A Trip to Honduras

To get to see the Copan Mayan ruins we had flown into San Salvador and then went overland ... going through Guatemala en route. This apparently was quicker than flying into the Honduras capital of  Tegucigalpa .......

Perhaps also safer! High murder rate in Honduras! And lots of narcotic deals in the country... in fact while we were there the ex President was being extradited to the US on drug charges! His brother was already indicted!  

There was a small town near the Copan Ruins and so we stayed there......

Next day... onto the the fantastic ruins.......

First we had to see a plan of the vast site......

To get to the actual ruins we had to walk about a km.... but en route we got to see some scarlet macau birds.... it is a sanctuary for them......

We passed lots of un-excavated pyramid ruins before seeing the first excavated one!

There were quite a few sacrificial altars around the place... this depicted 16 kings around it...

The ruins  have an amazing Hieroglyphic staircase, covered in hopes of preserving it....

The buildings we could see, apart from the pyramids, were also interesting......

The ballcourt was in an excellent state.....

And then there were the Maya Stellae........

They have preserved lot of archeological finds from tombs within the pyramids in a very interesting museum.........

One enters through a long tunnel and emerges to a superb painted temple.....

This temple had been carefully buried by the Maya... and just as carefully moved! Paint is new!!

After our day touring the ruins we needed to relax a little in the charming small town......