Copán Ruinas is one of the most visited places in Honduras. It is a calm and beatiful small town where you can enjoy ancient culture and sublime nature nestled in the foothills of western Honduras. For years, Copán has been renowned for its magnificent Maya Ruins, a designated World Heritage Site believed by archeologists to be the cultural center, the Paris, of the Maya world. Copan Ruinas is located 7 miles from the Guatemala border, so it is easy for people that visit Mayan Ruins in Guatemala to come to Copan.

Copan was the governmental and ceremonial center of the Mayan civilization, known for its remarkable series of stelae, which are sculpted rocks, usually representing ancient rulers of Copan. The stelae are located in the central plaza, which is next to the acropolis ( a large complex of overlapping step-pyramids, plazas and palaces).

These are some of the places that you cannot miss if you visit the ruins:

• • Campo de pelota: a court where the Mayans played a ball game, with their elbows, head and knees.
  • Escalinata de los jeroglificos: A huge stairway made of stone, that has the history of the Mayans sculpted in its steps.
  • Templo de Rosalila: a temple constructed in 571 a.d. which was used for religious ceremonies and at present time it is located under one of the pyramids in Copan.

Besides visiting the ruins, you can do a lot of activities. If you want to study spanish in a small town, Copan might be the right place for you, there are a lot of spanish schools in town. Also, you can go horsebackriding, birdwatching, go on Canopy Tours, Take a Hike to Rarely Seen Ruins and Hidden Waterfalls, Go Birdwatching, Soak in a Thermal Hot Springs, Explore Mysterious Caves, Camp in Remote National Parks, Go Kayaking or Tubing on the Copán River, Visit an Aquatic Park, Walk along the Scenic Copán River to the Ruins of Los Sapos, Go Mountain Biking, Visit Beautiful & Historic Colonial Towns in the Mountains, Tour a Coffee Farm, and Bring Home a Sample, and See Local Artisans Practice Their Craft.

Image by Adal-Honduras via Flickr

As you can see, you will never get bored in Copan. Just one final hint, one of the best restaurants to eat in Copan is Restaurante Carnitas N’ia Lola, where you can taste typical Honduran food. They are known for serving large portions of grilled and barbacued meat and vegetarian dishes at reasonable prices. Some of the recommended dishes are: Alambritos (Steak with melted cheese, bacon, onion, sweet pepper, with sides of salsa and pickled veggies) and the Plato Tipico (6 ounces of grilled steak, chicken or pork, sunny side up eggs, refried beans, cheese, rice and pickled veggies). Carnitas N’ia Lola is located 2 blocks south of the city museum.

It is a really nice small and peacfull town in Honduras, don’t miss it.

Image by ESPaul via Flickr

There is a great variety of food in Honduras, even if it is not known around the world our dishes are loved by tourists that visit our country. I would say that one of the best Honduran crafts is the way of cooking in clay ovens or the use of anafres, comales to bake the food giving it a special and unique touch. Some of the most typical food uses corn as one of its main ingredients, such as tamales, pupusas, and the very popular tortillas, which is eaten everyday just as bread in other countries.

The Honduran recipe that I will talk about today is called Baleada, which is a special tortilla which is not made of corn but of wheat flour. It is rather larger than the everyday tortilla because this special tortilla is going to be filled up with delicious toppings. Usually to make the tortilla for the baleada, you mix the wheat flower with warm water or milk, salt, baking soda and a little bit of oil or lard. Usually 2 cups of white wheat flower should be enough to serve 2 people. Add one teaspoon of oil, baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 egg, 1 cup of warm milk or water. It all depends if you prefer thicker/thinner or larger smaller tortillas, so try it out and adjust the recipe to your taste. Let the dough rest for about 30 min.

Then after having the dough is ready, make small balls so that it is easier to make the tortilla. Usually the tortillas are done by hand but you can use a rolling pin to get the final shape. To cook the tortilla, usually a comal is used but you can use a flat frying pan. Place the flat tortilla on the hot pan and wait until the edges start to separate from the pan, it takes less than a min. Then turn the tortilla over and wait a few seconds. When you think is ready, press down on the tortilla with a spatula and let go. Do this several times so that the tortilla inflates. Watch the video and see how the lady makes the tortilla…

The other ingredients that cannot be forgotten are the beans, usually the traditional Honduran Baleada is filled up with mashed red or black beans spread on the tortilla. Then put some shredded cheese on top with a special sweet/sour cream to finish this very easy dish.

There are other varieties of baleadas, you can add shredded coconut to the dough to give it a different taste and add to the original baleada recipe: avocado, sausage, scrambled eggs, jalapeños, onions, chicken or simmered beef. Put all of the ingredients on top of the tortilla, then fold and is ready to eat.

I hope you try out this easy recipe and let me know how it went.

Armando Lara was born in la Lima, in the north coast of Honduras in 1959. He demonstrated his artistic vocations since he was very young. Since he was a student in school, he enjoyed drawing very much and demonstrated his inclination to surrealism.

Even though he was prone to this artistic style, he did not want to follow the same psychological tendency of the pure form of surrealism and instead he followed a social path. To do this, he inspires himself in a concrete fact in life, generally related with injustice and converts this situation into fantastic images in order to give the painting the right atmosphere.

One of his most important paintings, where his style can be appreciated related with Honduras history is “Ecos”, made in 1989. The painting has warm tones and representing a desert with two craters in the centre and a fossil human figure in the spotlight. Also in the painting several seashells can be seen in the background.

In works of later years, Lara keeps his plastic speech full of content, but with a different texture that characterizes the picture described above. Now he works with cool colors in order to highlight aspects of a reality which are markedly inhumane. That’s what I see in his paintings “Rincon de luz” (1991) and “Calles de gas,” which describes two opposing environments of what is and should be the man. To a point that this ends up as a simple bagged hand, which means that it is powerless to perform is best ability: to create. Using this theme and style, essentially surrealist profile, Lara has made numerous personal and collective exhibitions with great applause from the audience. His works are in several countries in Latin America and the United States.

Some individual Expositions

Valanti Galery-San José Costa Rica- 2006
Mujeres en las Artes ‘’Leticia de Oyuela’’ Tegucigalpa, Honduras- Mayo 2005
‘’Espacio’’ Galery San Salvador, El Salvador- Diciembre 2003
‘’Valanti’’ Galery San José, Costa Rica-Junio 2001
‘’Legacy Fine Art’’ Galery Panamá, Panamá-Octubre 2000
‘’Espacio’’ Galery San Salvador, El Salvador
Galery ‘’Américas Collection’’ Miami, Fl. EE.UU.-1999
Contemporary Art Museum Panamá, Panamá Comunicación Interrumpida’’ -Agosto 1999
Contemporary Plastic Arts Galery Guatemala, Guatemala-Diciembre 1998

If you would like to see some of his paintings, visit www.artebus.com

José Antonio Velásquez is the most important painter that Honduras has seen. José Antonio Velásquez was born on the 8th of February of 1906 in a small town called Caridad in the south west of the country, near the border with El Salvador.
Velásquez lived in Caridad until his parents died, moving to the north coast of the country to look for work. At that time the north coast had many foreign companies investing in banana plantations. In 1930, he moved to Tegucigalpa and learned the trade of telegrapher. After learning this trade, he was offered a job and had to move San Antonio de Oriente, a town located at 30 km from the capital Tegucigalpa.
He fell in love with this town; he got married there in 1931 to Raquel Maradiaga and had 6 children. San Antonio de Oriente became his inspiration for most of his art work. After a few years he stopped working in the Post Office and started working as a barber, where he dedicated some of his time to painting as a hobbie, inspired in San Antonio de Oriente’s beauty.
José Antonio Velásquez is considered the first primitivism painter in America. His reputation began to spread and he was invited by the King of Spain to promote his work in that country. Afterwards, he would make several other expositions in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Colombia and Cuba.
His paintings were extremely deatiled and this style has its sources in spontaneous paintings of primitive man and also to children drawings. His work is similar to the French painter Lois Vivin, who painted Paris’ buildings brick by brick. The same style can be appreciated in Velazques paintings where you can see the roof tiles painted one by one, the hills where you can count the pine trees, dogs in the street and people occupied in their daily chores.
José Antonio Velásquez died on the 14th of February, 1983 leaving one incomplete painting.