Copán Ruins, Honduras

As I prepare a post for the Mayan Ruins blog page, I look through my photos and take myself back there so I can point out what was most interesting. I like to visit ruins so I can understand Mayan history better, but it is too big for me to grasp. So I have to re-read the guidebooks, research more of the ruins' history online, and lastly drag out every book I have about the Mayans and re-read that information. Obsessive? I suppose. I am trying to improve the ruins site to be more than just a personal photo blog.

When researching Copán, I ran across a traveler blogging his way around the world. When he posted about Copán, he simply said, "It is not all it was cracked up to be." I disagreed. And that inspired me to try to write a comprehensive story about Copán. I uploaded the photos weeks ago, and finally, yesterday, I was ready to post. The bummer is, it posted itself according to the date I added the photos, and it is not the first post you find if you open the page.

Here are some of the Copán figurines we bought. We loved them! They cost 50 cents US each. They are cheap imitations, and if you look closely, you can see most of them have been broken and glued back together. What was funny was we bought a few the first day, and on our second day at the ruins we sought out the two young boys who sold us the first ones, and bought almost all they had. We bought 18 of these. Practically everything at Copán is about King 18 Rabbit...........I prefer Uaxaklajún Ubaah K'awil......he is represented by many of the stelae at the site....and I guess we felt we needed 18 of them.

Left to right, King 18 Rabbit, King 18 Rabbit, King Smoke Shell, King 18 Rabbit, unknown subject, and unknown subject.

Ok, I don't know if the third one is King Smoke Shell, I made that up. He just looks like he should be called King Smoke Shell.


The heiroglyphics on all sides of the stelae at Copán are intriguing. I can recognize numbers and certain characters and glyphs, but it seems so complicated. I know Chak when I see him, and of course now Uaxaklajún (18) Ubaah K'awil (Rabbit)..........but I have a long way to go.

These are views of the back sides of the little cheap replicas from my mayan god collection. Copán is a spectacular place, you just have to know what it is you are looking for when you get there. Foresight is more difficult than hindsight, but well worth the effort.