Copan

Copán, in Honduras, was one of the largest Maya cities during the Classic period. It is also the largest southern site. At its peak, Copán reached a population of 18,000. Ultimately, warfare and misuse of the land caused the dynasty to fall. The last recorded date is A.D. 1200.

The ornate buildings and sculptures make Copán one of the greatest treasuries of art and architecture in all the Americas. The monuments portray Copán's rulers on the platforms, pyramids, stairways, and plazas. Copán's Hieroglyphic Stairway contains the longest written inscription from pre-Columbian America. The 72 steps are inscribed with more than 1,250 hieroglyphs which tell the story of Copán's rulers up to A.D. 755.

Games played at Copán's large Ball Court drew thousands of people to this ceremonial center. Although the Maya ball game is best known for the sacrifices that followed, to the ancient Maya it was an important dramatization of part of their Creation Myth.

Copán is perhaps the most enchanting of all Mayan archaeological sites, and unquestionably the most artistic.

Honduras's fourth-largest city, with a population of slightly over 100,000, CHOLUTECA's main attraction is its old colonial centre, one of the finest in the country. The municipal authorities spent years restoring the city's historic streets, and despite the ravages of Hurricane Mitch, the graceful buildings survived the mud and floods without too much damage. Most places of interest are grouped around the Parque Central, itself a pleasant place to enjoy the cooler evening air. Dominating the square, the imposing seventeenth-century cathedral is worth a look for its elaborately constructed wooden ceiling. On the southwest corner of the parque, the building now housing the Biblioteca Municipal was the birthplace of José Cecilio del Valle, one of the authors of the Central American Act of Independence in 1821 and elected President of the Federation in 1834, though he died before taking office.

San Pedro rates alongside Tegucigalpa, with its own international airport, foreign consulates, and a wide range of hotels, restaurants and shopping outlets – travelers coming from the north rarely need to visit the capital. Time permitting from here we may organize a trip out to one of the country's finest cloud forest reserves, the Parque Nacional El Cusuco.

One of the first Spanish settlements in the country, founded by Pedro de Alvarado in 1536, today's San Pedro bears almost no trace of its pre-twentieth-century incarnation. Burnt out by French corsairs in 1660 and virtually abandoned during a yellow-fever epidemic in 1892, the city struggled to maintain a population of more than five thousand, and today only a few wooden buildings remain as proof of its long past. Fortunes began to rise with the growth of the banana industry in the late nineteenth century, when the city rapidly cemented its role as Honduras's commercial center. With its outer reaches continuing to sprout factories, many of them foreign-owned, and a population now in the region of 600,000, San Pedro ranks as one of the fastest-growing cities in Central America.