walking we hear that crazy screaming child sound, and we knew we’d be lucky enough to see some more Macaws! And we spot them high in the tree, and we notice that there is a mandmade nest there. Cool! So we continue walking, and we see signs about how they are rehabilitating the Macaws, who are born on Macaw Mountain, and moved to the park where they adapt to the local Macaw population, and once they’ve fully adapted, they are released into the wild. We also read a plaque that Macaws are monogamous…awwww hehe. 🥰

We walk through the park entrance, and we see and hear a ton of these birds. Sooo cool! Apparently it’s feeding time, and there are multiple perches filled with fruit and at least 3 birds on each perch! Wow! We got up close and personal with them, and we felt so lucky to be in their presence! 

As we continue down the path, we start to get our first glimpses of some for the ruins! The first notable pyramid we see looks like its been refurbished, and boy is she beautiful. We have a great time walking around with nobody there, the only exception being the workers who are raking up the fallen leaves. I am again in my element, and so excited to see the stelae with such detailed carvings, and even some red color left! Wow! I don’t think I’ve seen any maya ruins still stained with colors. We quickly hurry to the biggest pyramid and get shots with nobody else in them, and check out the ball court. So cool!

I love gazing at the hieroglyphs, and one particular pyramid has the longest Mayan inscription found to date. Around 1,800 glyphs! Most are difficult to see with the naked eye, if not impossible, but a few were notable! Sweet! The entire site is comprised of the ceremonial center, the acropolis, and a couple of residential areas for the nobles and the elites. Something interesting is that the elites and nobles buried their loved ones next to where they lived and not in a communal cemetery. I was also super intrigued to see the ancient stone structures of the residential areas, as it’s the first I’ve seen seen at any archeological site. Awesome! 🤩

It took us around 3 hours to walk the entire area and get our fill of the site. By the end, we were all ready for a smoothie, and we called our old pal, Wilson, the Tuk Tuk driver. He was so kind to us, giving us all the tips, and he didn’t try to charge us the “tourist tax,” so we agreed to pay him double for our ride back to town. Pay it forward! 🙂

We find “the best smoothie” spot in town, San Rafael Cafe. We show up and realize it’s quite fancy and is probably more expensive. We get the menu, and we start to get carried away, dreaming about what to order, and thinking if we don’t have enough cash, we can pay with a card. But that’s just the hunger and heat talking for us, lol. We cool our jets and decide to JUST order smoothies, and we’ll try to find food elsewhere. I got a dragon fruit or a “pitaya.” So yummy! And while we were enjoying that, we looked up a restaurant that came up yesterday. It is on the central square and overlooks the park. Awesome! The food looked good online, so we meander over there.

Once at the restaurant, Dana and I decided to have a passion fruit juice, but as it turns out, there was no electricity, so they couldn’t run the blender. Bummer! Guess we’ll have to settle for a beer! Haha, booo hooo. Just kidding. It was great. We also order “gorditas,” which are similar to pupusas in that they are stuffed corn tortillas, but these were filled with chicken, beans, cheese, avocado, and onions, almost like a sanwhich. And they were fried, so the outside was quite crunchy. Score for another local dish! I’ve had gorditas in Mexico, and they’re basically sandwiches, so this was a fun new variation to try.

Hayden had a hankering for heladdooo! And he found a cool place called Maya Helado Rolls, so we go there….only to find they’re closed! Oh no! They have pictures outside, and its literally sheets of ice cream rolled up. It looks so cool! But why are they closed? It dons on us that there isn’t any power… We had stopped by a souvenir shop to find Dana a patch, and they didn’t have power either. Ahhhh, ok, so it must be a town-wide situation. That’s when we start to notice the generators on the sidewalks, lol. So we figure the ice cream shop closed due to that? Either way, we walk away, disappointed, and head back to chill at the apartment. Wait. Will the apartment have power? Ugghh. Haha

Nope! Ahh, oh well, lol. We checked the laundry we started earlier, and it appears that the power cut out at the beginning of the cycle. Dang! The sheet of laundry soap has started to dissolve but not completely. And the clothes are wet. Do we hand wash them or do we just hang them up to dry? It was just a load from the previous day, so they weren’t really that dirty. Thankfully we did the majority of the laundry yesterday.

With no power, we have no AC, and no WiFi. So, no getting work done, and with the afternoon heat and full bellies, we decide to play a game of cards to entertain ourselves, and we agree the loser will drink a nasty local banana juice soda lol. We all tried this drink, as it is a local Honduran soda, but we all detested it. The stakes are high for this card game! Hehe. We have a great time, and around 4pm, we decide to start packing and to shower before we lose daylight.

Right around 5:15, the power comes back on! Yay! Now we can make some coffee and get some work done. Yes! We spent the rest of the evening working away, still trying to figure out what’s next after El Salvador. Where will we end up? The options that came up were Nicaragua, México City, Colombia, and Belgium!

The next morning, I woke up earlier than my alarm, did some work on my volcano blog post, and just enjoyed some time in bed. I heard Dana and Hayden, so when my alarm actually went off, I left my bedroom and saw Dana already making coffee! Score! We woke up with plenty of time to pack our things and ease into another shuttle day, this time to El Salvador! Wooohoo! Allegedly, it would be around 5 hours, but given our recent experiences, that’s just never the case.

Once we had a delicious breakfast of a banana and some breakfast oat cookies, we tidied the space and got our bags together. We left the airbnb with extra time to stop by a small store to spend the rest of the cash we had. Our choices? Very important and necessary items: water and Oreos! 

We head to the meeting spot, and we’re half an hour early. We were told to show up 10 minutes before, and the last shuttle picked us up right around then, so we didn’t want to chance it. Well, 10:00 came and went and nothing. 10:15 and nothing. Around 10:20, Dana sent the shuttle company a message, and we were told that the shuttle was coming, but it was delayed because some people coming into Copán didn’t have any money with them to pay the entry fee for Honduras. Seriously? Well, what can you do? Haha

The shuttle comes around close to 11, so we’re already an hour behind. We’ll see how long it takes us to actually get to El Salvador. 😅 I asked our driver if we were picking up any other people, and he said just one more person. We all thought it would be this guy, Fredo, who we met on our shuttle into Copán. He was going to San Salvador, where we wanted to go initially, but the website said the shuttle was full. So we checked the shuttle to Santa Ana, a city in western El Salvador: wide open. But Santa Ana is on the way to San Salvador, so we assume this shuttle stops in Santa Ana first before continuing on towards the capital, lol. The shuttle must pick up passengers in Santa Ana, otherwise, why weren’t we able to book through to San Salvador? 🤔 So, our guess was correct, and we picked up Fredo at his hotel. Interesting, but we loved knowing it would only be the 4 of us, as our previous shuttles had been filled to the brim. We also expected to breeze through the borders being a smaller group. We never did ask if our driver would be picking more people, hehe. It’ll remain a mystery!

The Honduran-Guatemala border was only about 15 minutes away from Copán, and we get there just in time. Right after we got in line, there was a huge group of people who filled in behind us. It took roughly 30-45 minutes to exit Honduras and enter Guatemala, all in the same building we did on the way in. Easy Peasy!

Back on the road again, and it would be just under 2 hours before reaching the Guatemalan-Salvadoran border. This shuttle ride made me feel carsick…not as bad as the first one to Lake Atitlan, but it wasn’t great either, lol. Luckily, I was able to sleep a bit, and when I woke up, we were fairly close to the border. Yay!

The Guatemalan side of the border was straight forward, we just walked up to a window and the guy checked and stamped our passport. Awesome, back in the shuttle and onwards to one of my favorite places….El Salvador! 

The shuttle stops right on the border and an immigration officer asks to see our passports. Ok, cool. We expect to continue further and go into a building to get stamped, or scanned, or something. But we don’t! Thats all she needed, just to see the exit stamp from Guatemala, I guess. We made it! We’re in El Salvador! Woooohooooo! My first time in 5 years! I’m embarrassed I haven’t made it back sooner, but I’m here now, even if its only for a short time.

From the border we drove about 1.5 hours to our hostel in Santa Ana. I realize I’ve never actually stayed in Santa Ana before, maybe nearby, but I never really visited the city. Cool! 

So we check into the hostel, drop our bags, and head out for food. We got a recommendation for a pupuseria, but it didn’t open until 5. We had 2 hours to kill, so we decided to go to the main square and see the cathedral. Whomp Womp. It has so much scaffolding, it looks like a metal facade. 🤣 Too bad! I was really looking forward to seeing it, since I never had. Oh well, I’ll just need to come back, hehe. 

We walk around a few streets, just meandering and hoping to find an artisan market so Dana can find a patch, and so we can find some smoothies to tide us over until dinner. No luck on either end, so we look up a second place that one of the hostel workers gave us. Before we got there, we found a cute cafe, so we just went here instead. 

We got the menu, and I saw a couple of things I’d completely forgotten about: budín and arrayan! So naturally, I ordered both of these, but it turns out they didn’t have arrayan….a local fruit, which I ordered as a smoothie. So I got maracuya, or passion fruit. Not a terrible runner up, hehe. 

We sat here for almost an hour, battling hanger and sheer exhaustion. We NEEDED the pupusa place to open up, lol. The budín saved us a bit, but right at 5, we decided to walk over and get ourselves some much needed and desired pupusas. I simply could not wait! I haven’t had a real pupusa in 5 years! 

We ordered a variety of pupusas, some rice and some corn, and went to town. Dana and I had a Pilsner, of course. Hehe. Next up will be a Suprema, and then hopefully Cadejo :).

On our walk back to the hostel, we were a much merrier bunch, calling out the dog poop on the sidewalk, and the death holes, which were just gaping holes in the sidewalk, waiting to sprain or break an ankle lol. We stopped by a small artisan shop, and Dana found a patch! Sweet! So back to the hostel we go, to do some work on our next steps and to catch up on the day’s writing and pictures. Until next time! Chau!