Beyond Livingston

So we leave Livingston to return by boat to our van at Rio Dulce, and stop at another small restaurant along the river, where lunch was offered on the deck next to the water. At this point I was not hungry, had very little money to spend, and was anxious to get to Copan (in Honduras) before dark. This is of course the problem with tours, and this one was deficit (though the driver/guide was a wonderful man) in not ASKING us what we wanted to do next. I think all of us would have opted for going straight to Copan, though these “kids” were always ready for a beer. At the same time, being with a tour gave me the chance to speak or at least listen to Spanish nonstop, as almost all the other travelers were better at Spanish than I. In addition, this spot on the river was beautiful, and the restaurant staff congenial and willing to speak Spanish and talk a bit about their lives…and we heard again about the difficulty children in this area have in getting to school. This trip back to the Backpackers Hotel is muy rapido. So much so that the boat starts slapping hard at any incoming waves from other boats and spraying the outside people with water. At one point it gets to be a little too much for this non-swimmer, and I found myself turning around and saying sharply, “That’s enough!” From thereon it seems more reasonable. That is the only point on the trip that I am at all afraid or worried. [Later I learn that our speedy bus driver had been taking his first turn at handling a boat – that information would really have worried me!] There are some problems when we dock, as the rest of the group swore they had been told that the price of the boat ($26 each) was included in the tour price ($90.) I had been told it was not, but believed that it was only $10, and am getting so short of cash that it makes a difference to me, too. The boatman begins to look a little worried when the Canadian starts to rant and rave about being cheated and ripped off; I hurriedly get M.C. to make sure he understands that we thought he’d done a good job and the anger is not at him, but at the people who booked the tour. Eventually all is resolved, though I decide to tell my teacher to explain to her husband at the tour agency that people need to know EXACTLY what costs are involved, covered or not covered, as otherwise they will be very angry and OFTEN, as in my case, not bring enough to cover expenses. But everyone settles down after a bit, the pilote gets paid, and off we go again in the van. 

The trip to Copan is easy enough though it takes several hours. In general the landscape is more thickly populated and more modern. They take our passports at the border of Honduras, but everything is in order, and on we go and in a 15 min. drive from the border we are in the town of Copan and at our motel.  Maria Cristina and I are roomed together, again, but quickly leave after dumping our backpacks and go to look around the town. The town is bustling at this hour (8 pm or so, although this is confusing as Guatemala had already gone off DST and Honduras has not, so we lose – or gain – an hour) with people sitting in the park or chatting on street corners. We find a cute restaurant with some liveliness to it and go in, whereupon the teenage boys at a nearby table begin dancing outrageously and sort of flirting with us. That is fun, and we decide the culture here is different from Antigua or anyplace else we’ve been in Guatemala. More loose and easy, more friendly, less traditional (and actually there is no typical indigenous clothing in evidence here, of the sort we are used to among the Mayans in Antigua, although a lot of older women are wearing openwork lacy blouses, which might be typical of this area.) It is possible, if this impression is true, that the fact that this is one of few countries in this area that didn’t go thru civil war in the 70s and 80s contributes to the greater modernity and more “relaxed” attitude. The manager or possibly owner, tho he is quite young, of the restaurant comes over to chat with us, eventually introducing us to his little daughter, who stays with us to talk and play even when daddy goes to take care of other customers. He then brings his baby boy, obviously his pride and joy, over to see us. His wife and other family members or friends are playing cards in the back of the restaurant while the tv shows cartoons for the kids in the group. I notice more and more how M.Cristina’s fluent Spanish makes it possible for her to connect with everyone everywhere we go. A definite incentive for me. After a quick dinner we leave and walk up the street toward the motel. On the corner we run into the rest of the group, eating dinner in an open-air (screened) restaurant. We join them, although again they are all smoking like crazy, which MC likes even less than I do. When the guide, sitting next to me, lites up again, I take my leave and go over to where some little wild kittens and their mom are rustling around in the bushes outside the restaurant. I come back and beg a few pieces of meat from one of the men and when I throw it to the kittens, they lunge on it in a way that makes me think they are actually starving. Oddly enough, noone else heeds my plea to give up a little meat for the cats, even after I repeat it. The restaurant is run by two women, evidently a mother and her adult daughter with a baby. They take care of the baby over in a corner, all the while they have some pretty outrageous rock and salsa music playing very loudly. We then leave the restaurant and I think we are headed for the hotel but the group follows Carlos (the guide) down the street in the other direction, and we follow them, thinking maybe we had gotten mixed up in our directions. Eventually it is clear we are headed somewhere else, and he takes us to a bar in a lower part of the city. The bar plays videos of various American and European rock groups – Rolling Stones, et al – and everyone in our group is in a good mood, friendly, and joking is rampant, in a combo of Spanish and English, but for the life of me I can’t get anyone to get up to dance, so eventually when one guy decides he’s had enough to drink, I get up and leave with him to go back to the hotel. M.C. had already taken her leave early on, deciding the music was too loud for her. After the nite at the Backpackers Hotel, we both sleep soundly despite some noise from the street which filters easily into the hotel through the wrought iron façade. In the morning MC and I again go walking around town, in part so she can check out a hotel to stay at for the next few days as she ls leaving us here. She finds Hotel La Posada around the corner, a beautiful place with inside gardens, nice rooms, hot water, cable tv and good towels, for $26 per nite. We learned that the president of the country is coming to make a speech that day, and we ask various people around town, including some men working on the street, whether he is a popular president, which they say he is. We let them know our American president isn’t very popular with us. Everything seems a little low-key for a presidential visit, tho there is blue and white bunting all over, and families and people line the low walls of the park where he will speak. There are also several trucks full of soldiers in evidence, but even that seems easy-going. Of course, this would be more like the governor of a state in the US, in terms of size. But still quite relaxed. I notice many of the older men in town wear sombreros, and we had earlier noticed different men on horseback, but whether this is for some parade or common behavior, I never learn for sure. One of the men we see is so old, tired and poor-looking, that I think horseback is his usual method of getting around. We leave in the van fairly early (although there is a mixup because of the time-change) and make our way to the Copan ruins. There is some problem because while the fee is $10 American, by the time we convert the Honduran Limpiras we’d gotten in change for our Quetzals at dinner, we were shorted by a few dollars, but we all just bite the bullet and go in. (Interestingly, the Limpira is named for one of the heroes of Honduras, an indigenous Mayan, whose picture, with long black hair, is on the bill and on many posters.) We get a wonderful Mayan guide of 27 or so who has a capacious memory for details and who enjoys the questions and energy of our group. Copan ruins are famous among the Mayan group for having preserved inscriptions which tell of Mayan social life, the guide tells us, but I’m not clear how this is important, since he says because of the scrambling of stones over the centuries and inaccurate replacement, no one can read the inscriptions. Nonetheless the area is absolutely beautiful and the carved statues of the various numbered kings (“…and 14 beget 15 and….”) are fairly intact and quite wonderful. The guide shows us the various large round stones with channels for the blood to run down, which had been used to sacrifice human beings to the gods. They seem to still hold some power, as I perceive them (at least I correctly identify the one that is an original, not a copy, as are many of the other large carved figures.) He shows us the ball court where they played a kind of volley ball, 4 on 4, with a big heavy rubber ball which was, he demonstrates, hit with all parts of the body except for the hands and feet. The object was to score with a hit on the two carved standing stones at either side of each end of the court. At the end of the game, the best player was sacrificed to the Gods, and of course every player tried for the honor of being the best. He refers many times to the various kinds of drugs used by the shamen (was that the term?) and kings for visions and wisdom, some of which were also used as anesthetic for the sacrificial “lamb.” He says that in this case, unlike Rome, the common people (who were shorter in stature and had a shorter life expectancy than the ruling class, and lived in a very specific area of the community) were not allowed to watch the ball games (being spiritual in nature, in homage or supplication to the Gods) but they could sit away from the court, and with the incredible acoustics of the area, HEAR the whole game…..even able to tell which player was in action at a given moment. This suggests to me the enormous power of the shamen and kings. In Rome, as I understand it, the emperor had to offer the “games” for the amusement of the people as a way of keeping them in line. Although most of the tops of the huge “pyramids” have been removed to the museum for protection, the remaining buildings are quite amazing and beautiful, and it is possible to feel something of the size and nature of the original community. The museum cost an additional $5, but we don’t have the time or money; it is also possible for another $12 to go into the tunnels used by the archaeologists in excavating the ruins. As we leave, after wishing the guide good luck on the exam he has to take for an Anthropology class the next day, (he has to study outside his country because there are no Anthro/Archaeology teachers at the University of Honduras due to budget restrictions,) Maria Cristina takes up a conversation with one of the security guards or assistant guides, an older Mayan man. She mentions to him that although the rest of the group is leaving for Guatemala, again, she will be staying in Honduras and would be back the next day to see the Museum. He tells her that if she wants to take a tour by horseback, he will take her around to the various present-day Mayan villages in the nearby hills. Of course she says she would love to go. She had also found a poster for a butterfly reservation within walking distance of town, so she is set for several days on her own in Copan, before following whatever trail is next for her. We also learn that one of the reasons for the president’s visit to Copan is because there has been talk of raising the price of admission to the ruins to $180, which worries all the staff and the Mayan communities around the ruins, as they are afraid no one will come any more and their livelihoods will be destroyed. The president is coming to talk to the community about their concerns [what a concept!] The rest of us pack ourselves back in the van (by unspoken agreement everyone keeps the same seats they first started with, but because MC is leaving, I get her backseat with a headrest and a larger window-opening,) and off we go for the five-hour drive back to Gua City, after converting our remaining Limpiras back into Quetzals with a vendedor at the border, who walks around from car to car with big rolls of bills (and who of course shorts us in the conversion, this time by $12.50, for me.) I’m not sure how to avoid this money loss in each direction, but hope to learn.