Real Chicken Bus

Friday, May 6, 2011--Copan Ruinas, Honduras

I forgot to mention yesterday that one of the buses I took was a real chicken bus.  A lady got on with a live chicken in your hands with its feet tied together with a ribbon.  She sat beside me and put the chicken on the floor.  When she got off the bus a little later, they had to search for the chicken.  It had flopped around until it was located under a seat two seats up.

Today, I was up early to go to the Copan Mayan ruins.  I got there at 7:50 and was the first person inside at 8:00 when they opened.  I was able to get some good photos.  Copan is not nearly as nice a site as Palenque in Mexico was.  Most of the buildings are not completely restored.  What makes Copan special is that it has the best 3-D sculptures of all the Mayan sites.  Palenque is known for its relief sculptures.  And Tikal is known for the completeness and size of its buildings.  So each site has something special to offer.

It didn't take long to see everything here at Copan--much less time than it took in Palenque.  By 9:10, I was headed into the museum.  That's something else nice about Copan.  The special items from the sites in Mexico have been sent to the museum in Mexico City and the special items in El Salvador and Guatemala have also been sent to museums in their capitals.  Here, the museum with the special items they found is on-site.

There is little else to do here but go to the ruins, so I ate breakfast when I returned to my hotel at 10:30 and then spent the afternoon inside reading, napping, and on the computer.  Then I went back out in the late afternoon exploring town.   Eventually, I stopped at a local place and ate another bland dinner--flattened chicken breast with the usual black beans, goat cheese, sour cream, and fried plantain bananas.  I'm tired of what they serve in restaurants here in Central America!

Now that I have been in both El Salvador and Honduras, I would suggest that travelers only make brief trips just inside the borders from Guatemala--to Ataco and Juayua in El Salvador and to Copan in Honduras and forget trying to see anything else in the two countries.  It really isn't worth the effort.  Tomorrow, I return to Guatemala.