Ian has always been intrigued by the cultures of Mesoamerica – the Toltec, Olmec, Aztec and in particular, the Maya. To one day visit some of the sites was a childhood dream that had never quite faded. First we considered simply finding our own way to Guatemala and working out an itinerary, but soon realised the inaccessibility of most if the sites and the difficulties of independent travel in such a hot climate. After searching the internet Ian came up with exactly what he wanted to do at an affordable price. It turned out to be a specialised, experimental journey organised by the travel company Explore! and there were just two places still available when Ian enquired.
Amongst the literature we took with us were the accounts of the American explorer John L. Stevens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. He travelled extensively in the area during the 1840s accompanied by the English artist Frederick Catherwood, discovering and recording long forgotten sites of this pre-Columbian civilisation, already in decline at the time of the Spanish conquest during the 16th century. His travel account makes fascinating reading, depicting much about the lives of the Mayan Indians in the 19th century as well as hypothesising about the possible uses to which the ruined buildings he discovered in remote jungle areas may have been put. Catherwood's superbly detailed drawings showed just how vestigial many of the remains they discovered were but they were so accurate we were able to identify many of the same sites today. Sometimes, as at Uxmal, they were no more that a small fragment of what is now a completely restored façade. His drawings were almost certainly used to help in reconstructing these ancient cities from the jumble of fallen stones covering the sites.
The Spanish conquest over the Mayan people was absolute. Unlike the Aztecs whose calendar foretold the return of their white God at exactly the time the Spanish arrived, the Maya proved to be made of sterner stuff and many years elapsed before the Spaniards were able to benefit from internal divisions and complete the conquest of the Yucatan Peninsula. Once in control the Spanish set about converting them from their heathen beliefs, imposing Christianity upon then and burning their books and writings. Their history was completely destroyed to the extent that nobody could read or understand the strange glyphs that adorn so many of the stelae and walls of the mysterious cities that are still being discovered in the steaming jungles of Central America. By the time the Spanish realised they should record the writings there was nobody left who could read them. Many of the indigenous peoples today speak one of a couple of dozen Maya languages but the written form now uses European script. The only known Mayan writings today are three codices in Dresden, Paris and Madrid and it is from these and the monumental inscriptions that epigraphers are gradually piecing together the history of this highly developed, sophisticated civilisation.
The decline of the Mayan civilisation was due not only to Spanish oppression, but to war between different cities and to drought. The ordinary people worked the land growing maize and livestock, spinning and weaving - using capok from the sacred Ceibal tree and serving the high priests and the elite nobility that occupied the impressive palaces, temples and pyramids that can still be seen. The elite controlled their citizens with these symbols of strength and their advanced abilities in the areas of astronomy and mathematics enabled them to accurately foretell the auspicious dates for planting and harvesting, when the rains would come and when there would be times of drought. Their system of beliefs dictated that Gods must be appeased with sacrifices. This may be with offerings of food but sometimes human sacrifice was necessary. There were rituals for this. Sometimes wars were fought with neighbours in order to gain sacrificial victims, sometimes the winners, or possibly the losers, of the infamous ball game were chosen. Such matters affected mainly the priests and nobles, and the ordinary citizens were not generally involved.
19 January 2008, Antigua, Guatemala
We are quite exhausted! We left Exeter at 11.30 yesterday morning and finally arrived here this evening at 7pm local time. Guatemala is six hours behind the UK.
Following the crash at Heathrow airport a couple of days ago, our plane was delayed leaving London making us late for our connecting flight in Madrid. Here we were further delayed by the airport's stringent security measures so that we were the last people onto the connecting flight to Guatemala. By the time we eventually reached the boarding gate for our connecting flight ours were the only empty seats on the plane and they were on the point of unloading our luggage and flying without us.
We eventually landed in Guatemala City around 5pm where we met our 17 fellow travellers for this trip. They are mostly from the UK but include three Americans. Louise, our tour guide, and Juan Carlos, our driver were waiting for us outside the airport entrance.
We left Guatemala City in bright, warm evening sunshine and travelled along crowded, busy roads towards Antigua where we are now staying in the Posada de Hermano Pedro, a former convent building constructed around two courtyards. Simply furnished it is both cool and clean. Unfortunately we have discovered that the 110 volt electric current is quite incapable of coping with our tiny portable water heater so no illicit brew-ups on this trip! Luckily for us, our computer is just about holding its own.
Our route between Guatemala City and Antigua took us through city suburbs of street markets, shabby, run-down areas with shops and bars barricaded against the customers who have to pass their money through a grill before the goods are handed out to them. Scrap merchants, car valetting services and builders yards jostled for space with Macdonalds alongside the main road. There were yards, waste lands and shacks with corrugated iron roofs standing alongside smart, gated developments that are similar to those to be found along the southern coast of Spain.
The buses here are wonderfully different! They are huge and old fashioned, brightly painted with a roof rack for luggage as they run so full there is no room inside. We watched a lady run for the bus with a huge bundle balanced on her head. A man on a ladder at the back of the bus whisked it from her head onto the roof as she clambered inside. The roads are busy and badly lit with many people walking alongside them in the darkness.
Once out of Guatemala City our bus climbed steeply up though woods where we had clear views of several volcanoes with their typical cone shapes wreathed on the evening clouds.
In Antigua the old cobbled streets were humming with activity. The one way system was so crowded with vehicles crawling in for a free concert of Latin-American music this evening in the main square, that we were obliged to abandon our coach and carry our luggage to our hotel through the back doubles.
Once we had sorted our room we immediately set off to explore the old town, listen in at the free concert, find a cash machine and buy some bottled water as we have been told we should not drink from the taps. We are surprised at this as everyone looks perfectly healthy and at 1US dollar a bottle it seems rather expensive.
There are about 15 quetzels to the £. We noticed diesel costs 25.90 quetzels! Can it be for just one litre? (We asked and apparently it is for a gallon.)
We are too exhausted tonight to have gained anything but a vague impression of Antigua as we have been awake for almost 24 hours. Tomorrow we may have chance to see more before we move on into Honduras and our first Mayan site of Copan.
Sunday 20 January 2008, Copan Ruinas, Honduras
This morning we were given a tour of the historic centre of Antigua – in some ways a bit of a waste of time as we had skipped breakfast and done much of it early this morning and the tour was taken at the pace of the slowest. Still, the local guide did provide a little background on the constraints on development in a world heritage site where the replacement of every cobblestone and shop sign had to be considered. Undoubtedly Antigua is a very attractive town with its chessboard pattern of cobbled streets lined by low colonial Spanish style houses painted in a limited and harmonious range of colours and with imposing gateways and grills in front of the windows. It was once the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala which included in its provinces areas which are now separate countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. However a closer look reveals that many of these street fronts are mere facades and behind lay massive ruins. In 1773 the town was shaken by a series of earthquakes and the government decided to move the capital to a newer and safer site – what is now Guatemala City. The city became known as Antigua Guatemala and for many years was virtually deserted. When it was eventually rebuilt it was in a style to match the original, unlike the two other 16th century capitals of New World Spanish dominions, Mexico City and Lima.
It being Sunday, the churches were packed and in several of them girls in white were being taken to their first communion. There was a carpet of pine needles and flowers leading up to one church and in the cathedral the service was relayed to the congregation at the back of the nave by closed-circuit television.
Outside there were stands selling food and drink and we purchased rolls and fig and apple doughnuts for lunch from one of the sellers. Cachikel Maya from the highlands, dressed in colourful costumes, laid out displays of textiles in the ground and the main square was filled with strollers, many using the services of shoeshine boys. At the public washhouse a Maya woman with a couple of small children was doing her weekly wash.
The present day Cathedral is actually in one of the side sections of the complex and behind it the nave of the original 17th century building stands open to the sky with massive chunks of masonry lying where they fell after the earthquake. In the crypt Maya Indians still burn incense to the sixteenth century Bishop Francesco Marroquin who looked after their rights and lies buried there together with the doughty conquistador Bernal Diaz de Castillo who survived many battles and was wounded several times dying at a ripe old age in Antigua. Last year Ian found a copy of his vivid account of the conquest of New Spain at a market stall in Perranuthnoe. Opposite the cathedral were the remains of the university and seminary and just beyond that, facing the main square, the arcaded governor's house. Also on the square the former town hall, now a museum, was one of the only buildings to survive the earthquake unscathed.
We also viewed one of the jade factories where the hard mineral jadeite – not the same mineral as Chinese jade which is softer – is cut and polished to make jewellery and copies of ancient Maya works of art. Today diamond drills and saws are used to work this hard material. In Maya times harder forms of the mineral were used to work softer varieties in a long and painstaking labour. The premises were guarded by uniformed staff toting formidable guns.
Around midday we boarded the coach and headed across mountainous terrain back past Guatemala City along snaking, climbing roads to join the Motagua valley and cross the frontier of Honduras. Much of the land was parched and stark during the dry season and the general appearance was not helped by the large quantities of rubbish and an endless roadside straggle of dilapidated shanties, many thatched with palm and with hammocks slung in front. It is sobering to realise the wretched conditions in which such a large proportion of humanity lives. In Guatemala things cannot have been helped by the long and bloody civil war which the country suffered in recent years, in which hundreds of thousands of Maya were butchered. We saw Maya women carrying pitchers of water on their head from a pump, others washing clothes in a river while children played in the white, all pervading dust, mangy dogs limped along the roadside and bony cattle sought food in the scanty remains of harvested maize fields.
Once in Honduras we were soon at the attractive village of Copan Ruinas with its cobbled streets and a charming central square with palm trees, flowering shrubs and a clear fountain carved with Mayan glyphs. A cool hotel with a fan in the room provided a welcome refuge and a convivial meal with the whole group of seventeen fellow travellers, the tour leader, the archaeologist and the driver rounded off a long and tiring day.
Monday 21 January 2008, Copan Ruinas, Honduras
Our first Maya ruins and Copan did not disappoint. It was located in a well-maintained park only a couple of kilometres from our hotel so this meant we could make an early start.
We were fortunate to have the services of one of the best guides to the site and together with Coral, the tour archaeologist, who specialises in human and animal bones, we were able to learn a great deal about the health and daily life of the Maya in the classical period, which extends from about 250AD to 900AD.
The tour brought us first to the west court, surrounded by buildings with stepped ramps leading to a series of rooms often with doorways framed with stylised representations of a massive opened serpent's mouth. The development of the site was aided by a long period of stability, particularly during the long reign of Smoke Jaguar (628-695), whose 67 years on the throne was remarkable in a society where the average life expectancy was 35 years and whose stela is in the grassy courtyard. Perhaps the most important monument in this court is Altar Q, dating from about 800AD. Arranged round the edges of this square altar are the first sixteen rulers of Copan, starting with Yax Kuk Mo (426-437) and ending with Yax Pac who had come to the throne in 763. He is facing the first ruler and the sceptre of power is handed directly to him by Yax Kuk Mo. The altar is therefore a piece of propaganda designed to underline his divine authority through the long line of his ancestors. All this history has only been revealed as epigraphers have deciphered the Maya hieroglyphs over the past thirty years.
During the afternoon we walked to the site of Las Sepulturas two kilometres away, the homes of the nobles. Each family had a series of houses grouped round a central courtyard, the house of the head of the family being the largest, sometimes decorated with sculptures. The house of the scribe, for example, shows the owner holding a conch shell which is used as a container for ink. Each house has a room with a raised platform used for sitting and sleeping, the plaster coverings frequently still intact. Under the houses were often tombs where the deceased members of the family were buried.
We returned to the main site to visit the excellent museum which is dominated by the full-sized reconstruction of the Rosalila temple. This was hidden intact within a later rebuilding of the temple and the original colours of the stucco surfaces which covered the stonework were preserved. This gives an impression of how striking the whole site must have been when the buildings were painted in red with decorative details picked out in white, yellow, blue and green. Traces of colouring can still be seen on some of the stelae. Some of the original monuments have also been moved under the cover of the museum and replaced by replicas in the original position.
We had spent the entire day exploring the archaeological site of Copan. Our fellow travellers had long since disappeared back to the village, either to relax at our hotel or to visit a nearby spa for a reviving massage. Tiny three-wheeled tuk-tuks could be hired at the site for the bumpy drive back along the cobbled road into the village but we preferred to walk. On the way we explored something of the residential back streets of Copan Ruinas. Scratching, mangy dogs slept by the roadside, chickens pottered in dusty yards, from inside dark cool bars voices and laughter could be heard. Small general shops sold everything from hammocks and tourist trinkets to porridge oats and bubble gum. We collapsed wearily for a coffee on the terrace of a pleasant café where a chicken scrabbled around our feet as it wandered between the tables while from the adjoining garden came the squawks of a couple of brightly coloured toucans and several caged parrots. The low, plastered houses in these back streets frequently had bright cascades of purple or orange bougainvillea covering their walls while the roofs were often thatched with palms.
Nearer the centre we passed women street vendors selling bags of peeled and prepared fruit. Others were cooking at the roadside on open wood fires. Against a lamp post lent a typical Latin American wearing a straw Panama, a brightly coloured shirt and smoking a cigar, while outside the main bank were at least four uniformed guards carrying huge guns with pistols tucked into their belts. Despite this the village felt completely unthreatening and the people were smiling and friendly. Little children, who surely should have been in school, were trying to earn a living selling hand-made dolls dressed in traditional costume, approaching us with such charm that it was difficult to refuse them. (Literacy rates here are very low. In Guatemala we were told it is only about 67%! The bank notes have the value printed in Mayan as apparently so few are able to understand the written Spanish or the Arabic numerals.)
Ian has written graphically about the Mayan site of Copan. He did not mention however that the location was quite beautiful, set in a green valley surrounded by volcanic mountains covered in a dark green forest of unknown trees. We were fortunate that here in the highlands, the weather has been damp and comfortably cool, perfect for scrambling around the ruins. Clouds wreathed around the hills and bright red macaw parrots flew overhead or settled, shrieking in the trees that grew out from between the joints of ruined, overgrown walls.
