Nick's gringo travel blog: July 2007

Copan Ruins, Honduras.... Uber Mayan derelict city. This site is famous for the high amount of detail of the stelae (statues) and other carvings...

This is one of about 20 stelae depicting King 18 Rabbit at Copan.

One of the more important of hundreds of rock carvings at the site. This altar shows 16 of the Mayan Kings of Copan.

King carving close up

Temple? Aqueduct? amphitheatre? No, this is actually a soccer pitch - for the original Mayan version of football. After each match, one of the players was bumped off... no one knows if it was an outstandingly good player being sacrificed to the gods, or an outstandingly bad player being punished for his poor performance. Either way, its not surprising there aren´t so many Mayan soccer players anymore.

There are several theories about why the Mayan civilization collapsed - At Copan, the city and surrounding areas went from a thriving population of around 20,000 people with highly advanced culture etc, to within 100 years almost no-one remaining in the valley, the jungle gradually taking over and the city left to crumble.

The most popular theory is that the high population reached some kind of important threshold at about 20,000 people. Over exploitation of the natural resources of the Copan Valley, and expansion of the city area into prime (but limited) agricultural land resulted in excessive deforestation, removal of nutrients from the soils and various other environmental problems. Simply, the valley couldn´t produce enough food, and the civilization effectively starved to death.

Right now environmentalists are getting a bit upset by the amount of unchecked land clearing occurring in the region, as poor and desperate people try to maximise the profitability of their land. Recently the population of the Copan valley, for the first time since the Maya collapse, again reached 20,000 people. Umm... guys... Is there are lesson to be learnt here?

While most of the ruins and carvings are highly intricate and detailed, and no doubt should be taken very seriously by some lab coat wearing anthropologists type, there are quite a few that really just make you want to crack up laughing.

Maybe this was the kindergarten rock carving effort. And you thought Walt Disney was original.

A Scarlet Macaw, close up. The Mayans carved lots of versions of these heads....

Las Sepulturas, the working class living quarters of Copan. No one knows why a death metal band named themselves after this.....

Nicaragua has a pretty interesting history - Given that it's the skinniest part of central America it's always been a key transport route between east and west America (at least before the Panama canal was built). It also has a very massive lake (Lago Nicaragua - 177 km long) right in the middle of the skinniest section, and there's a river connecting the lake to the Carribbean, so that meant people only had to cart their gear 20km over land to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Anyhoot it seemed everybody wanted to get their hands on this part of the world from day one.

It started of course with the Spanish who built the city of Granada on the shores of the lake in 1524. It was a pretty popular spot for burning and looting, as French and Pommie pirates from the Carribbean managed to sneak up the river and sack the city 3 times before 1685. Then there developed a bit of a rivalry between Granada and another Nicaraguan city, Leon - not sure of the details but the left-leaning Leonese didn't like the right-wing Granadians much and enlisted a yankee wanabe dictator - William Walker - to come down and take over. Which he did, wiping Granada completely off the map - again - in 1856 before the locals sent him back to the USA with his tail between his legs.

Even Ronald Reagan had a bit of dig in the 1980's, funding counter-military groups based in neighbouring El Salvador and Honduras to have a bit of a swing at the Nicaraguans. Anyway with all this burning and looting going on its somewhat surprising that theres anything left, but actually Nicaragua is a really nice part of the world.

This is the cathedral in Granada, which I think looks pretty stylish for the conservative Catholic Church to come up with. Guess that's the latin American influence. Also they've had to rebuild it a few times so they've had a few chances to get it right...

Some other snazzy buildings in Granada....

This is the Cathedral in Leon, which is the largest in central America

Volcan Concepcion and Volcan Maderas - Two rather large volcanos that stick up out of the middle of Lago Nicaragua, together forming Isla Ometepe. I took this photo from the window of a bus on the mainland, hence you can't actually see that the volcanoes are in the middle of a bloddy massive lake. But trust me, they are.

This is a house on a coffee plantation on Isla Ometepe, which I stayed at for a few days.

The view of Volcan Concepcion from the coffee planatation - not bad for $2 a night hey!?!

Coffee plants on the coffee plantation

All around the volcano is thick cloudforest jungle.

In amongst the jungle are the scattered remains of the ancient Chorotega cililization. Hundreds of Petroglyphs (rocks with funky carvings on them) are scattered randomly around the island. Some say the Chorotega were a highly advanced civilization with a complicated written language which is not yet understood... others say they got a bit bored and hence graffitied the rocks randomly with meaningless dribble.

At first I thought, "This is great, there's definitely some advanced thinking behind these amazing rock carvings." Then I saw a few petroglyphs like the one on the right... maybe not.

The island jungle is packed with wildlife - A Howler Monkey observes the crazy tourist.

I wasn't too surprised to come across coffee plants, given the island is covered with coffee plantations. But theres also chocolate growing wild and free! Or at least Coca, like in this photo, from which you can apparently make chocolate.