so, elle is on a cruise this week. and since i'm in west michigan, which is still in the fierce throes of winter, how jealous am i?!i'm pretty jealous. but not so jealous i wouldn't rather be back in the lovely place i'm about to share with you. sorry, elle. ;]said lovely place is called honduras and is right in the middle of central america. my mom was born and raised there, and she met my dad in honduras while taking classes through the university of alabama {roll tide!} at the school at which they both worked. i love honduras not only because it's breathtaking beautiful, but because it feels like home, too, in a way i love but can't quite explain.when we go to honduras we stay at my grandparents' house, which is just outside one of the major cities. on this last trip, we also took a few side trips to places we hadn't been to for years, mostly to play tourist, but also because we may never go back again. honduras is notorious for violent crime, is only getting worse, and is now even more infamous for hosting the murder capital of the world.but i'm not going to dwell on that today. i want to remember honduras as i experienced it, and i want to share it with you that way, too, so that one day, when honduras is a safer place, you can travel there yourself with eager anticipation.one of the places we went to on our last trip was the mayan ruins in copán. copán was actually one of the largest mayan cities at the civilization's peak around 900 AD.
see the ruins right by the word honduras? those are the mayan ruins of copán!
this is the ball court.
the mayans played a game similar to soccer with a small, hard ball and what look like basketball hoops turned on their side. the losing team was ritually sacrificed. historians don't know much more than that.behind the ball court is a staircase, covered with a tarp. when this part of the copán ruins was found, the stones that make it up were all in a heap at the bottom.
they used to let people climb up on the staircase, but they realized that between people stepping all over it and the weather, all the intricate carvings on the stones were eroding away, which is why they now prohibit people from walking on it and keep the tarp over at all times, except for once a year when they change it out.we also went to two different beaches: the island of roatán & my grandparents' beach house in the garifuna* community of triunfo de la cruz. roatán has better & cleaner beaches, but the water at triunfo is much bluer.
at roatán
at triunfo
the flowers are absolutely beautiful, and i spent most of my time taking pictures of those:
& no account of honduras is complete without showing you how we got around:
my former roommate {left} & i, riding in the back of a pickup truck with our luggage the morning we flew back home.
honduras has the best attractions of any tourist destination: a rich history, beautiful beaches, and the second largest coral reef in the world {after the great barrier reef in australia!}. if you'd like to read more, i recommend you check out la gringa's blogicito, written by an american expatriate living in the city of la ceiba.
*black hondurans: descendants of free or escaped africans. they're extremely distrustful of hondurans who are descended from europeans and/or the native indian tribes, who unfortunately have treated and continue to treat them poorly. my grandfather only managed to buy land in this town due to the rapport he built with the citizens there over a great deal of time.
