Today we got up and walked outside of the city to the Copan Ruinas, a set of famous Mayan ruins that still have a lot of intact sculptures. We walked about 20 minutes outside of the city where we met our guide of the ruins (who thinks he’s a martian). Thankfully even though he was a bit special he had a lot of interesting information about the Mayans and the site.
We walked around the ruins for about 2 hours, listening to our guide telling us about their history and mathematics, whilst hearing the sounds of dozens of birds in the trees. After visiting the different places we walked back towards the exit where we found trees full of macaws, bright red, yellow and blue. we walked around for a bit to see if we could see any other wildlife and ended up seeing some other birds like the motmot, and a fawn running through the forest, which according to our guide is quite rare.
When we headed back to the city, we decided to try Pastellitos, which are kind of like empanadas with chicken and potatoes inside. Our guide brought us to an even dodgier restaurant than the day before, and the pastellitos were good, and probably didn’t give us food poisoning!
next after doing a bit of shopping for snacks and souvenirs, a couple of us met for our afternoon activity, horseback riding, with horses that are normally used for farming and are therefore not necessarily used to carry tourists around. I got onto my horse called Parrerito (small bird) and we started our journey, through the city before reaching the banks of the river to go deeper into the landscape and forest. My horse would be good most of the time but didn’t necessarily like being told what to do when he wanted to go faster, so he tried to kick to see if I would fall of 2 or 3 times, but I managed to hold steady and get him to listen to me.
We briefly stopped for some water before going up a hill, inhabited by local families, where the children all ran behind us to try to sell us the souvenirs they had made at home. as we continued we entered a forested area, and walked through some narrow paths in the forest, until we reached a very small set of ruins dedicated to the Mayan god of fertility, represented by a frog.
Next, we continued to a really nice lookout point located in a hotel restaurant, where I got a passion fruit juice, whilst we looked over the valley. As the sun started setting we started heading back to the village when suddenly my horse decided he wanted to gallop, but he also got scared by the horse next to him, so he jumped up and did a 365 turn, whilst I held on tight and ordered him to stop. Thankfully I didn’t fall, even though my guide who saw the whole thing was sure I was going to.
When we arrived back at the city we left our horses and went to have dinner before going back to bed early for another early morning tomorrow.