Honduras Travels

COPAN, HONDURAS–Lying on the open-air yoga platform at the Hacienda San Lucas, a rustic but chic adobe resort, I try to ground my body and lengthen my spine, but really, I’m here for the view.

Spreading out below me are the lush Honduran mountains, the green river valley and, though I can’t see them from my lizard-like pose, the Mayan ruins of Copan.

Normally 8 a.m. wouldn’t see me doing anything remotely physical, but the chance to do yoga on a hill overlooking the ruins is just a great way of soaking up the atmosphere.

Mayans had a culture with an advanced approach to architecture and science, they also had a very rich spiritual tradition that embraced different gods and a looming underworld.

168 kilometers southwest of San Pedro Sula, Copan is considered the most elegant, a graceful complex of stepped pyramids, buried temples, a mysterious ball court and a 72-step Hieroglyphic Stairway completed by Smoke Shell, the 15th ruler of Copan. During the city’s 400-year apex from 426 to 820 AD, it was the cultural center of the Mayan world.

I headed to the ruins right after my yoga class , just outside the laid-back town of Copan. My guide, leads me down a shady promenade towards the Grand Plaza, a grassy expanse dotted with carved stone pillars, or stelae, depicting Copan’s most artistic ruler, 18 Rabbit.

As I stand contemplating the ruler’s crocodile belt and serpent staff, a flock of macaws swoops by, their harsh shrieks piercing the humid air. They fly by again as we wandered over the ball court, a narrow field flanked by stone ramps.

My guide said, “Now we can try to wake up the underworld gods”.

When I look startled, my guide explained that this was no ordinary ball game. Played with a heavy rubber ball, it was a ceremonial test against the forces of death, the field a watery meeting point between the Maya and the underworld below.

Theories state that the losing captain was beheaded in shame, others that it was the winning captain who was sent to the underworld, his death ensured spiritual rebirth.

I asked my guide “When are we going into the tunnels?”.

He answered and said “we will soon enter the underworld, too,” he jokes.

That kind of trip wasn’t what I had in mind. It’s the Rosalila Temple I want to see. The Maya often built over old structures as new kings came to power and Rosalila was no exception.

A two-story terraced temple was built in 571 by Moon Jaguar, the 10th ruler of Copan buried beneath a building called Structure 16. As I descend into the tunnel and stare through the glass barrier, the temple’s faded pink walls seem to pulsate with mystery.

This was a very sacred place where rulers connected with their ancestors via rituals bloodletting and smouldering cloths through which visions emerged.

A driver takes a group of us up a red dirt road to Luna Jaguar, a hot springs resort nestled in the jungle hillside. Opened this past january by an Italian spa company, the experience is based on Mayan tradition, and if you go, be prepared to die.

“This tunnel represents the underworld, and as you go through, you are going to leave your problems behind and start anew,” our hostess told us as we stand facing a dark entrance guarded by a replica statue of Moon Jaguar.

Even symbolically entering the underworld is very spooky, but I emerge unharmed and follow a trail to a series of spa stations. Amidst the flat wide leaves and tumbling ferns steam billows up and the boundaries between jungle and sky seem to blur. The steam bath, is ingenious and simple, a wooden platform built over the roiling hot springs.

I continued to the core of the springs passing the open-air massage room, a circular hot pool bordered by river rocks. It’s a fantastic grotto.

Vines drip down, banana trees rustle and I soak in the water until my skin prunes. It’s twilight before I step out and plunge into the adjacent cold pool, springing up gasping and shrieking like a macaw.

This may be the underworld, but I think I’ve just been reborn and it’s great.

Written by: Carol Perehudoff