Mayan ruins in Copan

 These ruins are pretty much the reason we came to Copan.  This was the Southern most tip of the Mayan civilization.  They had some pretty amazing sculptures.  According to our guide (who had limited English) Copan focused a lot on art and was best known for these high-relief sculptures. Note-small ropes are not very effective for keeping two-year olds away from delicate ruins.

 The altar on the right was where they sacrificed human beings.  The blood would fall down that spiral apparently (no live demonstrations were available-although it would not be too surprising considering the murder rate in this country)

 This was an alligator and was the altar for sacrificing animals.  Caden's school mascot is the alligator so we thought it was a good picture.

This is one of the famous ball courts.  There are six statues and the players (usually prisoners of war) had to use their shoulders, elbows, knees and hips to get the ball to hit one of the statues.  There are two ball courts underneath this one that were buried.

 I can't remember exactly what she called this but it was basically a wall of hieroglyphs.  They were pretty amazing.

 There was a lot of Asian influence in the art.  It was very interesting.

 Caden is officially a junior guide.  Just kidding, but our guide let him hold her stick for a minute. The stick has a feather on the end so she can point to things on the artifacts.

 I think this is supposed to be an alligator.

 These were the residences of the royalty.  They were down the hill from all of the other ruins.  The ruins were only used for religious and political events.  All of the common people lived up in the mountains.

 They had some macaws when we first walked in.  They are huge and gorgeous!

 So the Mayans believed that every 52 years they needed to bury these temples and rebuild them. So underneath all of these ruins they found layers and layers of temples.  The archaeologists built tunnels that you can go in to see some of the underground ruins.  It was pretty cool.

As a side note our guide explained the way the Mayan calendar works and the current Mayan calendar does end in 2012 but another cycle begins.  You can all now stop worrying about the end of the world.  Our kids did amazingly well on this tour.  It was pretty hot and required a lot of walking but they did awesome.  Tom and I had to take turns listening to the guide, so we both know roughly 50%(ok, probably less because her English was not that great) about the ruins, I will have to tell him to write about what he learned.  It was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity to see these remarkable ruins, I highly recommend it.