Quite a lot has happened since I last left you with the blog. April had written this amazing entry on her experience in San Pedro and it was really funny to read all the crazy things she´d been upto. She was just about to post it here when her computer decided to die and never return. It must have gotten some kind of virus, because it seems that her operating system has been wiped....which totally sucks! We´re going to leave it for a few days, then try to turn it on again...yeah we both know thats not going to work. Oh well, these things happen, the really down side is that she has to carry it around for another 5 months!
The last few days in San Pedro were really nice though. Although we did see the whole computer incident as a sign that we should move on and that our time in Lago Atitlan was finished. The hotel was amazing, and it was so nice to wake up with the most perfect view. April had her last three classes at the Spanish school, and even got her maestra into the lake and had a water fight...I have no idea how she managed that. I usually spent the morning relaxing and wandering the town, looking for good deals to get to Copan, and a little more relaxing. We were both still feeling a little under the weather, but that didn´t stop us from enjoying ourselves every day!
We organised a shuttle bus from San Pedro all the way to Copan in Honduras that was meant to leave at 8:30am, but of course this is Guatemala and 8:30 really means 9:15. It was also very cramped, i think there were about 15 people in this mini-van, and granted it did have 15 seats...im pretty sure they only cater for tiny Guatemalan bodies. Its not all bad though, we met some fun people; 3 British girls who convieniently had the third dragon tattoo book and were willing to swap it for the second, another British guy who gave us some good tips on places to go, and some not so good ones as you will soon see, a German guy who is travelling for 2 years throughout Central and South America, and some Spanish girls, one of which chatted to April for a good hour in Spanish. It was all going well for her until she was trying to say that there wasn't much grass in Guatemala City, but the Spanish girl though she was talking about the other type of grass....marajuana. It was very funny for me to overhear that conversation and the confusion on both of their faces! We had to stop at a few places along the way, some people were dropped off and some more were picked up. We finally made it to Copan Ruins at 8:30pm, thats 12 hours of travelling!! It was dark and we were tired and hungry and deciding on stuff was not high on out priorities, so that is the reason this next paragraph happened the way it happened...
Dorm experience.....well yes we experienced the dorm. Although nothing bad happened, we are not too keen to try that again. We stayed in what cliamed to be the best hostel in Honduras, but if that was the best hostel in Honduras, then I definately do not want to stay in any more hostels here. Each bed even had its own name, we stayed in Barbie and Ken. The whole sharing a room thing with compete strangers just did not sit well for both April and I, and we decided that we'd rather pay a little more to have a room to ourselves, a bathroom to ourselves and the peace of mind that our stuff is not going to get stolen whilst we sleep. Also the fact that we are both really early risers and these dorms seem to be filled with the type of people who stay out late and sleep in in the mornings....yeah thats not us, I dont think a day has gone by in the late 2 months where we have slept in past 7am, we are usually up by 6:30 at the latest. So the next morning we packed our stuff and found a lovely hotel that, unbeknownst (not really sure if that is a real word) to us, had a pool, hammocks, tv, and internet!
Friday was spent touring the wonderful and fascinating ruins of the site of Copan. Although the entrance fee was quite a bit more than we were used to paying, it was worth it to see the amazing temples and stelae that Copan has to offer. It was a really nice day and I think we were lucky, there didn't seem to be many tourists there. We opted to not do the guide thing, which I think was a good choice. We wandered around ourselves occasionally reading from the Lonely Planet. The Grand Plaza at Copan is amazing and the size of some of the stela is quite unbelievable. We did happen to notice the lack of precision of some of the restoration work though. Maybe we are used to the exact nature of the restoration at El Mirador, but here at Copan its a little more basic. Firstly, the temples have been restored with concrete...ok that may not sound so bad to most people, but the Maya did not use concrete, so its not exactly how it used to be in the past. Secondly, one of the temples that had been restored was done so using a mortar that we would both describe as pink! Yeah I'm pretty sure the Maya did not have pink mortar in between their stones. And thirdly, some of the hieroglyhic blocks were completly re-positioned in the wrong place, making the inscription totally wrong. Ok im making it sound really bad and its not, im just a perfectionist, most of the restoration work there is great. It wasn't a very big site and we were finished by around 1pm, so we returned to the hotel. Just in case anyone was wondering about the title...GOK stands for God Only Knows, and the GOK piles of Copan are piles of carved stones that were just heaped together when the site was being excavated back in the day, and God only knows where they came from. Some of them have amazing carvings and its a real shame that they no longer have any provenience or context.
The next big adventure is Palenque. Yes I know it seems a little out of the way, considering we are going back to Guatemala City in September, but we have to get out of Guatemala before our visa expires. I cant believe that we have spent so much time in Guatemala, and we haven't even really begun travelling yet. Many great things to come...
