Charlie's Diary: Machu Picchu #2

Charlie's Diary: Machu Picchu

LOVING it all. Machu Picchu is stunning. Absolutely stunning. Every pic youtake could make it as a postcard. We arrived at 8AM and had blue-sky weather, llamas to love, spectacular views (yes the three of us took hundreds of pix), and fascinating people - Peruvian and international to meet and talk to. (A group of middle-aged Peruvian women tourists fell in love with my two traveling companions - both Chinese-born - and there was a lot of hugging and kissing.)

Food delicious. No one is sick although altitude knocked us for a loop. Hard finding an Internet signal. A couple of pix.

Charlie's diary: Copan ruins in Honduras III

more images...

Charlie's diary: Copan ruins in Honduras II

Sunday, May 25, 2008...

description of Copan from Wikipedia

The site in Copan is known for producing a remarkable series of portrait stelae, most of which were placed along processional ways in the central plaza of the city and the adjoining "acropolis" (a large complex of overlapping step-pyramids, plazas, and palaces). The stelae and sculptured decorations of the buildings of Copán are some of the very finest surviving art of ancient Mesoamerica.

Many structures are elaborately decorated with stone sculptures, usually constructed from a mosaic of carved stones of a size that one person could carry.

The site also has a large court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. At its height in the late classic period Copán seems to have had an unusually prosperous class of minor nobility, scribes, and artisans, some of whom had homes of cut stone built for themselves (in most sites a privilege reserved for the rulers and high priests), some of which have carved hieroglyphic texts.

The buildings suffered significantly from forces of nature in the centuries between the site's abandonment and the rediscovery of the ruins. There have been numerous earthquakes -- none of the roofs of the stone buildings were intact when the site was rediscovered, and the hieroglyphic stairway had collapsed. The Copán river changed course and meandered, destroying part of the acropolis (revealing in the process its stratigraphy in a large vertical cut) and apparently wiping out various subsidiary architectural groups in the region. In the long period when the site was overgrown the buildings and sculptures suffered from the invasive thick jungle vegetation and periodic forest fires.

Archeologists have consolidated and restored many structures at the site.

Charlie's diary: Copan ruins in Honduras

Sunday, May 25, 2008

We made a roadtrip through Guatemala to Honduras to visit the ancient Mayan ruins at Copan. more text coming...