My career in archeology is in ruins...

The town of Copan Ruinas has one substantial attraction which gives it both its name, and makes it one of the jewels of Honduras' not-so-strong tourism industry. The Mayan town of Copan was the capital from the 5th to 9th centuries AD, located in the very southeast of the kingdom (not far from the boarder with Guatemala). The site has a large number of structures remaining, although the river apparently eroded away a large portion of the site, and is particularly well known for the quality of the sculptures and art work.

It gets pretty, or indeed very, hot here from around 10am, so after breakfast we headed off to the site at around 8 . It-s only about a 10 minute walk outside of the village along a seemingly safe path, and we spent a couple of hours wandering around the site. The buildings are very impressive (with the majority still being in very good condition) and some of the sculptures equally well preserved. Its also in a pretty nice setting, with trees around and from the tops of the structures you can see the rolling Honduran and Guatemalan countryside, which at this time of year in rainy season is wonderfully green. It doesn't quite have the dramatic mountain backdrop that Machu Picchu does, but then I guess that is the feature that makes MP so special.

The cover on the left of the photo is there to protect a particularly ornate staircase

In the above photo you can see (along with the staircase) the remains of the ballcourt (in front of the stairs it's the two identical sloping stone building opposite each other). Its not known exactly how this game was played but seems to have the general gist of teams of 11 having to keep the ball in play without using hands, in a sort of no-hands volleyball). The court actually features on one of the Honduran notes, and some research on line tells me that the game had a huge amount of religious and spiritual symbolism, with the winners considered to be granted a swift path to heaven.

Another quirky feature of the Mayans is their practice of building structures on top of other ones. Some suggest this was done every 52 years when the solar and social calendars coincided, whilst others say it was just the done thing when a new ruler arrived in town (I guess similar to the Egyptians building pyramids bigger than each other, the Mayans just build structures on top of the last guy's!). As a result, there are a couple of tunnels underneath the site that have been dug, revealing even older structures. We didn't actually go into these tunnels, as the guide book suggests they're considerably less impressive than what's above ground, and not really worth the extra money. An interesting fact about Maya architecture nonetheless.

There is also a small Macaw sanctuary at the entrance to the ruins, and it seemed that we got there at the right time as the birds were all out and sitting on their perches for feeding time. The Macaw is the national bird of Honduras but I gather is rather endangered. Anyway, they were very colourful and didn't seem to mind our obnoxious cameras whilst they were eating away.

Hello Polly