Dona and I left Copan, Honduras, about 10:00. We were hoping to get an early start, but the restaurant where we had breakfast was about the slowest we had ever been in. We were headed for Quirigua, Guatemala, another Mayan site. As with a lot of places in Guatemala, you can get there from here, but it takes a little time and effort...
First we got a bus from the town square in Copan to the border. I can't remember exactly, but it cost about 10 limpira, roughly a tenth of what it cost us to get down to Copan late in the day. The border crossing was simple, and then we hopped on a bus headed to Chiquimula. However, just like the bus we caught coming in to Copan, this one stopped half way there, and we transferred to another bus. In Chiquimula we found a bus headed for Puerto Barrios, so we got on and told the driver we wanted off at Quirigua ruins. There was some question about where we should get off, as there is a Quirigua town and there is the national park with the ruins, which is 2 km further on. You can get a ride from the town to the ruins, but it means hiring someone to take you there. Unfortunately, we let the conductor persuade us to get off at the town. So... we hiked the 2 km down the road, a hot, sweaty, tiring hike, once again made more interesting because of our constant companion, Casey's new saw. Fortunately we did have water with us and a few snacks. The ruins is about 4 km south of the main highway, in the middle of a banana plantation. There's a nice road going there, and enough traffic to get a ride easily. A collectivo (micro bus) stopped shortly after we arrived at the turnoff and took us to the ruins.
The ruins at Quirigua are not nearly as impressive as those at Copan; it was clearly a smaller settlement. However, the stelae are outstanding. Quirigua has the tallest stela yet found, over 30 feet high. I kept thinking how cool it would be to be hiking through the jungle and stumble across towering stone carvings. Quirigua is also one of the few Mayan sites where in addition to normal stela, there are stone carvings of animals. Most of the stone carvings at Quirigua are under some kind of cover to protect them from weathering.
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| Banana Plantation |
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| Quirigua |
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| Stela | Serpent | Stela |
Quirigua, being in the tropical jungle, also had lots of great tree-house possibilities...
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| Great tree-house material! |
We found some cool lizards while wandering around the ruins.
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| Lizard |
We caught the last bus back to the main highway from Quirigua. Actually, what we got on was the banana plantation workers' bus. Once on the main highway, we got on a collectivo headed towards Morales. It was loaded like a phone booth, 25 people at one point. The door was left open and there were three people hanging on out there. It only took us half way, but another one was waiting where the first one stopped to take us the rest of the way to Morales. From there we got yet another one going north to Fronteras, where we arrived about dark.
This page last updated on 2013-10-23.
