A few months ago I got to visit the jungles of Western Honduras
and see the ancient Mayan city of Copan
With un-excavated pyramids, statues and wild macaws flying over our heads the whole time
this has to be the most underrated historical site I've ever seen
and I'll try to sum up some its coolest stuff in this video
After a 1500 kilometer road trip through Mexico and Guatemala and way too many
night buses, I met up with my buddy J in the colonial town of Antigua in early
2020 for some adventures.
Now it was time to go to Honduras.The ruins of Copán had
been on my bucket list for a while but the visa process for going to Honduras
was just a little too complicated.
After about five (six) trips to the Honduras
consulate, I did finally get my visa.
So from Antigua, we took a six-hour
uncomfortable shuttle ride through some winding roads, crossed the border and
immediately came to the city of Copan Ruinas in the floodplains of the Copan river.
The next day we, woke up at 7 a.m. to catch the site right when it opened up
The city of Copan was settled as early as 1000 BC and was occupied for around
2,000 years.
It's in the extreme southeast of the Mesoamerican cultural
region but it didn't really become a major centre until the early Classic
period when it was ruled by a dynasty of sixteen kings between roughly
AD 426 and (AD) 820.
The first ruler appears to be this guy named
Kʼinich Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ.
Isotopic analysis of his teeth found in his tomb suggests
that he might have actually come from Tikal in Guatemala if you've seen my video on
that.
My favorite part of the story is that a lot of artifacts from Copan
suggest that the city was very heavily influenced by Teotihuacan, which is
1200 kilometres away in Mexico city, and if you know anything about me that's one of my favorite places on earth
One of the things that makes Copan really unique to me at least was it's 80+
stelae.
These complex and sophisticated structures were used as
stone canvases back in the day for religious expression.
The kings of Copán
erected numerous stelae which still dominate the main plaza of the site
These became part of festivals and religious reenactments and they were
intended to immortalize the rulers and to protect the city forever.
So the best
part about coming here at 8 a.m. is that you'll have the facilities pretty much
all to yourself.
Right now we're in the main square of Copan ruinas and we
really don't see anyone else except for parrots and the other animals here
Along with stelae, I'd say the other thing that makes this Mayan site really
distinct are the hordes of exotic birds
If you go there early in the morning you can see the Macaws being fed even
that's pretty cool.
We also saw some turkey(?)
and whatever the hell this animal was
Now back to the site.
After 850 AD the royal residence was deliberately burned
and Copan gradually became depopulated.
it wasn't really thoroughly explored (again)
until the 19th century.
One place that very interestingly did not get destroyed
was the former principal religious sanctuary of the city called the
Rosalila temple.
It was carefully and ceremoniously buried along with many
artifacts from the time.
A full-size replica of this very well-preserved
temple can be found at the Site Museum at the entrance and you can walk through
it to get a glimpse of Mayan times.
Of course no Mayan city is complete without
a Mayan ball court game but if you want more information on that just watch my
video on it from Uxmal.
What's really interesting about this site is the
hieroglyphic stairway which is full of Mayan hieroglyphics and describes the
history of Copan and all its rulers.
It's a pyramid like structure with more than
2,000 glyphs on it's 63 steps And it's the longest known Mayan inscription
that exists
Hey people.
First off I want to give a shout out to Roberto Espinosa from the
Honduras consulate (in Los angeles).
That was a very busy place and everyone had their hands full
dealing with all kinds of issues that Honduran citizens were dealing with but
Roberto stayed in touch with me every day and made sure that I got the visa I
needed to go visit Copan.
So thank you for that.
On a second note, please let me
know if you have any questions about visiting this place in the comments and
I'll get back to you as usual.
On a final note, I think this is the last back-
packing or Central America backpacking video for the year at least, but I just
moved to Hawaii so I should be bringing you some more content but I'm
quarantined in my hotel room right now but more on that next week