Birds, hiking and Rastrajón

Tags: Honduras, Los Sapos, Maya ruins, Rastrojón

Date: January 30, 2020

We visited a local bird sanctuary that takes in pet macaws that have been left behind by their owners and, if possible, train them them to survive in the wild and then releasing them. The sanctuary mostly specializes in the scarlet macaw, which is the national bird of Honduras.

A parent scarlet macaw with its almost grown-up chick:

Probably a military macaw eating seeds:

Félicie looking at a macaw in a voliere:

The bird sanctuary is located in a steep river valley:

Apart from macaws, they also have quite a number of other bird species, here a keel-billed toucan (the same species as Touki, that we met at Finca Tatin):

A yellow-eared toucanet (notice the serrated edge of its beak):

A king vulture with a very colorful head:

View from a hanging bridge over the Copan river:

A wake of vultures eating a dead cow:

We did a short hike on the slopes of the Copán river in an area where numerous ancient residential Maya structures have been excavated. Due to economical constraints most of the structures found have been covered up again to preserve them. In the area we passed a tiny Maya site called "Los Sapos" - the toads, named after the carved stone below:

The site is believed to have been a place where fertility rituals were performed. In addition to the carved toad it has several carved stones, some of humans and some of other animals, however, most of the stones are very weather beaten making it almost impossible to see the carvings. Here is a rather well preserved crocodile:

The final Maya site we visited in Honduras was Rastrajón. The excavated part is small and the structures have collapsed due to water running underground eroding the foundations of the structures. Interestingly enough, the fallen stones are not in lying in a jumble, rather the walls have just shifted making it possible to still see the outline of many parts of the structures: