Copan

I've got loads of other pictures I'd like to put on this entry, but the computer's just too slow. These are some parrots, or are they macaws? This is 'The Old man of Copan'. I thought he needed cheering up, so I whispered that dirty limeric about the Bishop of Buckingham into his ear.


I've just been to the ruins of Copan, the main Mayan site in Honduras. It's quite an amazing place, and very different to the others I've seen. The thing that marks it out as unique is the incredible quality of the sculptures that are scattered all over the site. They are carved in deep relief with the most incredible detail. Somehow they look quite oriental, if someone told me they were Chinese I wouldn't bat an eyelid. You can also see how the artistic style influenced Matt Groening (the creator of the Simpsons) - there are carved faces that look just like the Revd Lovejoy and Groundskeeper Willy, among others. Another great thing about the site is the amount of carved stones that are lying about here and there, seemingly unexamined. There's a real sense that the site's only been partly explored. Because of this, perhaps, I was lucky enough to find part of an obsidian knife, similar to ones I've seen in several museums. It's still razor sharp after so many hundreds of years - as I discovered when I put it into my back pocket and sat down on a tree stump.

(I've had a good run of finding things recently. On the last three borders I've crossed I've found lucky pennies. As well as getting the good fortune it also means I've been able to goad the ravenous money changers by picking the coins up very deliberately and saying "Ah, this'll do me, thanks gents, but I'm fine for cash.")

The village outside Copan (confusingly called Copan Ruinas) is one of the loveliest spots I've found so far. It's a quiet little place with colonial architecture and cobbled streets set on a small hill. The inhabitants (as they are in nearly all of Honduras apart from the Caribbean coast and a few other places) are mestizos, that is, a mixture of Mayan and European. Because of this they're a good looking bunch who seem to have the knack of lazing without loafing.

Although the village is very unspoilt, the facilities for visitors are really well developed. There are civilised little bars, clean and cheap hotels (I'm paying about three quid a night) and tuk-tuk taxi drivers who give an honest price at the first time of asking.

When I first arrived I made a base camp in one of the bars to choose a hotel over a beer. In my faltering Spanish I asked the barmaid if she could recommend a decent place to stay. She gave me a sideways look and said: "D'you really want to speak Spanish, dahlin'? I'm English n'all and the lingo ain't my strong point neither."

Later I returned to the same bar and got chatting to an Italian-American bloke who was the living image of Robert De Niro, except yellow - I guess he had kidney problems. He had a huge dog with him, which was obviously some sort of expensive pedigree. The barmaid said she wanted to steal it and take it home, and he replied that she shouldn't because it belonged to his boss, who, he implied, was some sort of Mafia godfather. I had no reason to doubt that. After a while a Mayan bloke with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes came and sat on the bar stool to the other side of me, and quietly started drinking a beer. Suddenly, for no obvious reason, the American bloke leapt out of his stool and started addressing this gentleman, loudly and repeatedly, by the Oedipal pronoun and threatened to visit a mischief upon his person. As silent and swift as an otter the Honduran slipped out of the bar and disappeared down the street, with the American prancing after him making chicken noises. When he returned the English barmaid rounded on him: "Danny, you utter prat, what the hell are you playing at? You know full well he's got a gun in his arse pocket." She later told me that the Mayan bloke is well-known locally as a hit man. It took some time for it to sink in that I'd been caught in the middle of a feud between a Mafia exile and a Honduran assassin.

Shortly after this I started chatting to an English couple from Hereford. They said they'd also been struck by how often the landscape looks like the view from the Malverns. The chap said he was related to a farming family in Elmley Castle, so it's quite likely that somehow, distantly, by marriage, he's also related to me. They were both full of enthusiasm about my trip: "Good for you, do it now, while you're young. Us, well, we're racing against time to get to all the places we want to see. When we're 75 we'll never get the insurance."

I thought of this when I saw all the groups of pensioners coming into the ruins just as I was leaving in the midday sun. They tour in groups of a score or more and pore over the passing of ancient glory, of kings who've had their day, forgotten stories and decay. With pastel shirts and floral skirts and stay-pressed pants (with elastic to keep out the ants), baseball caps and cricket hats and telescopic walking sticks each one picks their way along paths grown steeper, in the shadow of the reaper. I know that Shelley, who died when he was 30, was very young when he wrote Ozymandias. I wonder if he'd been older he may have ended it with: "You and me both, mate. The lone and level sands don't seem to stretch that far these days, do they?."