After losing a day due to civil unrest in Guatemala we catch a 4 am bus and make it to Copan Ruinas, Honduras by noon. Having limited time here, we put our tiredness aside and go on a horseback ride up into the mountains. The ride is nice, the scenery is beautiful, and our sixty year-old guide is afoot chasing our famished horses with a stick. We ascend the mountain and come to a small indigenous Mayan village of maybe fifty inhabitants. We demount our horses and walk one km to the Mayan ruins of Los Sapos. Los Sapos means "the toads" and there are some very large stone carvings of toads at the site. Los Sapos is thought to be the birthing site for Mayan women. When the woman where ready to give birth they would be transported to this site to give birth on the rocks. Our guide decided to give us a demonstration of how the women gave birth. He also showed us three horizontal parallel lines carved on the rocks thought to be used to tell the time of day, if the sun hit the first line it meant the baby was born in the morning. Pretty intense to think that this was their baby hospital.
The next two days are full travel days making our way to the southern end of Nicaragua.
