Rabbit, King of the Murcielagos

We've settled into a nice habit of sipping gin and tonics in the poolside courtyard garden next to the ice machine, Rodrigo and I.

Day Two in Copan, the Mayan ruins three hours away on the Guatemalan border, and its lovely little town with its cobblestone streets, three-wheeled taxis, and more hippie-gringos with Macbooks than I would have thought possible in Honduras after my experience in grittier Progreso. Unfortunately we missed Secretary of State Clinton on the chicken bus, she was whisked in and out by helicopter yesterday. Copan is the most intact example of an old Mayan city-state, once called the Bat-City/Ciudad de los Murcielagos (A second compelling reason, Dennis and Tim, to visit). The king who built the massive stone temple and ball courts was named Rabbit, further convincing me that I am his reincarnation. Turns out to be a more epic nickname than Joe Jablonski might have expected, I'm pleased to discover. Except for the part about the king having to pierce his tongue and genitals in front of the people as part of a religious ceremony.

Maybe worse, imagine what kind of hell it was carrying stones on one's back to make these altars of human sacrifice in the middle of a jungle. Appropriately, our guide was one Virgilio. He was pot-bellied with an outie as enormous as his smile. The city of the mucielagos was eventually brought down by a rebellion of the lower class in the 800s, for those who would claim that Honduras is the only Central American republic without a major leftist revolution. When the Spanish arrived, they found only ruins; archaeologists like Virgilio have been trying to put it together for about a century. Except for the Americans who stole Eighteen Rabbit's stone (all the kings have hieroglyphs that run up the huge staircase of the pyramid-temple) and brought it to the Peabody in Boston. Where he is living without a visa, a smiling Virgilio added.

We took some good pictures climbing around the temples (and you will spot more than the occasional macaw) that I will share as soon as I find a way to upload them.

Huge ceiba (silk cotton) trees grow out of the temples and their gigantic roots (think Tarzan-scale) crumble the ruins. For the Mayans, they were a symbol of life, stretching down into the underworld and up into the heavens. Rodrigo commented that its a great image of nature outlasting and overpowering passing human civilization. But you can also see it as a dramatic symbol of the great life of this civilization. So I enjoyed the vibrant two-hour Mass, the only white person in the Church of San Jose, conspicuously standing two heads taller than everyone else and fumbling with the Spanish. The Mayans still do human sacrifice right.

Tomorrow we start our surveys. God bless.