16/09/04- 18/09/04 Copan Ruinas

For our first foray into the Mayan civilisation we headed to the Honduran town of Copan Ruinas on the border with Guatamala. It proved to be a interesting place and to make it more so we decided that we would all adopt a glorious Mayan leader from Copan and compare the extravagance of each leaders temples, alter and the like. I, understandably, got the leader known affectionally as Butz Chan whilst Roger chose to adopt the leader "mat head". Turns out that mine was a lovely leader and his was pants. Anyway very beautiful place and the town is also really lovely. Recommended.



In the picture above the ruins look like the steps of a fairly modern municipal building and with most municipal building (well, around where I grew up) there are a couple of yobs hanging around it.

One things they Mayans did in this site (and many other sites) was play a funny game of football (as in a variation of football, as opposed to being crap at it) after which the losing team would have to give one of their players up to be sacrificed by the winning team. And then they would all get into a big bubble bath together, decapitated player and all. This was obviously before they had Mister Matey- in fact the Spanish for bubble bath is jugo del perdedor- literally Loser's Juice.