Copan was in the old days of the Maya, an important city, which is located in Honduras. I visited it during a road trip in 2019. Is it worth visiting this world heritage site?
Where is it located?
Copan is located really close to the border of Guatemala in the west of Honduras.
230 km driving from Guatemala City, 210 km from San Salvador, but 410 km from the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. So with 180 km the next bigger city in Honduras, or around the same distance from Santa Ana in El Salvador.
So you can take a bus or hitchhike from many different countries to this location. The border situation between these countries is also really relaxed, so that is nothing to worry about.
In our case, we had a rental car, with which we took some other travelers with us to share the costs.
What does it cost?
With $15 you can enter the ruins, for the price, you can freely walk around in the area of the ruins. For extra payment, you are able to visit the museum for Maya sculptures as well. This depends on you, if you want to do it. I think the normal entry is enough to get a good feeling for the old city of Copan.
With the normal entree, besides the ruins and the area itself, you are able to see excavation sites, where you are able to see workers, making more of Copan visible for the future.
What to expect?
You can expect great nature, with seeing in it the ruins of an old Maya town. It is a touristic place, but not that filled with tons of tourists, compared to other maya sites.
You can freely walk around and spend a decent amount of time exploring the area. It is located right in the little city, so it is easy to reach there.
They kept it with much nature in the sites and made it more authentic in the way of knowing it is an old maya town.
In the area there were many animals found, for example free turkeys running around and also parrots, which are able to be found in the trees. It is a peaceful environment, with not many tourist shops around. It felt peaceful and like a good place to visit.
There is also an open space, around where the ballgame arena is at. There the grass is cut and kept in shape, so that everything is looking good.
My experience
We visited Copan during the rainy season in Honduras, which was not bad, it was raining basically at the end of the day heavy for an hour or sometimes a bit longer. So during the day, it was fine to visit the city.
When I arrived at the park, nature was already looking great. After paying the entry fee, we were welcomed by the parrots. After going further along the way, the ruins were starting to appear. It looked impressive!
Seeing the temples and everything which was excavated, it was great. Also with being able to walk up some parts, having a better view of the area, perfect. I was not expecting that beforehand. To be fair, I was not expecting anything.
Seeing the temples with for example trees growing out of it, looked amazing. Something which looked, due to that fact, really old and interesting.
My favorite part was probably the arena of the famous Mayan Ballgame where the outcome of the game was deciding who gets sacrificed. I was hearing in general a lot beforehand about it, so seeing the actual playground from one of them was really great.
I also liked seeing the parrots and the turkey. Actually for me it was my first time seeing parrots in the wild. Usually in Europe, you see them as a pet or in a zoo, or on television.
Why is it good visiting Copan?
One of the reasons is that Honduras in general is not the best visited country in Central America, because of that, also Copan doesn’t have many visitors.
Also Copan was an important city in the mayan kingdom. It was located to the south of it. You can find many hieroglyphics, which you can find for example in the high hieroglyphic staircase. It is quite big and in relatively good condition.
I personally liked it a lot there, same as the people who were there with me. It was the perfect combination of seeing something impressive, being with not many other tourists and still having a clean and healthy touristic center around everything.
The workers of the world heritage site are taking care of it staying clean and seem to be treating it with respect.
Summary
Copan is a quite big and important maya town, which is not so highly visited as for example Tikal or the ones in Mexico. This is most likely due to the in general not highly visited country Honduras. It is a safe place to visit and is located not far away from bigger cities around.
The entry fee is a fair price, for all the work, which is and was happening around there.
I personally really like visiting Copan and when you are near there and thinking about also visiting Honduras. Just check it out, it is great for a daily trip, you don’t really need longer there, because the surrounding city is not really big and much to see.
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