Copan Ruinas Honduras

We were all excited to get to the Copan Ruinas, because it was purportedly a particularly cool ancient Mayan city, but also because Nina’s former nanny, Maria, was going to meet us there.  Maria is originally from Honduras, near Tegulcigalpa, and just happened to be visiting Honduras at the same time we were there.

Honduras is not currently in a happy place, socio-politically speaking.  The president since 2013, who controls the Congress who counts the ballots, is accused of using that ballot-counting power to give himself a narrow margin of victory in November’s elections.  The people who voted for the other guy are calling BS and have protested several times since the election.  (Can you imagine if the US House of Representatives was tasked with assigning the committee that counts ballots and declares victory?  No rules for bi-partisan representation, just let the party in power pick the ballot counters.  OMG.)  There was another protest planned for January 20th, 6 days after we entered Honduras.  We decided to enjoy the Ruinas and Maria, and then bolt for the border before the next round of protests.

But first, for the enjoyment part!  We arrived in early afternoon, a bit later than Maria was planning to arrive.  We thought she might be out at the town square so after we bought some plates of food from a street vendor, we sat down at the square to look for Maria.  Nina wandered all around, shouting “Mia!  Maaaaarrrria!  Mia!!”.   We learned soon that Maria, her daughter Gigi who babysat Nina several times, Maria’s niece and her niece’s 10 month old baby boy had been delayed by a car problem but had finally arrived and they were hungry (as were we).  We went to Maria’s hotel lobby to meet up for dinner and by then Nina was practically in a “Mia” frenzy!  The reunion was super cute – Nina was just in heaven.

The visit to the Ruinas the next day was really special.  The ruins are particularly breathtaking, on beautiful and well-maintained grounds, and inhabited by a bunch of enormous and brilliant macaws.  We saw Maria and Gigi right away after entering the park and viewed most of the ruins together.

Maria invited us for a real Honduran asana dinner that night that we all really enjoyed.  Perfecto!

The next morning we packed up to try and get to a good mid-way point through Honduras by nightfall.  We stopped by Maria’s hotel on the way out of town for more hugging and besitos.  Nina did NOT want to leave, but eventually we got everyone loaded back up and pulled out of town more or less on time.