Copan

Most of my tour seemed ambivilant about the humble ruins of Copan but I dug them. And I got points from the tourguide for having done my homework and seen Apocalypto. I think the central american people pretty much appreciate, well at least this industry, the visual impact of the film, and the reference it gives to what life might have been like, though he commented that the forest would not have been so dense, in the chase scenes, because of wide spread deforestation of the lands. But in explanation of the bloodletting, drug use which he frequently disparaged in reference to how they came up with the fanciful sculptures, cocoa beans, and slave trades he pointed to the film quite a bit, and used some amusing pop references so tha´t we´d remember... of course now i only know that the first king of copan´s name rhymes with Jacques Costeau... but then there were some cool king names like smoke-snake... and our tour guide was quite tall and not all like the tiny people we saw in antigua or in various parts down the countryside so far... so the mongolian-china gateway thing didn´t seem far off by looking at him. The history of this place is fascinating! But so far, and so under realized cinematically. It is quite a shame there aren´t more um, well, apocalyptos out there... for nothing else but to show this huge, industrious, over opulent and eventually ecologically devastating mass of people who were obsessed with the calendar, liked concrete as much as modern cities, invented the wheel and the numerical concept of zero-- fantastic.