Recent Press
Conde Nast Traveller
December 2005
“Dive Right In”
By: Ondine Cohane
Swap the turkey for freshly caught lobster, and the boxing-day movie for a white-water-rafting adventure. Ondine Cohane enjoys a Caribbean Christmas on Honduras, whose pristine reefs, white sands and Mayan ruins means there’s something for everyone...
The Ruins
Most visitors head straight for Copán, near the border with Guatemala. They fly into San Pedro Sula and then take the three-hour bus ride. But renting a car allows you to do some exploring along the way. From La Ceiba we drove to Tela, the site of the government’s next lucrative beach development. Despite several cheerful seaside restaurants along its long, curving bay, Tela is more dusty and rundown than charming. Further along a rough dirt road, however, is Miami, an authentic, pretty Garifuna village of traditional thatched huts, on a spit between a lagoon and the Caribbean Sa. After a nondescript drive past San Pedro Sula, the countryside becomes spectacular on the stretch between La Entrada and Copán. Two thirds of Honduras is covered in rugged mountain ranges, and you really notice it here, as the road winds its way through lush meadows past farmers on horses with simple rope bridles, through green mountain passes, with pickup trucks wheezing up the steep hills with about 20 passengers in the back.
It is late in the afternoon when we pull into Copán, and there is a pall of laziness hanging over the whitewashed plaza, typical of dusty colonial towns in Latin America. The directions we had been given to Hacienda San Lucas required little in the way of memory but a lot in faith: arrive in the square and ask for Doña Flavia. But it works instantly, and we’re directed down past the river into the surrounding hills. Rounding the last bend, we catch sight of a long, sloping lawn framed by trees and bougainvillea and dotted with dozens of lanterns. This 100-year-old hacienda has only two bedrooms (with four more to be completed by the autumn). The rooms and public areas are simple but exquisite: open spaces with high ceilings, rough-hewn wooden tables and benches made from trees that had fallen nearby, polished saddles lining the hacienda courtyard, and a small garden filled with purple and pink blossoms and vegetables. The atmosphere is hushed. We drink a bottle of chilled Chilean wine under and old rubber tree with the owner, Flavia Cueva, a warm, energetic woman who returned to her family’s abandoned hacienda in 1998 and painstakingly restored the property. The place is still without electricity, and is all the better for it. The open kitchen is based on a Mayan model, with a wood-fire stove and comal, a traditional ceramic hotplate. With the help of chef Carlos Rivera and the local Chortí Mayan women, Flavia has resurrected traditional Mayan recipes. Along with the hacienda’s versions of tamales and adobo (a sauce made from sesames and pumpkin seeds and dried red peppers which takes days to prepare), these were unlike anything I have tasted and without doubt the best food of the trip.
The next morning we walk down to Copán. The cool air in the hills warms slowly as the sun takes over the cloudless blue sky. The countryside is sleepy and fragrant: flowering bushes line the road, teenagers fish in the river while their ponies loll on the banks, fields of cattle seek shade under huge trees and women carry bundles of food for lunch on top of their heads. This is an area of the country in which the indigenous highland culture has remained intact, and the town is a vibrant local community that attracts tourists without being overrun. It is a small and easily navigable place where both visitors and locals congregate to people-watch in the main square. A covered market nearby sells more vegetables and flowers than trinkets.
The first European to set eyes on this area, John Lloyd Stephens, wrote in 1843: ‘We could not see 10 yards before us…We stopped to cut away branches and vines…the beauty of the sculpture, the solemn stillness of the woods [was] disturbed only by the scrambling of monkeys and the chattering of parrots.’ Lloyd Stephens was the first archaeologist to ‘discover’ the Mayan ruins at Copán and his book spurred European interest in ruins throughout the region. He fell so deeply in love with the site that, legend has it, he paid $50 for ownership. Although it is not as large as Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula or Tikal in Guatemala, the artistic quality of its temples and sculptures are unsurpassed, which is why it is called the Paris of Mayan cities. As Stephens wrote, ‘Savages never reared these structures; savages never carved these stones.’
At its apex, in the sixth century AD, the population of Copán was about 24,000. Its greatest architectural and artistic period began under Moon Jaguar, the city’s 10th ruler, in 553AD, and continued under 18 Rabbit, who was responsible for completing the impressive Grand Plaza and Ball Court. After 18 Rabbit was murdered (ironically while at a ball-court game in Qurigua) the dynasty weakened, despite bold attempts at spectacular statuary propaganda (the Hieroglyphic Stairway, the longest inscription in the Americas, was constructed to illustrate the powerful history of Copán’s rulers). The city was wiped out by 827AD. Most archaeologists now blame a combination of environmental factors that sound painfully familiar: deforestation, drought, soil erosion and population growth. ‘Copán grew too fast and couldn’t feed the people anymore.’ Explains Dr. Ricardo Argurcia, the leading expert on the ruins, ‘and, meanwhile, people were succumbing to the diseases that come from lack of nutrition and natural resources.’ Dr. Agurcia leads me into a tunnel under one of the main pyramids. Here, in 1989, he uncovered one of the Mayan world’s most unusual and precious sites: the Rosalila Temple, a unique example of preservation in a culture that usually demolished previous architecture to build new structures. Agurcia and others speculate that Rosalila was only spared because it was the grave of Copán’s first king and his beloved wife.
Later that afternoon, Flavia takes us to Los Sapos (“the frogs”), a much smaller site 20 minutes walk away from the hacienda. Flavia has reforested the land around here and during the summer wild flowers line the trail. The rock outcrops, which date from the Olmec period (1100BC-900BC) and were ancient even to the Mayans who built Copán, are thought to be a fertility site. A faded sculpture shows a woman in a pose that suggests giving birth, and local women still come here to make offerings when they are ready to have children. Flavia lights a couple of candles and leaves some black beans, and we sit in silence as night falls. On our way back, we pass the home of one of the families that have lived on the land for generations-Flavia’s father promised the current owner that he could always keep the house, rent-free, and he is sitting outside as his daughter cooks dinner. She invites us into the candlelit home and, as my eyes adjust to the light, I see that the walls are lined with dried corn husks, a baby lies in the cradle, and the woman is cooking tortillas on a hot stove. I think of Elwood and his hillside home, and of this small house above Copán in the woods, and can’t help but think that this is the real Honduras, the one I came to see.
For reservations, contact us at: info@haciendasanlucas.com.