We didn’t have much time to get through Honduras to reach Copán Ruinas, but we knew that we wanted to start our Mayan adventures here. The town is in the north of the country near the border with Guatemala, and it certainly involved an epic, (and boring) multi-day journey to get there. From Esteli in Nicaragua we transited through Honduras’ mega capital Tegucigalpa for a couple of nights and then took an 8 hour, 2 bus journey to Copán Ruinas. Yet again we endured overzealous air-conditioning on the buses which left us shivering from cold, and it seems that buses in Honduras don’t like you to use the bathroom as they don’t bother switching the light on in it, rendering it useless or at the very least a severe challenge! But, we got there in the end!

Copán Ruinas town has definitely got a certain charm to it. Despite being a tourist gateway for visiting the nearby Mayan ruins of Copán, it manages to retain a lot of local character. There are many nice hotels and decent restaurants in town, but they are all independent establishments which at least seem to be run by local people, and you can get a taste of Honduran life in the central market or just by watching the people go by in the main square; and that includes Honduran cowboys, complete with hats, boots and huge machetes!

Copán Ruinas is very compact, centring around the main square, which has a pretty church and a small museum with many artefacts from Copán. However, other than strolling around, there is not much to do, but there is a pretty market street which mostly sell jewellery.

The main attraction is of course the Mayan ruins of Copán, and the nearby site of Sepulturas, all within 15 minutes of the town by moto-taxi. The sites are in a very beautiful jungle setting and we found ourselves only with a few other tourists and some of the resident red macaws; an advantage of travelling during the rainy season.

Copán was an important city on the edge of the Mesoamerican culture’s territory and was occupied for some 2000 years. Copán is most famous for its intricate stelae and alters which are carved stone monuments depicting rulers of the city and describing their dynasties in hieroglyphs. You can even still see traces of the red paint which covered them in times past. One of those rulers was “18 Rabbit” who was captured and beheaded in a power struggle between Copán and its satellite state Quiriguá in modern-day Guatemala.

Copán is also famous for what is called the hieroglyphic stairway which forms the entire side of one of the pyramids, and is ornamented with carvings of rulers/gods. The stairway represents the longest hieroglyphic text known but unfortunately, when it was first restored, the text got jumbled up and has not yet been deciphered in full.

There is also a ball court with the heads of macaws carved in stone, the macaw (Guacamaya) being a very important symbol for Copán.

The other most interesting area is the Jaguar plaza which has several stylized jaguars and a wonderful morbid alter with carved skulls which may have been the site of religious bloodletting ceremonies. Be sure to peek over the eastern side of this square to see where the course of the river Copán (now diverted) eroded part of the structure leaving a very sheer drop.

Also under one of the pyramids there were found to be several older temples, buried intact, as was common custom when a ruler’s epoch ended. It is possible to enter the tunnels underground to see one of the previous structures.

Sepulturas is an area close to Copán where important figures such as scribes would have lived. Although not anywhere near as impressive as Copán proper, it is a nice quiet hour’s stroll through ruins.

Other than Copán, there are various tourist activities around the town. We chose to visit Macaw Mountain, the bird sanctuary which is responsible for releasing the scarlet macaws that we saw in the archaeological site. All the birds at Macaw Mountain are rescued from domestic settings or exotic bird traffickers and are released back into the wild if possible. The sanctuary is structured round a river gorge and contains mostly macaws, but there were some other birds like toucans, parrots and owls.We particularly enjoyed the walk-through cages with the scarlet macaws, one of which bit Alex’s foot and that of the cheeky and curious toucan who dive bombed us.

You can also hold the birds, which was quite an experience, or have a lunch or a coffee on the premises.

We spent 5 nights in Copán, which was definitely enough to soak up some of the atmosphere of the nice town, visit the ruins and hang out with our feathered friends at the Macaw Mountain. Copán was our first Mayan city of this adventure and it certainly set the bar high for magnificent and important sites.