Copan Ruinas, Honduras to Finca Paraiso, Guatemala

Day 57 to Day 60
Tuesday, May 4th to Friday, May 7th

Copan Ruinas Day
Copan Ruinas to Finca Paraiso, Lago Izabal, Guatemala
Finca Paraiso Day

I think I've found a good travel companion in Phillipe. We both seem to like just quietly experiencing our environment. We both seem to not be too keen on being in a large tour group, yet we can have deeper conversations about many subjects. Phillipe is a teacher whose subjects include ethics and he has studied religion. This is making for some interesting and stimulating conversation topics.


I wasn't too keen on visting the ruins at Copan. I'd seen enough ruins in the past and another one didn't really appeal to me. I ended up going anyway and holy moley! was I impressed. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves. The hordes of Turistus Autobus were just leaving as we showed up. We ended up just ambling along, each at our own pace. The energy of the place was simply wonderful. The site is much smaller than Tikal and some others, but the number of well preserved stelae and carvings was stupendous. The archeologists had created tunnels through parts of the pyramids and we paid to see them. The Maya had built over existing structures several times and it was quite interesting to see the old original walls and carvings that had been covered up with the newer construction. We ended up spending at least 3 hours at the ruins just soaking in the energy.

At the entrance to the ruins, there were parrots and agouti, kinda like an oversized rat, that were trying to steal the parrots' food ...the parrots won.




Brisas Del Lago, Finca Paraiso, Lago Izabal, Guatemala

We spent two nights here lounging in the hammocks, reading and listening to the waves of Guatemala's largest lake.




Lago Izabal




Lago Izabal, Finca El Paraiso




Lago Izabal, Guatemala




They started surrouding us during dinner at night.




Lago Izabal




Finca El Paraiso Cattle Drive




Aguas Calientes, Finca El Paraiso, Guatemala

Aguas Calientes was a wonderful little interlude. The night before we had met a German and Austrian girls who had rented a car and were driving around Guatemala. Two more independent travellers to my heart. Eva and Astrid are veterenarians and were a lot of fun to be around. With Phillipe we floated in the warm pools for a few hours and then I hiked around the area to see the source of the hot water. The little waterfall is all hot water, which falls into the colder river below. Right behind the curtain of water is a little overhang where you can hang out for your own natural sauna. The river has little fish in it which just love biting the legs of unsuspecting great white tourists like myself. But at least they didn't break skin. All that was hurt were my vocal cords when I yelped out loud.



Aguas Calientes, Finca El Paraiso, Guatemala

Comments

Onip said…
And I think that you make a good traveling companion Tooo...

IT's been a very nice time !!!

ANd yes.. Copan.. What a great place...

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