Mayan Madness - What NOT to do with the spine of a stingray!

The chicken bus was fine, it was the pullman from Guatemala City to Chiquimulu with its cocophany of woman walking up and down the aisle balancing chicken and red sauce dinners on their heads as the bus careened along and the poor little lad sitting behind us with an upset stomach (maybe he ate the chicken in red sauce) that made up for the lack of "excitement" on the first chicken bus.

Our pit-stop for the night, to break up the cross border journey was the hive of grockle activity, Chiquimula. Ok so we were the only ones there, much to the fascination of the locals and the eagerness of the hotel owners. One of whom practically chased us down the street dressed in only a towel and soap suds. Like THAT's going to convince us!

The next day was a competion in how many people could be squeezed into a small minibus (Stu counted 30 in one of them) as we crossed into Honduras for our first taste of Mayan madness in Copan. Copan town is a relaxed, cowboy hatted semi-grockle town, 5 minutes walk from the ancient Mayan city of Copan.

The sprawling Mayan capital survived until the mysterious collapse of the culture around 900AD (thought to be from the enviromental pressure of over population). Its famous for its intricately carved stone Stelae (above), depicting rulers, gods and all sorts of nastiness (more on that later) all described in Mayan heiroglyphs. The Maya had a pretty well developed system of numbers and writing (unlike the Incas) which shows who did what to whom and where and when. Kaz in teacher mode was excited to discover that the Mayans were the first to use the digit zero as a place value holder and took snaps of their pictorial representations of digits for fun in the classroom next year. Of the two main centres at the time, Copan and Tikal, Copan is deemed to be the artistic centre, with much more highly decorated buidings and statues.

After a quick primer in the archealogical museum and an even more informative scoot around the kiddies museo, we headed out to the site for an explore. The Macaws guarding the entrance proved that Kaz still suffers a "large beaked bird" phobia, a hangover from Hawaii when she was 5. That's a good look Kaz! We then wandered the site, trying to match up the stelae with the descriptions in the pretty useless guide we'd bought at the gate. Our trip to the kiddie museum had also shown us how to count in Mayan so we practiced our numbers and got excited whenever we could decipher a numerical heiroglyphic. Archaeologists in the making...


One thing the kiddies museum had censored was the cruel worshiping practices and sacrifices the Maya were fond off. Most of their ceremonies involved some form of blood letting. One of the most revered involved the king dropping his daks (did they wear daks?) and spearing his "old fella" with the spine of a stingray. His wife would then slice her tongue with strings of thorns, they'd mix the blood together and burn it to honour the gods. Ouch! Other delightful practices included stripping the skin of high ranking captives so the priests could dance around in it, supposedly assuming their powers. Definitely not PG-rated stuff.

Being the organised bunch they were, the Mayans had one day of war a year, where they fought to capture people for sacrificing in great ceremonies. They also invented football (of a sort) played in a large stone court (photo above). The ball was heavy rubber, no kidding, it weighed around 8kg which they volleyed between teams by bouncing off their hips. Understandably they wore thick leather belts where the ball made contact with their bodies. Prize for the victorious team? They got to keep their heads unlike the unfortunate losing team which ended up as a sacrifice. Maybe someone should try this with The Bombers to give them some incentive...

The sprawling site of Copan is in the lowland forest, providing a beautiful back drop to the intricate carvings, fine stone buildings and detailed alters spread about the city as well as a nice humid home for small things that buzz and bite, look out!

The next day, we left the human sacrificing and painful ritual shenangins involving spines and thorns to the Mayans and undertook our own kind of ceremony to celebrate Stu's birthday. Our version of ritual involved the king of the day's favourite things, a bit of giddy- ay-ah on horse back and fine dining in the form of a Mayan feast on a luxurious hacienda - yee-ha! We hooked up with the very aloof, cowboy hat toting, Don Robero and trotted, cantered and bounced our way up through the valleys and hills to an indiginous village. About 75 families live in this village, a lot of which consist of up to 14 kids which made us feel like the pied piper as kids followed us around trying to sell us straw dolls they had made (we just had to buy one from the little lass who told us we had to buy one because she had no father or mother - what a little sales lady!) and singing english songs to us that they had learned at school - cute! The village over looks the entire Copan valley and part of the ruins, if you have excellent vision. It was the perfect spot to stop for a swift half to toast Stu's big day - what a view (below)! Don Robero was a pretty relaxed kind of Honduran (is there any other kind?) and let us have a quick spin around the village soccer field before we cantered ahead along the gravelly road, left to dodge tuk-tuks coming the other direction on our own.
Hot, sweaty and exhilarated from our ride, we parked our steads at the gorgeous Hacienda San Lucas and kicked back on the property while our Mayan feast was prepared. Given Copan is located amongst the tobacco fields of Honduras we had a few puffs on a hand rolled cigar we had acquired the day before at the local market. Not the tastiest thing 2 non-smokers can put in their mouths but it put Stu in the groove, gave Kaz a headache and kept the mozzies away to boot! (see bargain of the week too).

The sun went down (somewhere behind the grey clouds) and the citronella lamps dotted around the pretty garden were lit. Time to move on to something tastier. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......a bottle of Argentinian red, bring it on! The central americans know how to throw together a mean tortilla and tastey panqueques for breakfast but unfortunately they subscribe to the "squeeze the bladder of a cat" school of wine making so sipping a Malbec from Mendoza was heaven! Our 2 hour plus Mayan feast followed, papaya and balsamic salad, black bean and egg soup, cornmeal tamale on banana leaves, roast chicken and crystallised paw paw with rum sponge cake to top it all off - yum. It was an al fresco, candle-lit feast, muy romantico! After a strong coffee we squeezed into the back of a tuk-tuk with the maitre'd and were whisked back to town by a pubescent looking kid who should have been cramming for his high school final exams he was sitting the following morning...

With our short foray into Honduras over, we did the cross border shuffle back to Chiquimula, yep still nothing going on. Next day we braved our longest pullman bus yet (though this time the driver had his wife and kid in the front seat which kinda' slowed him down a bit, not really). 7 hours of bums on seats, thank god this was our second last long distance haul of the trip!! After being punted off to a local tour company to finish the trip (and give us the hard sell in the back of a minibus) we landed on the wee island of Flores, our base for visiting Tikal.

11 months of travel experience has not been wasted, we expertly dodged the guia's spiel and his hostel recommendation and sorted out our own transport and mas comodo accomodation. 3am tour? Nah! We thought getting up at 6am to get out to Tikal was a good enough effort at this point in the trip. Pepped up a little by our Nescafe lattes in bed we made it out to the most famous Mayan site of Tikal. Unfortunately the weather did not agree with us and it howled it down for the hour long trip giving us the perfect excuse for una pausa for desayuno at the entrance to the site while the rain pettered out. We needed the sustenance for the kms of walking between sites we were about to do! See photo below for proof - those temples are steep!

Tikal doesn't boast the detailed carvings of the stelae and altars at Copan, probably due to acid rain erosion. It does however have the most stunning setting, sprawled across 550 square km of dense jungle. Archeologists are still uncovering temples from the jungle vegetation. A lot of our time spent at this site was walking between temples and plazas along jungle paths with no other gringos in sight , just us, the monkeys howling overhead and the occassional woodpecker headbanging to the tune. Check out the bright red crown on this punk rocker. Well spotted Stu!

Amazing scenary aside, there were some massive pyramid temples to scamper up. Scamper? Actually, we were hanging on tightly and taking it slowly. The slippery staircase of Temple I (top photo), underneath which the great King Moon Double Comb (do you think he got teased at school with a name like that?) was buried, has been roped off since two tourists have plummeted to their deaths trying to climb them. The highest temple that we climbed was Temple IV at 64m which is Tikal's highest building. The top of the temple stands out above the jungle canopy providing a stunning view of jungle below with other temples poking their heads out into the sky. Wow!

All of that climbing in the jungle humidity was thirsty work. Guatemalans to the rescue with icy cold beer inside the main mayan plaza. What to have first, beer or crisps? Shluuurp! Tikal was a real highlight to finish off our month in Guatemala. Time to dash through Belize and Mexico in 8 days!

Cioa, cioa chicos!

Kaz y Stu xxxx

Shout out of the week: Muchisimo gracias to the Aitken clan and Stella-bella for some cracking horse riding, Ann and Phil for our tastey feast, Ma Wales and TOF for the budget boost (we're gonna need it in Mehico and Belice!) and everyone else for the funky birthday wishes! Nice hat Zeza!

Bargain of the week: shhhhmoking! Honduran cigar for 6 cents

Excuse of the week: could we have a receipt for the extremely dodgy Guatemalan exit / entry tax you just slipped into your back pocket? Excuse #1: The machine doesn't work on a Sunday. Excuse #2: The accountant is on his lunch break. Hmmmm......next they'll be telling us the dog ate the receipt book....

Meal of the week: Mayan feast, hands down. Who would think bean and egg soup could taste this good?