Mexican Road Trip: To the Yucatan and Back

Hello, everyone!

To those among you who may have been following “Part 1” of this thread: my sincere apologies for the extended intermission. I said I’d be back in a month, and here it’s been four! But I’m finally (finally!) ready to pick up where I left off.

In a nutshell: it was the 13th day of our Mexican Road Trip, and we’d spent the morning touring the Mayan ruins at Tulum. Cut to our two intrepid explorers (Me and Mikey), sitting in my Jeep in the parking lot of the Archaeological Park, contemplating our next move…

(Care to come along for the ride? Better buckle your seat belts, and keep a sharp eye out for the TOE-PAYS!)

Rick

On the 13th day of our road trip, we spent the morning making a follow-up visit to the Mayan ruins at Tulum. Our plan for the afternoon called for a visit to a place called Cobá, a large Mayan site just 30 miles away to the northwest. Known as the City of the White Roads, Cobá is the fifth most popular Mayan ruin in Mexico, at least in terms of visitor numbers–although I was fairly sure that had more to do with the proximity to Cancun than it did with the quality of the architecture.

We’d already booked a second night at the Maison Tulum; (with that French bakery on the ground floor, we were certainly in no hurry to leave).

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Maison Tulum, Google Street View

That left the rest of the day free, giving us plenty of time to drive to Cobá, explore the ruins, and still make it back to Tulum in time for dinner.

The route couldn’t have been simpler: a straight shot on MX 109, a Quintana Roo State Highway.

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Tulum to Coba

That meant we’d be contending with potholes, livestock, and the ubiquitous topes (killer speed bumps) but at this point, all that was par for the course.

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Transit Police on motorcycles, snuck up beside us at a stop sign.

COBÁ

We arrived at the archaeological park a little after 1:00 PM. There’s a village adjacent to the ruins, but very little infrastructure.in the park itself. A row of tour buses sat idling on one side of the lot, engines running to keep their AC going, but there were no more than a dozen private cars in view, and some of those probably belonged to staff. This was October, the off season, but I got the sense that the lack of private cars was typical, that the majority of Cobá’s visitors tend to come on those buses, and not on their own.

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Park Entrance, ruins of Cobá

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Cobá: Site Map (INAH)

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Site Map composited with Satellite View

The first thing we saw when we walked in was a bicycle rental concession, along with a fleet of pedicabs, all staged near the entrance, and doing a booming business. We rather quickly found out why. In it’s day, Cobá was one of the largest of all Mayan cities, with a population estimated to have been more than 50,000 people, spread out over several square miles. Unlike the other sites we’d visited, there wasn’t one central area where all the most interesting structures were clustered. The attractions at Cobá were spread out, just like the original old city had been, so there were actually four different groups of ancient buildings, separated by as much as two miles! On the plus side, the old Mayan roads, the sacbeob, still connected the various sections, and portions of them are kept in good enough shape to use as bike paths.

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Most visitors to Cobá rent bicycles to tour the extensive ruins

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Other visitors prefer to be carried

Many of the people we saw returning their bikes after finishing their tour looked like they’d just run a triathlon, puffing and panting, dripping sweat, and red in the face–which was hardly an endorsement of the experience. October in the tropics can still be quite warm. With all the rain, the day was humid to the point of stifling, and the path was lined by thick jungle growth that blocked off any hope of a breeze. Honestly? Mike and I didn’t even ask about the bicycle rentals. We went straight to the Pedi-cab stand, and sat ourselves down in the first available. Our designated pedal-pusher was a young guy named Francisco, who was clearly in better shape than either of us old gringos. He offered us a two hour circuit of the ruins for 200 Pesos (a little over $10). Sounded downright cheap to me, so off we went!

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Me and Mikey chose the Pedi-cab option; (hence, Mike’s toothsome smile).

Francisco was quick to point out that he wasn’t a guide. Official guides had to be certified, and it wasn’t so easy to get that credential. He would nevertheless do his best to answer any questions we might have, and he’d let us know what we were seeing as we made our way through the site.

The first stop, not far from the entrance, was a Ball Court, with sloping sides, and stone goal rings still in place. Every Mayan city had at least one of these; according to Francisco, Cobá had two of them. This was the smaller court, probably used for practice, or more intimate contests. Players on opposing teams tried to knock a rubber ball through the goal without using their hands or feet.

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Ball Court #1, flanked by a platform with stone steps. The game was a merger of sport, politics, and religion. In some contests, the losing team was sacrificed to the gods!

Cobá was quite a big deal back in its heyday, from 600 AD to about 1000 AD. Being the largest city in the area gave them the resources to dominate their neighbors, and that’s exactly what they did. They demanded tribute from all the lesser Lords, and secured their privileged position by forging close alliances with their most powerful rivals, the kings of Tikal, Dzibanche, and Calakmul. It’s quite probable that they secured those ties through intermarriage of the noble houses. Based on inscriptions found on many of the stelae at the site, a great many of the rulers of Cobá are thought to have been women. It’s important to note that even though major new construction ceased after 900 AD, Cobá was not abandoned at that time. The city remained occupied, and the original structures were still being maintained well into the 14th century, almost up to the time of the Spanish Conquest. When Chichén Itzá started its rise to prominence, Cobá was already beginning its slow decline, yet it remained a force in competition with the mighty Itzá for at least a century.

Cobá was a religious center, with the largest, finest pyramids and temples in the area, and it was also at the center of a thriving trade network. The Maya never quite developed the wheel, and they had no draft animals, so everything that required transport had to be carried on the backs of humans. The sacbeob, the White Roads, were raised pathways that spread out from Cobá’s ceremonial and administrative centers like a web. The name came from the layer of crushed white stone spread along the path to reflect moonlight, making it easier for the bearers to move their loads in the cool of the night. Within the city, the sacbeob connected hundreds of residential clusters, each cluster consisting of fifteen houses built atop a raised platform. Outside the city, the White Roads extended for as much as 100 km, connecting the many smaller Mayan cities and towns that traded with Cobá, and owed fealty to the kuhul ajaw, their divine ruler.

The thought that we were rolling along those original sacbeob was very cool; there were more of them in evidence here than at any other site in the Mayan world. The crushed white stone that once defined the pathways is long gone, but since the park closes at 5:00, the only people who might benefit from reflected moonlight are people who–let’s face it–shouldn’t be out there in the first place.

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The Pyramid of the Painted Lintel, with a staircase up one side.

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Climbing is not allowed, so the close view of the painted stones was taken with a telephoto lens.

We pedaled along for 20 minutes or so, then got out and walked to the next major grouping of structures, centered around a squat, truncated pyramid topped by a blocky temple. This was the “Pyramid of the Painted Lintel,” so called because of the stones above the temple doorway that are still coated with the original red and blue-green paint. The temple and its lintel was protected by a palm thatch roof supported by wooden poles. According to Francisco, the roof was a recent addition, put there to shield the ancient paint from direct exposure to the weather.

Francisco was well accustomed to the task of pedaling visitors around the ruins, but this particular day was extra humid from all the recent rain, and we were on a section of path that went slightly uphill. The poor guy was struggling, standing up on the pedals to put all of his weight into the down strokes, and sweating buckets. I insisted that he pull over and take a break while we explored the next set of ruins on foot.

The architecture was classic Peten style, influenced by the early Mayan city-states in northern Guatemala. The structures are old and worn, blocky, lacking the flair and the artfully restored embellishments that characterize the more famous sites, like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.

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Cobá wasn’t opened up to tourists until the 1980’s; only a small part of the old city has been cleared, and much of that is already overgrown again, with jungle trees sprouting from the steps and platforms.

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A short distance away was the main Ball Court, which was definitely bigger than the first one.

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There were carved stone panels and other sculptures, including a stone skull, very worn, mounted flush with the ground at the center of the court.

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Most interesting was a large panel of glyphs, a record of dates and other details relevant to the contests that took place here.

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One of the two goal rings has a section broken out, which is actually typical. They’ve found at least a hundred Mayan Ball Courts in the Yucatan, and only a handful had goal rings still in one piece. At some Mayan sites, broken rings have been replaced with intact replicas. Here, they did no such thing.

Just beyond the main Ball Court was a four-tiered conical structure known as the Xai’be Pyramid, often called the Iglesia (the church). Round buildings are unusual in the Mayan world, and are often associated with the observation of celestial events, and the forecasting of solstices and other seasonal phenomena. The Xai’be Pyramid was thought by some to have served that purpose, in the manner of the famous Caracol at Chichén Itzá, but, according to the archaeologists, no evidence has been found that would support that theory. As far as we know, Cobá’s Iglesia was never anything more than a monument to a ruler’s ego.

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The Xai’be Pyramid, also known as the Iglesia (the church)

A stone’s throw from the Iglesia was the Ixmoja Pyramid, the largest building in Cobá. Rising 140 feet from its base, the Ixmoja is the second tallest pyramid in the entire Mayan world, and it’s the main reason why most visitors come to Cobá in the first place. Why is it so popular? Because they still allow visitors to climb the darned thing, 130 very steep steps, all the way to the top, where you’re rewarded with a killer view of the surrounding countryside. Pyramids at most of the Mayan sites in Mexico, including the famous Castillo at Chichén Itzá, have been off limits to visitors for decades, for safety reasons, as well as to protect the monuments from the wear and tear caused by millions of trampling feet. If “climbing a Mayan pyramid” is an item on your bucket list, Cobá is one of the very few places where you can still scratch that itch.

Why do I not have pictures from the top? Because, I regret to say, we didn’t make the climb. We stood there and watched for a bit, but in the end, we elected to skip it. When you get to a certain age, you have to be honest with yourself about your limitations, and about the fragility of old bones. My sense of balance isn’t what it used to be; I get dizzy on ladders, and even worse when looking down from high places. I imagined myself clambering up (and then back down again) all of those steep stone steps, climbing in a conga line with all those other people, and, if I’m being honest? It really didn’t look like fun.

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Visitors to Cobá, climbing the Ixmoja pyramid.

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A warning sign states “Climb at your own risk,” in Spanish, English, Italian, and French.

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There is a guide rope fixed in place, the one and only concession to visitor safety. A fall from the top could be fatal!

Cobá is known for its stelae, the flat standing stones carved with intricate designs commemorating important persons and events. The glyphs on the stelae, to the extent that they are still legible, tell the story of Cobá’s noble houses, the wars, the alliances, and the succession of rulers (the cabbages and the kings), complete with dates that they’ve been able to translate. There are several groups of stelae in different sections of the ruins, protected from the weather by rustic palm thatch roofs. To the untrained eye, most of them don’t look like much, but for the Maya scholars, they speak volumes.

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There was still a lot more to see, including a large set of buildings known as the Macanxoc Group, but that would have meant pushing our Pedicab driver well beyond the two hours we’d agreed to. The poor guy was pretty well whipped, and Mike and I had put in quite a long day ourselves, so we called a halt. We thanked Francisco for his services, and threw in an extra 200 Pesos as a well-deserved tip.

The drive back to Tulum was uneventful (just the way we like it), and in what seemed like no time at all, we were back at our hotel, sipping on a cold brew. After dinner, we spent a pleasant evening in our room, plotting our next move. We were close to the mid-point of our expedition to the Yucatan. We’d been to Palenque, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, Tulum, and now, Cobá. That was the whole top five, so it was time to shift gears, and start exploring some of the sites that are less well known. With dozens of possibilities to choose from, narrowing down the list was a challenge.

We definitely wanted to go back to Campeche. We’d passed through it much too quickly when we were on our way to Merida the week before, and I’d promised myself a closer look at the place before we left the area. With that in mind, we spread out our maps, and plotted a route from the Riviera Maya to the opposite side of the peninsula, by way of Escárcega. That would not only complete our circle around the Yucatan, it would give us easy access to at least a half dozen Mayan cities that we’d be passing along the way.

Next up: Day 14, from Tulum to Escarcega

Rick,

Very cool seeing this thread come back to life.

one suggestion: Break up the future days into more posts -- makes it easier for folks using mobile devices to view the thread. (For instance, the last post could have been placed into 4-5 posts.)

On desktops, the photos load easily, because we have built the upload mechanism to scale them faster.

But good to see nonetheless.

Mark

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick Quinn

Players on opposing teams tried to knock a rubber ball through the goal without using their hands or feet.

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So...How did this work? They used their heads or chests or??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

So...How did this work? They used their heads or chests or??

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They mostly used their hips and shoulders, is my understanding. The balls were made of natural rubber; (there's speculation that there may have been a human skull in the middle of the ball). Either way, the balls were supposedly heavy, and hard, so players wore thick leather armor to avoid broken bones. I mentioned that the losing team was sometimes sacrificed? In another version of the story, it was the WINNING team that was sacrificed, because death by sacrifice was a great honor, on par with death in battle.

Seems kind of appropriate to start part II today, given the recent weather events in that part of the world :)

Rick, In case you didn't know, for a good bit of the Yucatan section of this trip you were inside the crater formed by the asteroid impact responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs.

AZBuck

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BillyGr

Seems kind of appropriate to start part II today, given the recent weather events in that part of the world :)

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Indeed, they're getting clobbered right now on the Caribbean side of the Peninsula. During the time that we were there (October of 2015), it was nominally the END of the hurricane season, but they had the stongest hurricane on record (Patricia, with 200 mph winds) bearing down on the Pacific coast. There were fears that Patricia would collide with the tropical storm that was flooding Cancun that week. We got lucky (as did millions of other people) when they ended up going in different directions.

Rick

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AZBuck

Rick, In case you didn't know, for a good bit of the Yucatan section of this trip you were inside the crater formed by the asteroid impact responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs.

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Actually, that explains quite a lot!

Rick

DAY 14: From Tulum to Escárcega, via Muyil, Becán, and Chicanná

On Day 14, we had one last French Bakery breakfast at our hotel, the Maison Tulum, then we gassed up the Jeep, checked the oil and tires, and hit the road. MX 307 is the principal north-south highway connecting the cities and towns along the Riviera Maya. From Cancun to Tulum the road runs parallel to the coastline. After Tulum, it veers slightly inland before dropping south to Chetumal, on the border with Belize.


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We planned to head in that direction, but we’d decided against crossing into Belize, so at the junction with MX 186, Just before Chetumal, we would be turning west toward Escárcega, on the other side of the Yucatan peninsula.

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We planned to visit at least three Mayan sites this day, beginning with a place called Muyil, which neither of us had ever heard of before I noticed it on our map. It was just 15 miles south of Tulum, but it had a reputation for being one of the least crowded attractions in the area.

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MUYIL

The name of the Mayan site is Muyil, but the surrounding community is Chunyaxche, and the two names seemed to be interchangeable.

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First we took the turnoff for Chunyaxche, then the turnoff for Muyil.

For being so close to Tulum, Muyil had an isolated, far-away feel to it, and they certainly weren’t kidding about the lack of crowds. We arrived just past 9 AM, and wandered the grounds for close to an hour. The whole time we were there, we were the only visitors in sight.

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The parking lot was right beside the road; the only vehicle in view belonged to the caretaker.

Parking was free, and entrance to the ruins was just 50 Pesos apiece (less than $3), making this the cheapest ruin we’d been to so far. Then again, it was also the smallest ruin we’d been to so far. Muyil/ Chunyaxche was named for two adjacent lagoons, connected to each other and to the sea by canals. Big canoes filled with trade goods plied the Caribbean coastline in the Mayan era, and they used the lagoons as a safe harbor. Muyil provided docks, and became a transfer point for goods moving inland. Trade gave them the wealth required to build a serious pyramid, large enough to belie the small size of their community. (Ever larger monumental construction was the ultimate form of one-upsmanship among Mayan Nobles).

Just beyond the rustic ticket booth,

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a pathway leads past a site map:

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and other signage to the first of Muyil’s buildings, a temple known as “Estructura 7H-3,” a relatively intact structure reminiscent of the building style we saw at Tulum, with a vaulted concrete ceiling, and faded remnants of painted murals on some interior walls.

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The temple is backed by several larger structures that are crumbling into rubble.

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We wound our way through the forest on a well defined path,

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and after five or ten minutes we approached a large clearing.

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Muyil’s largest structure is the Castillo, a tiered pyramid built of stacked stones mortared together. When viewed from the front side, it’s much like the Peten style pyramids of Tikal.

Rising up above the tree tops, this five-tiered stone pyramid was impressive! The painted stucco that once smoothed the exterior is long gone, along with at least half of the carved and fitted facing stones. What’s left, at least on the back side, is clearly exposed as a very large pile of rocks.

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Near the top there were two stone panels with birds–herons–carved in relief. The caretaker was quite proud of these, as they were newly installed reproductions that he considered “much nicer” than the originals.

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Officially, the pyramid is Structure 8-I-13, often referred to as the Castillo, the Castle. It’s not huge, as pyramids go, topping out at just over 50 feet, but it’s definitely imposing. Try to imagine: the equivalent of a five story building, with a three story grand staircase, just appearing, out in the middle of nowhere? Boo-yah!

Continuing along the path was like hiking in deep jungle, but there was an incongruous, almost continuous rumble as the trucks passing on the nearby highway hit a downgrade, and applied their engine brakes. (BRUUMMM-bum-bum-BRR-A-A-A-P-P-P!) Mike was filming with his Go-Pro camera while we walked, and came within an inch of smacking face first into a barely visible silken web strung across the path at eye level.

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The spider was a golden orb-weaver, known for huge, complicated webs; fortunately for us, this one was a dude. The females of that same species are 80 times larger than the males–think, tarantula size. Nose to nose with one of those? No—just—no, but thanks, anyway.

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Strangler fig, with buttressed roots!

We kept going most of the way along the path, to Structure 9K-1, aka Temple 8, aka the Pink Palace; so called for the reddish tint of the stone;

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According to the site map, there was another temple further ahead, at the ultimate end of the path, but right about then, the dark clouds that had been building since we arrived opened up and started POURING on us! Mike was well behind me, still viewing the world through his Go-Pro, so intently that he almost missed me when I came running toward him. “Let’s get out of here,” I shouted as I lumbered past, “Before we get soaked!” I used my raincoat to shield my cameras, leaving everything else exposed, so by the time we got back to the Jeep, I looked like I’d been showering with my clothes on.

Next up: Heading South on MX 307

South on MX 307

It was still early when we left Muyil, heading south on MX 307. We hit a town with the unlikely name of Felipe Carillo Puerto, where we were shunted off onto a poorly marked construction detour that had us driving through neighborhoods, with stop signs at every corner.

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Texting while Driving a motor scooter? At least she has a helmet on!

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Headed south on MX 307: Scenes along the road.

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Topes! (Toe-pays): Even when they’re well marked, they’re a pain!

At the junction with MX 186, three hours south of our starting point in Tulum, we kept to the right and turned toward Escárcega, four hours of slow state highway to the west. Our next destination was a Mayan city called Becán, just short of the halfway point on that stretch of road. That’s where we left the State of Quintana Roo, and entered the State of Campeche.

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In the small town of Xpujil, we went through a roundabout featuring a statue of a Campechana, a woman of Campeche…

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…and a second sculpture, modern, but with Mayan themes, titled “Caracol de la Vida,” the Shell of Life. That one, I must confess, was a little strange!

Next up: Becán

BECÁN

Aside from the brief rain storm that soaked us at Muyil, this had been a perfect day, weather-wise, with temps in the high 70’s, and beautiful blue skies. We’d been on the road for almost five hours, altogether, making good time, when we finally spotted a sign that read Becán, along with the pyramid symbol that indicates a ruin.

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I’d circled it on our map the night before, mostly because it was directly in our line of travel. Other than location, I knew very little about the place. We slowed and made the turn, driving past a rustic hotel.
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A short distance further along there was another sign, and an empty parking lot. Just like at Muyil, we appeared to be the only visitors.

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A path led from the parking area into the trees, and after a short distance, the vegetation closed in on us, almost like being back in the jungle. We walked for a quarter of a mile or so before we finally spotted the entrance booth. Couldn’t miss it–the path actually went right through the building!

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The site’s caretaker (the only staff person in evidence) charged us 80 Pesos apiece to enter, which was more than Muyil, but less than every other place we’d been.

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The caretaker asked us to add our names, along with our home towns, to their guest book, a custom from a bygone era that I found quite charming. I wondered how many books they’d filled with names over the years, and how far back they went?

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There was a site map posted outside the entrance booth, and we paused for a moment to study it. This was the first plan of the city that I’d seen, and the name of the place suddenly made sense: Becán, which translates from the Mayan as “Stream formed by Water.”

In this case, the stream in question was a circular canal that surrounds the old city center. This wasn’t a natural formation. This was a moat, pure and simple, backed by earthworks that created a dual barrier for defensive purposes. All you can see from ground level are scattered, disconnected segments:

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But when viewed from the air, or better yet, from a satellite, the outline of the original channel is still plainly visible.

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There was a time when scholars viewed the ancient Mayan society as a peaceful theocracy, comparable to that of the Tibetan Buddhists. The discovery of this defensive moat at Becán was an important revelation, evidence that the Mayan version of a theocracy might not have been quite so peaceful after all. At Becán, they obviously went to a lot of trouble to protect their city. It’s only fair to wonder why they felt that was necessary.

According to the map, there were originally seven bridges that crossed the moat. We followed the main causeway to a wide staircase inside the walls;

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That led us up to the main plaza, where several massive stone buildings surrounded a circular altar.

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Stones on the altar, and on several other structures in the old city center still bear traces of the red pigment that once colored many of these buildings.

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We climbed the steep steps on the front side of the building identified as “Structure I.” Once we were safely up on the first level, we made our way around to the back side, where we gained a completely different perspective.

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A wide terrace ran the entire width of the building,

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And from there, we had a bird’s eye view of the multi-level terraces down below us.

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Trying to imagine this area filled with people, with the pomp and grandeur of the Mayan priests and Nobles in their flowing robes and elaborate feathered headgear, and these buildings all intact, stuccoed, and painted in bright colors. It would have truly been something to see!

CLIMBING DOWN AN UP PYRAMID

There’s a trick to climbing a Mayan pyramid. Many of ’em are proportioned opposite to a standard staircase, with narrow treads and tall risers; (in this set of photos, each step is a full foot in height). The pitch of the steps is so steep, you can’t approach them straight on. For safety’s sake, it’s best to keep your feet sideways on the steps, with your body parallel to the stairs, so you can move diagonally as you climb. Your feet get a better purchase, and you’re less likely to slip. (Slipping on a Mayan staircase could be a disaster!) Mike demonstrates his technique, on steps so steep, it’s more ladder than stairs.

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Several of the structures around this main plaza were partitioned into individual rooms, many with concrete benches, thought to have been used for sleeping. These had to have been elite accommodations for important people, the royal family, the nobility, the high priests.

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I’d have to hope, for their sake, that these spartan quarters were fixed up a bit when they were in use. Blankets, maybe some curtains, and a nice soft mattress? Stripped down to cold bare stone, these digs were about as inviting as a prison cell–albeit without the iron bars.

There was a second, smaller plaza to the west of the main plaza, still inside the city walls. We started to walk over that way, but I called a halt to talk it over with Mike. We still had a two hour drive to Escárcega, where we planned to stay the night, plus, there was one more stop I wanted to make. Considering the time, I figured it was best if we cut it short at Becán. Mike agreed, so we turned around, and headed back to the parking lot.

The west plaza’s buildings were concealed from view by the trees, so we didn’t even realize that Becán’s largest pyramid was over there, just out of sight. Like a couple of dummies, we missed what might have been the best part of the ruin, all for the sake of saving a few minutes? There’s a lesson here: if you should ever decide to forego seeing something, especially after you’ve traveled a long distance? You’d best know exactly what you’re skipping, before you walk away!

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Like all the Mayan sites we visited, there were fascinating details everwhere, when you looked more closely. Inside one of the stone rooms there was a wasp’s nest unlike anything I’d ever seen, the size of a volleyball with intricate patterns, a perfectly symmetrical work of art.

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When I looked at the ground, I spied a column of leafcutter ants, each of them hauling a sliced bit of leaf four times the size of their bodies, cogs in the endlessly moving machine that keeps their colony fed.

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And then there’s the stone in the ancient buildings, the skillfully carved segments that fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Every Mayan city we’d seen so far was different from every other. There were common elements, but there were also major regional distinctions, and much of what we were seeing at Becán was unlike anything we’d encountered elsewhere. This part of the Mayan world was known as the Rio Bec region, and the school of design that predominated here was known as Rio Bec Architecture. I did a bit of study on all this, after the fact, and what I found is utterly fascinating:

RIO BEC MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

"Rio Bec” was a style of architectural design that was largely based on illusion. Instead of traditional step pyramids topped by temples, the Rio Bec Maya built wide structures with twin towers on either end. The towers narrowed toward the top, so if you looked up at them from below, they appeared to be much taller.

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False doorways lead into alcoves with no exits, and buildings that appear to be temples are actually solid structures with no interior space.

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Stairs were mere decoration: these steps for example, lead to a blank wall. In the Rio Bec region, form won out over function, and many of the massive structures they built here were–no joke–strictly for show.

It was almost 4:00 PM when we left Becán, and we needed to be in Escárcega, 90 miles west, before the sun went down. Even at that, I figured we had just enough time to make a VERY quick stop at Becán’s sister city, a small site called Chicanná, less than three clicks up the road.

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The main reason I wanted to stop there was the name: Chicanná, a Mayan word that translated as “House of the Serpent Mouth.” The name supposedly described a particular building among the ruins, and that was something I just had to see.

Next up? Chicanná!

CHICANNÁ

We left Becán, and we were barely underway when we spotted the sign with the pyramid, pointing to the left:

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Do I even need to say it? Ours was the only vehicle in the small parking lot. We stopped at the ticket booth to pay the 50 Peso entry fee, then studied the site map:

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There were just six buildings, most of them in one cluster. We had 30 minutes to see the place, so we got straight to it!

I did some research, (after-the-fact), and the information I turned up was really very interesting. Chicanná was first occupied around 300 BC, about 50 years after Becán got its start, and was abandoned around 1100 AD, which was about 100 years sooner than Becán. It’s thought that Chicanná was actually an exclusive enclave for Becán’s elite, a segregated suburb for the rich and famous. The houses were finer, the temples more ornate. Nothing was too elaborate for the noble folk, and when times were good, they lived like kings. Chicanná peaked early, from the time of its founding until around 250 AD, and it remained, throughout its existence, intertwined with its patron, Becán. There’s nothing big here, no pyramids, just an assortment of smaller structures, done in a hodge-podge of architectural styles.

We turned right when we first entered the ruin, following a path which took us to “Structure XX,” the remains of a temple that, despite the ravages of time, is still the tallest building in Chicanná. The structure is a perfect example of mongrel architecture.

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The temple at the top is pure Rio Bec: a doorway leading to a blank wall in a solid structure with no interior space.

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Viewed from the front side, the entire building becomes a giant zoomorphic mask with an open mouth, a feature of the Chenes style of Mayan architecture,

And, of course, there were the carved stone facades, especially the multiple depictions of Chac, the rain god. All of that was influenced by the architectural stylings of the Puuc region.

Chicanná was a city in the jungle, and that’s what it felt like, walking around the place. The site seemed to be mostly uncleared, and essentially unrestored, lacking the manicured, park-like look of the more famous Mayan cities.

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I’m sure there was an enormous amount of effort put into exposing the principle structures here, but these tropical trees grow so quickly, they’re already starting to take over again. Being the only visitors, it was very easy to imagine what it would have been like here in the early days, before there was any such thing as tourists in the Yucatan.

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Conical towers at either end of a stone platform, designed to give the illusion of larger size.

The buildings in Chicanná show the influence of half a dozen distinct schools of Mayan Architecture, but at the core, the underlying theme is that illusive style known as Rio Bec. Structures are built atop a platform, and at each end of the platform there is a tower that comes to a point at the top.

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When stuccoed, finished, and painted, these towers would appear to be taller than they really are to an observer looking up at them from their base.

THE HOUSE OF THE SERPENT MOUTH

We were already running short of time, but we’d saved the best for last.

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A rectangular building with two doorways, one of which was surrounded by Puuc style bric-a-brac.

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A complex geometric pattern which, if you looked closely, had eyes and a snout!

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The doorway was a mouth, surrounded by stone teeth. A little bit of imagination is required to see it, but the Chenes-style construction of this facade turned the entire building into the head and mouth of a serpent!

The facade would have been painted, back in the day. If you look closely, you can still see traces of red pigment in the recesses between the stones. The inside of the serpent’s mouth would have been red, the color of blood; the teeth white, and the eyes yellow, along with shades of green, blue, and black, to complete the pattern.

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The Maya were a people who loved color, and with a temple like this one, they would have gone all out. The “House of the Serpent’s Mouth” was a place where important ceremonies took place, grand spectacles that we can only imagine. When the Mayan priests in their colorful feathered robes disappeared through that doorway, they were stepping through the mouth of the Great Serpent into the abode of the gods, and when they emerged again, they were imbued with god-like power.

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I would have loved to spend more time at Chicanná, but it was already 4:30, and we were going to have to really push it to make Escárcega before sundown. We jumped back onto MX 186, and I drove as fast as I dared, with Mike providing a second set of eyes to help us avoid the hazards in the road–especially the topes! Most of them were well marked and painted yellow, but in some cases there were so many skid marks on the yellow that the hump had turned black, and blended with the asphalt, practically invisible. We hit one of those at highway speed, and literally went airborn!

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Fruit stand, MX 186

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Needless to say, we wasted no time on that stretch, and rolled into Escárcega at 6:30, just as the sun dropped below the horizon.

We hadn’t made any reservations, so we kept our eyes peeled for hotels, and spotted a place called the Global Express; they had a room for us for 900 Pesos (a bit more than $50). That seemed high, but we were too tired from the drive to shop around for something cheaper. We’d been pretty spoiled by some of the nice places we’d been staying, so this hotel was a disappointment. Not because it was bad; more because it was boring! We weren’t planning to hang around Escárcega, so all we really needed was a clean bed for the night, and the Global Express served that purpose well enough.

This really had been a long one. More driving than anything else, but with three more Mayan cities checked off our list, it felt like we’d had a very full day. I had images of temples and pyramids jumbled together in my brain. I’d taken hundreds of photographs, counting all my shots from Cobá, so I was going to have my work cut out for me, just keeping all those images organized. I was honestly too tired to fool with any of that, there in Escárcega. We had a quick dinner at a nearby restaurant, then went back to the hotel and crashed, planning an early start for the next day.

Next up: Edzná, First House of the Itzás

I seem to remember that many historic type sites in the US had such sign in books.

They often liked having them as it was a good thing to use to show those with funding (be it state/national or private groups) of the interest in their sites, and why they were worth getting that available donation.

No idea if anything like that exists in Mexico, but it could be, or they just figure that since they are a historic site, why not keep that history going for those coming in the future?

I think, in the case of Becán, that the guest book is an old tradition that they've never given up. The site doesn't get many visitors--it's too far out of the way. The old guy behind the counter has probably held that job for 40 years; adding entries to that book might just be his hobby, but I'm kind of amused by the idea of a storeroom full of notebooks stacked on shelves, probably growing mold (if not rotting) in the damp climate.

Rick

DAY 15: Escárcega to Edzná, First House of the Itzás

Escárcega is a small city of about 30,000, located at the junction of two Federal highways and a railroad. Very few tourists pass through the place, and those that do are mostly in a hurry, on their way to somewhere else. The only reason Mike and I stopped and stayed the night was timing: the sun was almost down when we got there, and driving any further after dark would have been foolishly dangerous.

This was Day 15 of our road trip. We wanted to get going as early as possible, but took the time to check the weather reports before starting out. The strongest hurricane on record was screaming in from the Pacific with winds approaching 200 mph, affecting weather throughout the region; we’d had daily downpours for most of the past week, but the latest forecast showed the track of the storm veering to the north. Hopefully, that meant a reprieve from the rain, because we had a lot of miles to cover, and Mexican highways can be treacherous when wet.

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Weather reports from October 23, 2015; the track of the hurricane veered north, so we were about to enjoy clear skies for a change.

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Route from Escárcega to the Mayan City of Edzná

The plan was to drive north from Escárcega, through Champoton, headed for Campeche, where we had a hotel reservation. Along the way, we’d be making a stop at a Mayan city called Edzná, one of several sites in the area that I hoped to visit in the next two days. We wanted to be in San Miguel de Allende for the Day of the Dead celebration at the end of October, and I still wanted to visit San Cristobal de Las Casas and Oaxaca. The distances weren’t vast, but many of the roads were very slow, so we had very little time to waste. Two days in Campeche, two or three more getting to San Cristobal, another two or three through Oaxaca to San Miguel, and along the way, another half dozen Mayan cities. Fun stuff, but a very tight schedule!

Most of this day’s route was a rerun: when we drove from Palenque to Merida the previous week, we traveled the exact same road, and it really did seem familiar, distinct from all the other roads we’d driven since crossing the border.

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This was a very rural highway, with turkeys, topes, horses wandering loose, and vendors selling heaven knows what from stands at the side of the road.

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We went through a roundabout where they had a statue dedicated to “La Campechana,” a woman of Campeche in traditional dress, hands on her hips, and showing a defiant attitude.

This whole part of the Yucatan had a unique cultural identity, and I was looking forward to experiencing some of that.

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Once we got to Champoton, we could smell the salt air from the Gulf of Mexico as the road merged with MX 180, the highway that runs along the coastline.

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The town was larger than I remembered, and there was a fair amount of traffic, but we finally got through it, and back out on the open road.

We entered an agricultural area, passing numerous cultivated fields, but these weren’t large scale farming operations. Rather, they were mostly small family plots where people still worked the land with horse-drawn plows (along with the occasional tractor). Life out here was far removed from the gritty hustle and bustle of the towns. Were the country people better off than the city dwellers? That’s very much a matter of opinion.

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When we reached the intersection with MX 188, we made a right turn toward the ruins of Edzná. We still had some flexibility, as far as WHICH Mayan cities we should visit, and I’d been studying my guide books, looking for the most interesting possibilities. Edzná came highly recommended as one of those “hidden gems” that shouldn’t be missed, so it wound up at the top of our list.

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As we approached the ruins, the trees closed in on both sides of the road, and signs directed us to the “archaeological zone,” and the parking area for Edzná, The First House of the Itzás.

THE ITZÁS

First House of the Itzás? That’s a statement that prompts a question: just exactly who, or what, were the Itzás? In a nutshell: they were an ethnic group. The ancient Maya were never a single unified cultural entity. There were dozens, if not hundreds of different ethnic divisions, ranging in size from isolated clans with a few dozen members to sprawling cities with tens of thousands of citizens. There were scores of different Mayan dialects, countless unique oral traditions, and endless variations in the style and pattern of dress. The Itzás were a particular ethnic lineage, and, more importantly, they were a a noble bloodline of kings with exceptional organizational skills. They rose to prominence in Edzná, and when their population outgrew the food supply, many of them migrated to the northern Yucatan, where they founded what might be called the “Second House of the Itzás.” That one turned out to be a bona fide wonder of the world, and it still bears their name:

Chichén Itzá!

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(And now you know!)

Next up: Edzná!

I know you said this was a repeat of a prior route,

(Moderator Note: The previous error in posting has been rectified and so this post has been edited to avoid any further confusion.)

Post removed as per request of Rick Quinn

EDZNÁ

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There were four or five other cars in the small parking lot when we got there. They were apparently the first shift, the folks who came early when the park first opened, and by the time we arrived, they were already starting to leave. At that, we had this marvelous ruin practically all to ourselves, almost from the moment we walked in! But hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Edzná is one of the older Mayan sites. First settled way back in 600 BC, the city flourished for the next thousand years, becoming a center of significant influence in the Late Classic era of the Mayan civilization. From 400 AD until around 1000 AD, Edzná dominated the surrounding region. At its peak, the city was home to 25,000 people, spread across a territory of ten square miles.

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Ticket booth: Edzná

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Buying tickets to Edzná

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Site Map

We studied the site map near the entrance, and I could see that the main section of the ruin was relatively compact, with most of the important structures clustered around an acropolis, where the largest pyramid was located.

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We had to walk for half a mile or so on a wide path before we reached a cleared area, and the first of the ancient stone buildings.

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The buildings surround a plaza, centered around a stone altar, consisting of one large, and two smaller circular platforms. Significant efforts have been put into the restoration of this part of the ancient city, and much of the labor was provided by a group of Guatemalan refugees, working with a program that combined badly needed humanitarian relief with historic preservation. Funding for the program that employed the Guatemalans was raised by a coalition of European diplomats, many of whom have visited the site in support of those efforts. Originally known as the Grand Plaza, the restored grouping of ruins was renamed the “Courtyard of the Ambassadors,” in honor of the men who made it possible. Ironically, the refugee laborers, like most of the region’s poor, are modern day Mayans, descendants of the people who built the city in the first place.

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Whether restored or not, the remnants of Edzná are impressive, well built and artfully designed. The older buildings are based on Peten style architecture, while the newer structures exemplify the Puuc style, similar to what we saw at Uxmal.

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Near the courtyard, there’s a stepped platform called the Nohoc Na, the Big House, more than 400 feet long and 30 feet high,

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as well as a ball court that’s missing its goal rings.

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Beyond that, several small pyramids, some built in a simpler style and obviously older, from the early days of the ancient city.

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The real prize here was the acropolis, and Edzná’s signature pyramid, a unique structure known as the Palace of the Five Floors.

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We could see the top of it from a distance, but it wasn’t until we got closer that this extraordinary building fully revealed itself.

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There are five levels, as the name suggests, with a temple topped by a massive roof comb on the top step, and a wide staircase leading from the base all the way to the peak.

The structures on the various levels all had Puuc style facades, smooth stone slabs cut square and fitted together like puzzle pieces over a concrete core. Doorways in the facade led to more than a dozen small rooms that may have been residential quarters for the city’s elite; or perhaps they were used by the priesthood, when conducting ceremonies and communing with the Mayan gods. Back in the day, the entire building would have been painted, with red being a dominant color, and the roof comb with its projecting tenons would have supported a massive molded plaster sculpture. We can only imagine how that might have looked; sadly, not a single trace of it remains.

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The back side of the building is buttressed by elegant, curved structures that may have been used as ramps, to facilitate the hauling of heavy loads to the upper floors. All in all, this Palace, or whatever it may have been, is impressive as the dickens!

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Off to the side of the acropolis was a temple, partially covered by a thatched palapa. The roof protects two large stucco masks that were discovered during excavations conducted in 1988.

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Molded and painted stucco was a common decorative element on Mayan buildings, but it’s extremely fragile, so very few examples have survived in good condition; these masks at Edzná are among the best that have ever been found. They represent the two faces of the Mayan sun god, one looking toward the sunrise, and the other toward the sunset.

All in all, Edzna was a pleasant surprise. Bigger than I expected, but quite manageable, and the state of preservation of the major structures ranks among the best I’ve seen. Taking it in, we could almost feel the presence of the ancient Maya. I tried to imagine what it would have been like when it was still in use, with all the sights, sounds, and smells of a living city teeming with people, with the kings and nobles in their palaces, and the priests in their temples. What a different world that must have been, and not so very long ago.

Next up: A Night on the Town in Campeche

Onward, to CAMPECHE!

We left the Archaeological Park at about 2:30, pretty well beat after four hours spent walking around the ruins. Campeche was only an hour away, and I’d booked us a hotel through Expedia.Mx, the Mexican version of Expedia, which was proving to be surprisingly useful, giving us some excellent recommendations.

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In this case, we’d made a reservation at the Hotel del Paseo, located right at the edge of the historic city center, and easy walking distance from the plaza. Turned out to be a great choice: the rooms were modern, clean, and quiet, and at the time of our visit (October of 2015), a double was less than $50 per night. Today, in 2024, they’ve gone up a bit–closer to $100–but, considering the great location, that’s still quite reasonable.

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Hotel del Paseo in Campeche, a quite decent place to stay, at the edge of the historic district, and a short walk from the main Plaza

Campeche, founded in 1540 is one of the oldest Colonial cities in the Americas. In its day, it was one of the most important ports on the Gulf of Mexico, the place where the treasure galleons took on their cargo of riches from the interior before sailing home to Spain. There were stockpiles of gold and silver that made the port a favorite target for pirates, so fortifications were built around the old city center. Many of the old walls are still standing, and sufficiently well preserved that the “Historic Fortified Town of Campeche” was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999. The restoration and renovation of the area is an ongoing project, and a source of considerable civic pride.

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House fronts and store fronts along the cobblestone streets of old town are painted in bright colors, giving the place a decidedly tropical feel. Many years ago, I lived for a time in Cartagena, a fortified Colonial city on the coast of Colombia. The many similarities took me right back to those days of my youth, and a powerful sense of nostalgia.

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The opposite of drive through dining. In Campeche, they close the whole block to traffic, and restaurants place tables in the middle of the street.

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A little public art. (Okay, BIG public art!)

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More public art. The guy in the middle almost looks real!☺ The colorful facades of the historic city center create an ambience that's unique to Campeche.

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Several views of Campeche’s main cathedral and central plaza.

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Mike and I were strolling around the plaza, taking photos of the cathedral and the surrounding side streets, when we ran into a crowd of beautiful girls, all in traditional dress, assembled in front of a stage that was festooned with balloons.

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The sign on the stage read: Festival of Dance and Folklore. And did I mention the crowd of beautiful girls?

Next up: La Guaranducha!

In Campeche, they Dance La Guaranducha!

This was a truly unexpected pleasure: a serendipitous coincidence of good luck and good timing. Campeche, where they dearly love a good festival, was putting one on at that very moment: a “Festival of Dance and Folklore,” according to the sign on the stage. The girls were all dressed in full “Campechana” regalia, with embroidered white blouses, colorful, ankle length flounced skirts, and hair pulled back with ribbons and combs. What we were about to witness was a demonstration of the traditional dances of Campeche, routines and costumes with roots reaching back to 16th century Spain. The rhythms and movements, as well as the music is a blend of African, Spanish, and indigenous Mayan influences; a joyful celebration of Campeche’s multi-cultural heritage.

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Dancers in traditional costumes, getting ready to perform for the crowd on a stage set up in Campeche’s main Plaza.

FESTIVAL OF DANCE AND FOLKLORE

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An announcer, I’ll call her the Dance Instructor, introduced the troupe of girls and young guys on the stage.

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Clearly, the guys were little more than props, because all eyes were on the girls, so colorful, and so elegant, dressed to the nines, and hiding coyly behind their pleated, folding hand fans.

The matron described the dances that would be performed, the best known being “La Guaranducha,” in which the ladies entrance the young men with swirling skirts and twirling scarves.

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The dresses worn by the ladies are a traditional style dating back to a bygone era, but each dancer adds personal touches.

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The women of Campeche, the “Campechanas,” are famously strong willed, and that attitude, characterized by defiant smiles and the traditional stance, arms akimbo and fists on hips, is clearly displayed in the posture of the dancers. Each of these young women has a wonderfully distinct personality, and each of them brought something unique to their performance.

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La Guaranducha is a celebration of life, community, and the joy of existence. Colonial Spanish grandiosity, enlivened by frenetic elements of black Carnaval, tempered by the sly influence of the indigenous Mayans, whose descendants still make up much of the population of the Yucatan. The dance originated in Campeche, and it is still primarily associated with that city, but versions of it are performed in other parts of the Yucatan as well, including in Merida.

There were a number of different groups performing on the stage, and one of the most fun was a children’s choir, two dozen youngsters singing traditional songs:

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The kids were dressed in miniature versions of the same costumes worn by the older performers, and they were–dare I say it? Cute as the dickens!

When the performances ended for the evening, we took in the sunset, and the simultaneous moonrise behind Campeche’s baroque cathedral. Construction of the church started in 1540, the year the city was founded, and it wasn’t actually completed for more than 200 years. It’s a beautiful building, and I got some great photographs:

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Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción, the Catholic Cathedral of Campeche, built between 1540 and 1760

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A beautiful sunset, a beautiful evening, a perfect end to a very fine day in Mexico!

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After a terrific dinner at one of the restaurants with tables in the blocked-off street…

…we headed back to our room at the Hotel del Paseo for a much needed rest. We had a basic plan for the next day that involved more Mayan ruins, and more of Campeche–but it was going to be very hard to top this day. It was frankly spectacular, from start to finish!

Next up: Adventures along the Puuc Route
 

DAY 16: Here a Puuc, there a Puuc, everywhere a Puuc Puuc

On the 16th day of our road trip, we had breakfast at our hotel, the Hotel del Paseo near the historic center of old Campeche; then we gassed up the Jeep and hit the road. We had a lot of miles to cover, and we were eager to get going!

Our goal for the day involved driving a loop through an area known as the Puuc Hills, the only part of the Yucatan Peninsula that isn’t relentlessly flat. In the Mayan era, the Puuc was considered prime real estate, and it contains what is easily the densest concentration of Mayan ruins in all of Central America. The most famous of these is the fabled city of Uxmal, which we’d seen the previous week, but there were dozens of others, and considering how close together they were, this was a unique opportunity to visit as many as four or five small sites in a single day, sort of like a grand finale to our Cook’s tour of Mayan cities in the Yucatan.

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The Puuc Hills, with some of the many Mayan sites circled in red.

THE RUTA PUUC

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The official Puuc Route, beginning in Uxmal

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The route that Mike and I followed, beginning in Campeche

My guide book described an itinerary called the Ruta Puuc (the Puuc Route), a 25 mile stretch of MX 261 that begins in Uxmal, and travels south through low, forested hills, stopping at (in addition to Uxmal) the Mayan cities of Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak, and Labna. It was here among the Puuc hills that Mayan art and architecture achieved its ultimate expression, which is why the Ruta Puuc is included with Uxmal in its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. MX 261 extends all the way to Merida in the north, and to Campeche in the south, running smack through the middle of the Puuc region. Since we were starting from Campeche, and since we’d already been to Uxmal, our plan was to follow MX 261 north until we reached the area where the other four sites were located (all within 11 miles of one another). After touring the ruins, we’d simply turn around and head back to Campeche.

MX 261

Mexico has a national system of modern, well maintained toll roads that make short work of the miles between major cities. MX 261, running east from Campeche, was most definitely NOT one of those! The hazards ranged from deep, dangerous potholes to animals in the road, to strolling pedestrians and children at play, oblivious to the traffic whizzing past. Every few hundred meters we ran over another Tope, the speed bumps installed to curb velocity through towns and other populated areas. We had to stay ultra-alert to avoid hitting one of them at highway speed, and blowing a tire (or worse).

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Scenes along the road, MX 261, East of Campeche

Just as we reached our halfway point, I spotted what looked like a ruin, right alongside the road.

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There was nothing in my guide book about a Mayan site in this location, so we were quite curious to check it out.

Next up: Tacob/Tohcok

TOHCOK

The first thing we saw was a road sign identifying the site as “Tacob.” I used my phone to do a search on that name, and Google hacked up a page full of links to Mexican restaurants, starting with “Taco Bell.”

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I scrolled down pretty far, but saw no reference to Mayan ruins. I tried Google Maps, pinched up to the maximum magnification, and found what appeared to be the right spot, labeled not as “Tacob,” but as “Tohcok”?

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Satellite view of Tohcok, identified as Tacob on road signs

We parked the Jeep on the north side of the highway, then walked across the road to the site. The ruins were surrounded by a rustic fence, but there was a sign beside the gate that said “Open,” in English, no less, so we strolled on through.

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We were met by the caretaker, who welcomed us enthusiastically, introducing himself as Pepe.

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I asked Pepe about the name of the ruin, and he proceded to tell me, with obvious pride, that the place had at least five names, including “Taco.”

“Taco?” I repeated. “Like the food?”

“Oh, yes,” said Pepe, smiling broadly. “But we never use that name.” He went on to explain that “Tohcok” is the name favored by the archaeologists and the map makers, and it translates from the Mayan as the “Place of the Flint Knife.”

“So, the sign on the road is a mistake?”

“Yes, the sign is wrong,” Pepe admitted with a shrug. “But what’s important is that you stopped! We don’t get that many visitors, so, para ustedes, the sign did its job.”

Pepe launched into a well practiced spiel about the history of the site, which was founded around 300 AD, and reached its zenith, along with the rest of the region, during the Late Classic era, around 900 AD. Pepe talked at great length about the Mayan religion, and the human sacrifices that took place on the raised platform in the middle of Tohcok’s plaza. Just like the warriors killed in battle, the sacrificial victims didn’t die in the usual sense; they moved on to a higher plane of existence. He showed me a carving of a corn flower, with the head of a warrior embedded sideways, awaiting his rebirth into the next level of the Mayan cosmos.

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The head of a warrior killed in battle, sideways in a corn flower

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Several views of the primary structures in Tohcok, a small site surrounded by cow pastures.

Tohcok was first reported by archaeologists in the 1930’s, but it wasn’t excavated until much more recently, and it’s only been open to the public for the last few years. The buildings were constructed in the Puuc architectural style: thin, square cut stone slabs embedded in a concrete core, forming a smooth veneer. There are also elements of the Chenes style, characterized by carved stone motifs on lower walls.

As you walk in, there’s a structure known as the Palace on your left. It’s a two story building, with a central staircase leading to the ruined second floor; there are pillars on the ground floor, and a Mayan arch. Straight ahead from the entrance is a second building, the Acropolis. A ceremonial platform extends into the plaza from that building’s foundation. The base of the platform features elaborate Chenes style carvings of corn plants, and, at the corners, there are nicely carved representations of Chac, the big-nosed rain god. They’ve documented as many as forty more structures associated with Tohcock that remain unexcavated, appearing as little more than overgrown mounds in the cow pastures on either side of the highway.

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Tohcok: Site Map

Like most of the Mayan cities in the Puuc region, Tohcok was subordinate to the lords of Uxmal, and in later years, to the League of Mayapan. What that meant, in practical terms, was an obligation to supply materials and labor for monumental construction, and to provide a quota of young men to serve as warriors in ongoing military campaigns. In exchange, they got the support and protection of those larger kingdoms. From the 30,000 foot level, the arrangement wasn’t all that different from the way things work today.

We thanked Pepe for the tour, and slipped him a few hundred Pesos as a propina (a tip). In Mexico, tipping is expected pretty much any time someone provides you with a service, and rightly so, considering the extremely low wages. Even at that, I can’t think of any other situation on our entire trip where the gratuity was more well deserved.

We drove another hour north on MX 261, passing through several small towns, including the village of Bolonchen. This was rural Campeche at its most remote, and I, for one, was loving it!

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We had a decision to make at this point. Three of the four sites on our list were immediately adjacent to one another, while the fourth, Kabah, was a bit further away, off by itelf on the road that went north toward Uxmal. Kabah was the one I most wanted to see, but it was also the biggest, and I was afraid that if we went there first, we’d linger too long and run out of time. It was a two hour drive back to Campeche, and we definitely didn’t want to be on that road after dark. That meant we’d have to head back no later than 4:30, and it was already almost 1:00. It made sense to knock off the other three first, going for quantity over quality, moving as quickly as possible. Afterwards, we’d know exactly how much time we’d have left for Kabah. With that plan in mind, I turned right at the road junction, and headed for Sayil.

Next up: Sayil

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick Quinn

We were met by the caretaker, who welcomed us enthusiastically, introducing himself as Pepe.

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Very cool that you met the caretaker. This is one of the most interesting posts of the report thus far.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rick Quinn

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Clearly, the guys were little more than props, because all eyes were on the girls, so colorful, and so elegant, dressed to the nines, and hiding coyly behind their pleated, folding hand fans.

The matron described the dances that would be performed, the best known being “La Guaranducha,” in which the ladies entrance the young men with swirling skirts and twirling scarves.

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---

Great photos of these young performers!

Mark

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

Very cool that you met the caretaker.

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Pepe was a cool guy. Mike kept his GoPro camera running through most of his impassioned lecture, and that's probably the most interesting segment of film from the whole trip. (Most cohesive, anyway.)

Rick

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

Great photos of these young performers!

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Thanks! I love this set of images, especially that top one. The expressions on their faces, and the colors! That dance festival was a spectacular opportunity. All I had to do was point the camera; the gals did all the work!

SAYIL

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Leafcutter Ants

In the Yucatec Maya language, Sayil means “Place of the Leafcutter Ants,” and it’s easy to see why. For such tiny insects, they are a massive presence in this rain forest. Their nests house as many as two million ants in colonies that extend as much as 50 feet underground.

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Each worker harvests a snippet of leaf matter, cut with their razor sharp mandibles, and then they get in line, carrying their prize into the nest, where it is used to grow a fungus that is the colony’s primary food source. This activity enriches and aerates the soil, greatly assisting in organic decomposition, a necessary function for maintaining the health of this complex ecosystem.

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Most of these photos were actually taken at Labna. Same ants, slightly different neighborhood.

Sayil had a relatively brief history, in the overall scheme of things. It reached its peak around 900 AD, which is when most of the monumental construction took place, and as little as 100 years later, around 1000 AD, the city was abandoned, most likely due to an extended draught that led to widespread famine. At the peak, there were as many as 10,000 people in the area, and without adequate rainfall, it was impossible to grow enough food to sustain them all.

We paid our admission fee in the small building by the entrance, then we followed a path through dense forest to an open area.

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My first view of the Grand Palace of Sayil was so unexpected, it stopped me in my tracks, and I found myself standing there, mouth agape, neglecting to breathe. “Oh, wow!” I said at last. It was definitely one of those moments.

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The Grand Palace, or North Palace, is a three tiered structure that’s a whopping 250 feet long, with a 32 foot wide staircase up the front side that leads to the upper floors. Multiple doorways are separated by columns, leading to an interior that boasted 90 rooms. The Palace is a Puuc masterpiece. An engraving titled “Zayi,” by the famed illustrator Frederick Catherwood, appeared in the book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, published in 1841 by his partner, the travel writer John Lloyd Stephens. Stephens and Catherwood were the first to document many major Mayan cities, including Sayil/Zayi. Their work was an important factor in bringing the Maya to the attention of the world outside Central America.

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The Palace of “Zayi,” as illustrated by Frederick Catherwood in 1841

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A 19th century photograph of the initial excavation

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The building as it appears today

There was a sacbe, a raised causeway, leading south from the Palace. We followed traces of that path for 300 yards or so, to the second most famous structure at Sayil, an absolute mess of a temple known as the Mirador, the Watchtower.

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The Mirador, the ruins of a Puuc style Pyramidal Temple at Sayil

The most salient feature of this pyramidal temple is the Puuc style roof comb, a well-preserved ornamental structure that runs the full width of the building and rises some 20 feet above the roof. Projecting stones–tenons–were there to support large plaster sculptures. The whole business would have been painted in bright colors, predominantly red.

As for the pyramid, what little is left of it has collapsed, reduced to a grass covered mound of rock and soil that has buried most of the rest of the temple. A single interior room has been excavated and exposed, with open doorways on either side. The pyramid was originally constructed atop a small natural hill, so the temple, especially the roof comb, would have been visible from a distance. Was it an actual watchtower, like a sentry post? Or was it more of a boundary marker for the Palace compound? That whole area would have been considered exclusive, restricted to the elite.

Near the Mirador is a a third structure, very much in ruins, and largely unexcavated. This one is known as the Temple of the Heiroglyphic Jams, a reference to one of the partially buried doorways that is surrounded by a band of glyphs. The temple is overgrown by tropical vegetation, and it’s very easy to imagine what the whole place, including the Grand Palace, must have looked like to the first explorers who came across these ruins. Lost cities in the jungle, rising from the mists of time. Such is the mystique of the ancient Maya.

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The Temple of the Heiroglyphic Jams

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Sayil is surrounded by rain forest, closing in on all sides.

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Yum Keep: God of Fertility

Mike and I had fallen into a routine of sorts during our visits to these archaeological parks. I’d always make a beeline to the big stuff, the iconic views, the perspectives likely to make the most impressive photographs. Mike, on the other hand, liked to move at a calmer, more deliberate pace, soaking it all in. I have a degree in anthropology, and I studied the Maya in school, so my perspective on all this stuff was quite different from his. We would often split up, each of us doing our own thing, and then we’d regroup. I never really worried about us losing track of each other, but at Sayil, this approach turned into a problem. After the Mirador, I went on ahead while Mike took some close-ups of flowers, or fungus, or some such thing. I came to a fork in the path, and took a right, walking as far as a group of stelae, standing stones. Then I got distracted, taking photos of a bizarre sculpture of a Mayan couple locked in an embrace, with the man sporting an enormous phallus (see photo, above). A few minutes later, I was ready to leave Sayil. We’d seen the best of it, and we had three more sites to visit, so we needed to get a move on. I looked around for Mike, but didn’t see him anywhere, so I shouted his name. No answer. I followed the path back to the Mirador, shouting as I walked along. Nothing. Back to the Grand Palace, where I shouted even louder, many times, before walking all the way to the building where we bought our tickets. I asked if anyone had seen my friend, but they had not. Not since we came in together. I tried calling his cell phone, but there was no signal in that place.

Back into the ruins I trudged, shouting myself hoarse, and getting a bit worried. I walked completely around the Grand Palace, hollering my head off, but no Michael. Back to the Mirador, same deal. At that point, I hadn’t seen Michael in at least an hour, and I was ready to call in an actual search party, imagining the poor guy passed out on the trail, or worse! I came to that fork in the path, and I spotted a small sign I hadn’t noticed before. It read “South Group,” with a pointing arrow. I started down that path, calling for Michael as I walked along, but after a few minutes of that, I stopped. I was sweating buckets, and I was frustrated as hell, so I took a deep breath and yelled as loud as I could, put everything I had into it, and this time, Mike not only answered, he appeared, strolling up the South Group path, casual as you please. I won’t transcribe what I shouted at that point. Let’s just say it wasn’t very nice.

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Satellite map, showing relative location of the South Group

It seems Mike had followed the signs to the South Group, a cluster of ruins that was a good two kilometers away from everything else. (See satellite map, above). He hadn’t realized it would be that far, so he simply kept going (and going, and going). It took him almost half an hour to reach the end, and another half hour to get back. He’d been expecting me to follow him, surprised that I hadn’t, though, by his own admission, the structures in the South Group weren’t anything special, not really worth the hike. I pointed at my watch. It was almost 3:00, leaving us just ninety minutes to visit three more sets of ruins? Quite simply, that wasn’t going to be possible.

I was furious, but there was no sense in taking it out on Mike. I had to blame myself, for not being more emphatic about our time constraints, and for not keeping closer tabs on him. Michael doesn’t wear a watch. That’s not the way he rolls.

Without belaboring the point, we beat feet back to the parking area, jumped in the Jeep, and headed off down the road to our next stop. Even though we were running low on time, I was determined to make the most of what we had left.

According to our map, Xlapak, the smallest of the Puuc Route sites, was just 3 miles up the road from Sayil, and Labna was two miles further. I wanted to stop at Xlapak first, so I kept an eye on my odometer. We passed Mile 3, and then Mile 4, but there were no signs of any kind, and I started to wonder if we’d missed it somehow.

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The road was very narrow here, with no shoulder, like a country lane. I kept driving, and after another mile or so, I finally came to a sign: “ZA Labna,” (for Zona Arqueologica). We turned down an even narrower road, finally arriving at a tiny parking lot.

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The road between Sayil, Xlapak, and Labna.

Next up: Labna

LABNA

Apparently, we’d driven right past Xlapak, but I figured we could look for it again on our drive back out. We bought our tickets for Labna, and I could see from the site map that the park was relatively compact.

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Labna: Satellite View

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Labna: Site Map

There was a palace near the entrance, connected by a sacbe to a cluster of monuments, including a pyramid and an arch. One of Frederick Catherwood’s best known engravings featured that very structure, the “Labna Arch,” and I was curious to see how the real thing compared to the 19th century art work.

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The Labna Arch, a drawing by Frederick Catherwood published in 1841

Labna, which means “Old House” in the Yucatec Maya language, has been joined to Sayil, and, by extension, to Uxmal, through most of its history. Like Sayil, it’s a Late Classic site that flourished from 600 AD to 900 AD, and the architectural syle of it’s monumental structures is pure Puuc. The population declined around 1000 AD, but the city wasn’t totally abandoned until around 1200 AD, 200 years later than Sayil. Like Sayil, the first published reports of the ancient city were from Stephens and Catherwood, back in the 1840’s. Also like Sayil, it is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that incorporates Uxmal and the Puuc Route.

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The Labna Palace, longest building in the Puuc region

Walking in, the first thing we saw was the huge building they call the Palace, a two story structure with a wing added to each end, bringing the total length to almost 400 feet, the longest such building in the Puuc region.

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The lower walls feature square cut stones set into a concrete core, forming a smooth veneer…

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…while the upper walls feature a cornice comprised of cut stone carved into rows of columns, alternating with carved geometric shapes, assembled into mosaic panels.

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Included are several depictions of Chac, the big-nosed god of Rain.

These are all classic elements of Puuc Architecture.

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Leading due south from the Palace was a sacbe, a raised causeway bordered by low stone walls on either side. I told Mike to stick close as I followed that path to the ceremonial plaza, where we got our first look at the Labna Arch:

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Like the Grand Palace of Sayil, the Labna Arch was a stunner, every bit as impressive as the famous engraving by Frederick Catherwood. The walls that once stood on either side of the arch are depicted in his drawing, but in the 175 years that have passed since his visit, they’ve fallen, leaving the arch standing alone. It’s what’s known as a corbeled arch, as opposed to a true load-bearing arch. The Maya never quite figured out the concept of a keystone, a wedge-shaped stone carved to fit at the top of an arch, where it’s locked in place by the equal weight of both sides. Even without the keystone, arches like this one were quite solidly constructed, and it’s not uncommon to see them still intact, after the rest of the wall or building to which they were once attached has long since crumbled to the ground. The Labna Arch was not a gateway into the city. Rather, it was a passage between two distinct segments of the ceremonial complex.

On the other side of the arch there was a ruined pyramid, crowned by a cube-shaped temple with a prominent roof comb. It’s called the Mirador, just like the Watchtower at Sayil, and the pyramid part of the structure is in similarly poor condition. To put it crudely, what’s left of it is little more than a pile of rocks. The stucco facing that once covered the sides is gone, leaving nothing but the stacked stones at the core. Like the Mirador at Sayil, the roof comb would have supported plaster sculptures or bas reliefs, painted in bright colors, and visible from a distance.

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The Mirador, a ruined pyramidal temple similar to the Mirador at Sayil

Labna was small enough that we really didn’t need a lot of time to see it. The major structures, the Palace, and especially the Arch, were unique, and they were some of the finest examples of Puuc Architecture to be found anywhere. The same could most certainly be said of the Grand Palace at Sayil. These small cities are like the Mayan version of suburbs, satellites of the big town, in this case, Uxmal. All of these communities in the Puuc region were allied, politically, culturally, economically, and socially. The Puuc was the cradle of the Golden Age of the Maya. Labna and Sayil were among the brightest jewels in the crown of a realm that never quite coalesced into an empire.

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Scenes in and around the ruins of Labna.

It was almost 4:00 PM when we left Labna. We were facing a two hour drive back to Campeche, and sunset happens at 6:30. The math was pretty simple: we had to be on the road and headed for the barn in just 30 minutes, or we’d be driving MX 261 in the dark. Kabah was obviously out of the question, but we might be able run in to Xlapak, snap a couple of photos, and run back out, just so we could say we’d been there. Of course, that was assuming that we could FIND Xlapak. On the drive from Sayil to Labna, we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the place.

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This time, we spotted an unmarked side road, close to where the ruin was supposed to be, so we turned down it.

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After about 100 yards, we spotted a sign that said Xlapak

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and just beyond that, a tiny parking lot...

Next up: Xlapak

XLAPAK

By then it was 4:10, and according to the man in the ticket shack, Xlapak closes at 4:30, rather than the usual 5:00 PM. Since we only had 20 minutes, he let us go in for free, but we had to swear on our mother’s graves that we would hustle back out by closing time. (The guy told us that he had a hot date waiting for him in Santa Elena, and he didn’t want to be late!) I’m not going to say we ran, but we definitely hustled, following the caretaker’s brief instructions: down the path from the entrance, and straight ahead when we came to the fork. A five minute walk, at the most, to Xlapak’s version of a Palace.

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Xlapak-Maps and Signs

The Palace, Xlapak’s only structure of any size, is a tiny thing when compared to the Palaces at Sayil and Labna. The building is so top heavy with Puuc style bric-a-brac, it’s a surprise that it hasn’t collapsed under its own weight. Each corner features stylized depictions of Chac, the god of rain, stacked three high, and at the front and rear of the building there are super-sized Chacs, large square mosaics, comprised of individually carved stones, assembled like pieces of a puzzle, and cemented in place.

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Several views of the Palace at Xlapak, on the Puuc Route

We walked a little further to a second structure, this one an unreconstructed pile of rubble:

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...and that was pretty much it for our visit to Xlapak. The caretaker locked the gates behind us as we left; I shook his hand, and thanked him for the favor of letting us dash in at the last minute.

WHAT WE MISSED:

The Mayan City of KABAH

Probably my biggest regret on our whole amazing road trip. We passed within five miles of Kabah, but we didn’t budget enough time to so much as stick our noses in the door. Kabah is the second largest Mayan city on the Ruta Puuc (after Uxmal), and it features many one-of-a-kind monuments. If we’d stuck to a schedule, we probably could have fit it in, but what the heck–we still had plenty of fun! (That said, if I ever revisit the Ruta Puuc, I’ll make a point of stopping at Kabah FIRST!)

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We still had a two hour drive ahead of us, and we couldn't afford to waste a single minute!

Next up: A fast run back to Campeche

A FAST RUN BACK TO CAMPECHE

Driving back, we were in a race against time and a setting sun, but this was not a road that could be driven fast, so the only way to get an edge was to drive it efficiently. We passed through Bolonchen, which I remembered from before. The shadows were already getting longer, the townspeople winding out their day.

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Scenes along the road in Bolonchen, Campeche

As we drove along the narrow streets of their little down town, people on the sidewalks all started pointing, but they weren’t pointing at my Jeep, they were pointing down the road, back the way we came, and some of them were shouting.

“What’s going on?” I asked, peering under the visor, blinded by the sun in my eyes.

“I dunno,” Mike replied, sticking his head out the window to see behind us. “Wait–oh, crap!”

“What?” And then I saw it. We were going the wrong way on a one-way street! A car coming toward us started blowing his horn, so I whipped around the first turn that we came to, and spent five minutes driving in circles before we reconnected with MX 261, pointed in the proper direction. So much for driving the road efficiently!


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Back out on the highway, we made much better time, because there was very little traffic. At one point we overtook a small pickup truck, and when we pulled up alongside, I counted 19 people packed into the back, standing room only, plus three more in the cab.


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Ride sharing, Campeche style!

They gave us a friendly wave as we passed them. I shuddered to think what would happen if that truck failed to slow down for a speed bump, or braked too hard for a cow or a stray dog!

By 5:30, we’d made it as far as Hopelchen, close to the halfway point, and not far from Tohcok, the little bonus ruin we’d stopped at earlier in the day. That meant we were doing okay, timewise–until we entered the town. Highways don’t always run in a straight line through small towns in Mexico. The required turns don’t always seem logical, and signs are often missing at critical road junctions. That’s okay for locals. They all know where to go. As for Me and Mike? We got sooo lost!


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Hopelessly lost in Hopelchen

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to get so turned around in a town that small, but it was all narrow, one way streets, and none of them seemed to go through beyond the downtown. Hopelchen (Hopeless-chen) made our wrong-way adventure in Balonchen (Ball and Chain) seem like a minor blip in comparison. We lost the best part of ten minutes just getting out of there–and it was time we did NOT have to spare! Funny thing was, we’d had no problem driving through that same town earlier in the day, while headed in the other direction. Now, because we were in a hurry, Murphy’s law kicked in on us, and we made nothing but wrong turns.

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Scenes in and around Cayal, Campeche, getting late in the day!

6:00 PM! We passed through the tiny town of Cayal, with the sun dropping lower every minute. We had 30 miles to go, and half an hour until sundown. On any modern road, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but on MX 261, it was like the impossible dream. I drove as fast as I dared, making up a little time on the open stretches, but the closer we got to Campeche, the more people we encountered, and the more people, the more topes!

I put Mike in charge of Speed Bump Spotting, and working as a team, we managed to avoid most of them. Once or twice, his shout of TOE-PAY! came too late for me to slow down, and we hit those suckers, KA-BAM! Hard enough to rattle our teeth, and send our luggage flying. I never blew any tires, hitting topes at speed, but there was cumulative damage to my front end: control arms, bushings, steering components, shocks. I suspect that the repair shops in Mexico that do that kind of work must have more business than they can handle.

We rolled into Campeche about 6:45, parking in the lot by our hotel just as dusk faded into darkness, and the lights of the city came on. We freshened up in our room, and then went out on the town for a seafood dinner (giant shrimp, as I recall), followed by a stroll around the old town, and the central plaza. The afternoon and evening of the previous day we’d watched an amazing “Festival of Dance and Folklore” right there in the plaza. This evening, it was a light show!

Campeche is one of the most colorful cities in Mexico, with storefronts and houses in the historic sector painted in a dozen shades of pastel. That night, they kept that theme going with a colored light show in the plaza. Multi-hued spotlights focused on a long row of arches.

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Colors shifted, messages flashed, and then a series of portraits appeared, people from the town, each arch framing a different face.

On the other side of the Plaza, colored spotlights illuminated Campeche’s historic Cathedral, a play of light and shadow against a sky that was dark with clouds, save for one spot, where an almost full moon shone down through a small break in the overcast. With the spotlights and the portraits on one side, and the brightly colored cathedral on the other side, Campeche’s Plaza was a psychedelic trip!


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We’d had an exhausting day. Almost five hours of driving, four sets of Mayan ruins, several miles of walking (most of that at Sayil). We already had our plan set for the next day: we were going to drive back to Palenque, and from there we were going to visit one last Mayan ruin, a place called Bonampak, near the border with Guatemala, famous for remarkably preserved painted murals. After Bonampak, assuming the roads were clear, we’d cross the mountains to San Cristobal de las Casas before beginning our journey back north. We’d already seen so much, it was hard to believe we’d only been on the road for 16 days. We were past our halfway point, but we still a LOT to look forward to!

Next up: The Road to Bonampak

DAY 17: FROM CAMPECHE BACK TO PALENQUE

The 17th day of our road trip started out exactly the same as our 16th day: we had breakfast at our hotel, the Hotel del Paseo (near the historic center of old Campeche); then we hit the road. Over the course of the previous eleven days, we had completely circled the Yucatan Peninsula, visiting no less than a dozen Mayan cities, as well as the modern day cities of Merida, Campeche, Cancún and Tulum. We’d seen colorful festivals with costumed dancers performing in the streets, and we’d driven deep into the back country on highways that were an adventure unto themselves. All in all, our little expedition to and through the Yucatan had gone better than we ever could have hoped, but we were starting to run out of time.

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As of Day 17: Where we've been!

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After Day 17: Where we’re going next!

I had one last Mayan ruin that I wanted to see, a place called Bonampak, near the Guatemalan border in southern Chiapas. After that, we’d start the long drive north, passing through San Cristobal de las Casas and Oaxaca on our way to San Miguel de Allende, where we planned to celebrate the Day of the Dead festival at the end of the month. The itinerary was certainly workable, but there was more than 1,300 miles of driving involved, most of that on slow mountain roads. I set a schedule, and we were going to have to stick to it, despite the temptation to stay a bit longer in Campeche.

Our goal for Day 17 was to drive five hours south, back to Palenque, the place where our Mayan adventures first began. I’d used Expedia.Mx to book a room at a place called the Hotel Chablis, and we planned to use that as our base for a couple of days. Bonampak was three hours from Palenque, which meant a six hour round trip on a potentially dangerous rural highway. Add in some time at the ruins, that was likely to be a very full day. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We had to get to Palenque first, and that, by itself, was no small task.

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Route from Campeche to Palenque

Mexican cities can be hard to leave, and I mean that literally, as well as existentially. Leaving Campeche for points south, for example, we started out by driving north, because I wanted to make one last pass along the waterfront on our way out of town. Bad idea.


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Staging area for State Police in Campeche

That dropped us smack into the staging area for the Traffic Enforcement Division of the State Police, an elite squad of motorcycle cops. Up to this point, all our interactions with Mexican Police had been perfectly cordial, but these guys were land sharks, notorious for pulling over tourists and shaking them down for supposed infractions. I got “the look” from at least one of them as we drove past, but they hadn’t started their shift yet, so I got us the heck out of there, as fast as I dared.


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The scenic section of Campeche’s waterfront is the historic city center, where the remains of Spanish walls and fortifications create a unique ambience. North of downtown, it’s an ordinary beach, with thatch-roofed eateries and other businesses typical of Mexican beaches anywhere else in the country (all taking their cue from Cancún).


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We didn’t stop. We just drove on by all of that stuff.

MX 180-D

Any serious discussion of the condition of Mexico’s highways will always begin with a recommendation: whenever there’s a choice, you should always use the Toll Roads, which are faster, safer, and generally more free of hazards than the libre (free) State Highways. Leaving Campeche, we took our first opportunity to jump on MX 180-D (the “D” indicates a “Cuota,” a Toll Road).


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Mexico’s Toll Highways (Cuotas) are modern and well-maintained

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We pulled up to the booth, paid the toll, and sped off towards Champoton, a beach town that’s about an hour south of Campeche. Unfortunately, the Toll Road ended after just ten miles, and merged with MX 180 (without the “D”). This was a “libre,” highway, so it wasn’t divided, and there was just one lane in each direction, but in this case, that wasn’t so bad. The pavement was in good condition, and traffic was light, so we made good time.


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The road hugged tight to the coastline, a beautiful stretch that looked a lot like California.

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There were even a couple of surfers, out there scouting for waves.

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Then we passed a guy with a bicycle, pulling a trailer full of recyclable cans, while simultaneously pushing a cart full of something else, and flying a Mexican flag. (Come to think of it, even THAT could have been in California!)

Once we got to Champoton, we ran into a surprise roadblock, with Municipal Police selectively stopping traffic in the middle of a busy street.


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Apparently, old gringo tourists driving Jeeps weren’t on their radar at that particular moment, because they waved us on, without so much as asking for our papers. Ordinarily, they would have been stopping every vehicle, so we wondered who, or what, they were looking for.
Champoton, like most beach towns, seemed like a nice place, even though all we really got to see was the busy main drag. Unlike the Toll Roads that bypass the cities and towns, the “free” roads pass through the middle of everything; it’s interesting, but super slow.

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Driving through Champoton

We found the turnoff to Escarcega:

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and stopped for coffee at “The Italian Coffee Company:”

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There was something happening at the fairgrounds involving livestock, infusing the salt breeze with the unmistakable aroma of manure:

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We parted ways with the ocean after that, and followed the State Highway fifty miles south to Escarcega. This was our third pass along this same stretch of road. The first time, we drove through quickly, on our way to Merida. The second time, we were headed back to Campeche from Tulum, but we ran out of daylight by the time we got to Escarcega, and elected to stay the night there, rather than risk driving in the dark.


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Scenes along the road in Escarcega

Driving through again this morning, the town looked different; busier, and nothing about the place seemed familiar.


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In the downtown area, the local police were out in force, selectively stopping cars, the same type of action we’d just seen in Champoton. Was it some sort of regional manhunt, or a response to a threat? A training exercise? Or just a coincidence?


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Trash recycling center

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Local passenger van

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Horse refueling stop

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Studying the map while Mike drives for a spell

Beyond Escarcega, we jumped on MX 186, another road we’d driven before, and we followed that west, and then southwest for more than 100 miles, finally turning off on MX 199. That seemingly ordinary road junction was the scene of a huge protest the first time we came through the area; a Zapatista Road Block stopping all traffic entering the State of Chiapas. This time, we had clear sailing, and half an hour later, at about 4:00 in the afternoon, we finally arrived in Palenque.


Next up: Back in Palenque!

Palenque, Reprised

We found our hotel easily enough (thanks to the wonders of GPS), and had a couple of beers in the room to unwind from the drive. The Hotel Chablis proved to have been an excellent choice:

Hotel Chablis, Palenque

We’d been having great success, using Expedia.Mx to search for hotel rooms, which is how we found this lovely place in Palenque. Modern and well appointed, with lovely gardens, a beautiful pool, secure parking, and a quite decent restaurant. It was located in a quiet part of town that we never would have found on our own, and best of all, back in 2015, a double room was only fifty bucks per night! (The current rate, in 2024, is $70 per night; still quite reasonable.)


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That evening, I started feeling a little rough around the edges. I wasn’t sure if it was overexertion from all the hiking, stress from all the driving, or some combination of the two, mixed with tropical heat and humidity, lack of sleep, and questionable food. I wasn’t able to eat much of a dinner, and I crashed, much earlier than usual.

Day 18: A sick day in Palenque!

Back when I was a young guy traveling on the cheap, I had a cast iron digestive system, and almost never fell prey to the crud that strikes globetrotters when they fail to take proper precautions. Unfortunately for me, it had been more than forty years since that bygone era, and the cast iron part of me seemed to have rusted away. When I awoke on Day 18, I wasn’t merely unwell, I had the BUG! I’d had a wretched night. A tropical downpour just outside our open window woke me up at 1 AM, and I never got back to sleep, tossing and turning, sweating and freezing, running a low-grade fever, along with all those other classic symptoms that we don’t talk about in polite company. Travelers in Mexico have a name for this horribleness. They call it:

MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE!

Also known as the Turistas, or simply "Traveler’s Diarrhea," this dreaded affliction will strike nearly everyone who travels far enough off the beaten path in Mexico (or anywhere else with less than perfect sanitation standards). E. Coli is a common bacterium that lives in your gut and is generally harmless. Problems occur when you come in contact with E. Coli that have been living in someone else’s gut. Even the tiniest amount of fecal matter is likely contaminated, and if you inadvertantly ingest any of that, even a single drop of contaminated water, odds are, you’ll get zapped by the curse. Symptoms include raging diarrhea (Boo-Yah!), stomach cramps, chills, and fever. Of course, there is no actual curse. Montezuma, the once and former Emperor of the Aztecs, has nothing to do with this disease. It rares up ↑ when you let your guard down ↓, and eat or drink something that hasn’t been properly sterilized.


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E. Coli @ 10000x

E. Coli is everywhere (such is the world we live in). We tend to develop a resistance to the strains of the bug most prevalent where we live, but we have no such resistance to bacteria originating far from our homes. (For example, the bugs we might encounter when traveling internationally). Regardless of how and where you contract the condition, it will generally self-resolve after a couple of miserable days. Take Lomotil (requires a prescription) or Immodium for the diarrhea, and stay hydrated. Seek medical assistance if the problem lasts more than two days, or if fever rises above 102º.


The six hour round trip drive to Bonampak that we had planned was clearly out of the question. I really only had one play here: rest, recuperate, and pray for a speedy recovery! Michael somehow managed to avoid the bug that laid me low, so while I spent the day in bed, he re-visited the Archaeological Park at Palenque. We’d had the ruins all to ourselves, the first time we passed through here, but this time the park was crowded with student tour groups. Crowd, or no crowd, I was sorry to have missed the opportunity to see that place again. Of all the Mayan sites we visited, Palenque was quite probably my favorite.



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Tour groups at Palenque. (The young lady’s hat says: “Chill, dudes, I have a boyfriend!”)

By the end of the day, I was feeling much better, eating solid food, and keeping it down without a problem. The enforced rest did me a lot of good; we’d been running non-stop since crossing the border, so I definitely needed it. I had to wonder what was it that caught up to me. Montezuma’s Revenge from an improperly washed glass? Food poisoning from a bad shrimp? The symptoms were often similar, and traveling the way we were was a bit like Russian Roulette. Five times out of six, you walk away unharmed, but if you’re in the line of fire when the hammer falls on a loaded chamber, you’ll find out the hard way what all the fuss is about. My quick recovery was an enormous relief. We had a schedule to keep, after all, and I couldn’t afford to fritter away another day lying about in a hotel room.


Next up: The Road to Bonampak

DAY 19: A Stone’s Throw from Guatemala

By the morning of Day 19, I’d recovered to the point that I was willing to take a chance on Bonampak, and when I say “take a chance,” it’s because there was more at risk than my health. Bonampak is 90 miles from Palenque, a slow, three hour drive, according to Google. The Federal Highway, MX 307, continues on from there, and runs within a stone’s throw of the Guatemalan border for almost 200 miles. According to the people at our hotel, the whole area is a smuggler’s paradise, the primary corridor for contraband of every description coming into Mexico from points south, and that includes unprecedented numbers of migrants and asylum seekers making their way north to the U.S. Border.


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MX 307, from Palenque to Bonampak

The illegal activity, much of which takes place on or near the Highway, was happening mostly at night, under the cover of darkness; we were assured that the road was considered safe during daylight hours, because it was heavily patrolled by the military and the Federales. We were told to expect a lot of soldiers and road blocks, but not a lot of traffic, and as long as we were back in Palenque before sundown, we shouldn’t expect any trouble. We followed that advice, and indeed, we didn’t have any trouble, but keep in mind, this was in 2015, almost ten years ago. In the time that has passed since our visit, the situation with the Cartels has gotten immeasurably worse, and the gangs now operate with impunity at all hours of the day and night.


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Article from the AP dated January, 2024

In an article dated January of 2024 (click the link), the Associated Press reports that Cartel gunmen are effectively in control of the roads in this part of Chiapas, and anyone wishing to visit the Mayan ruins has to pass through their checkpoints. Yaxchilan, a major ruin near Bonampak that was formerly accessible only by boat, is no longer accessible at all, at least, not from the Mexican side of the border, and Bonampak itself is not recommended for tourists (despite assurances from INAH, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, insisting that it’s safe).


Many of the guided tours that take visitors from Palenque to Yaxchilan and Bonampak have been suspended, a devastating blow to the local economy, which is heavily dependent on income from tourism. One guide who was interviewed said that it was getting to be like the Gaza strip down there: armed gangs shooting it out with one another, heedless of the innocents caught in the crossfire. If I was to go back to Chiapas today, I’d probably have to skip Bonampak, so I’m certainly glad that we went when we did. That little ruin was the cherry on the top of our Mayan adventures, different from anything else that we experienced. Read on, if you’d like to know what it was like, when we drove:

The Road to Bonampak

Our hotel had a gated parking area. Oddly, my Jeep was the only vehicle using it during the time we were there. I got the sense that most visitors to Palenque arrive on buses, or else they fly in to the little airport. Road trippers from the U.S., like me and Mike, weren’t remotely common in this part of Mexico.

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Secure parking at the Hotel Chablis in Palenque.

The 180 mile round trip we were about to take really wasn’t much compared to most of our driving days, but we were going deep into a very rural area, where we weren’t likely to find much in the way of services.


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We stopped at the Pemex gas station on our way out of town, and I asked the attendant to “llenarlo,” (fill it). We only needed a few gallons to top off the tank, but for all I knew, this might be our last chance to buy fuel before the end of the day.


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Pemex station in Palenque: Last Gas Before Bonampak. Attendants do the pumping; there’s no self-service!

In the U.S., pump jockeys at service stations were a thing of the past, but in Mexico, they’re a fact of life, and for me, a nostalgic throwback to my youth.


The route out of town was familiar: we started out on MX 199, the highway that crosses the mountains to San Cristobal de las Casas. We drove that road after our first visit to Palenque, two weeks before, but we’d only made it as far as Ocosingo before a Zapatista Road Block forced us to turn around. Most of the State of Chiapas was Zapatista territory, and we started spotting their road signs (below) as soon as we left Palenque. (Enrique Peña Nieto, referenced on the signs, was Mexico’s President in 2015.)

ZAPATISTA ROAD SIGNS IN CHIAPAS

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Sign on the left:

“You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people rule, and the government obeys. The trafficking of weapons, planting and consumption of drugs, sales of intoxicating beverages, illegal trafficking of wood and destruction of nature are strictly prohibited.
Good government board, Northern Zone”

Sign on the right:

Justice for the murder of comrade Galeano ELZN.
Peña Nieto: Supreme Paramilitary Leader.
Manuel Velazco: Maximum leader for the murderers

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Welcome! San Martin-Chamizal; Palenque, Chiapas

The organization of civil resistance: “Light and strength of the people.”
We reject the application of structural reforms starting in 2015, the entry of INEGI, federal, state, and municipal police, and exploitation of natural resources. Don’t believe Televisa and T.V. Azteca. Narco-government, Narco-party.
Better get organized and fight, we are going to take power as an organized people and build a new constitution and a constituent congress.
Peña Nieto: Guilty of forced disappearances. Not one more, enough crimes.

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Fortunately, the road to Bonampak was not one of the routes that was subject to blockade, so once we made the turn onto MX 307, we were pretty much safe from delays due to political protests.


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MX 307

We’d driven a number of isolated rural highways, most recently when visiting the Mayan cities along the Ruta Puuc, but this one, MX 307, was a special case. It is the ONLY road for many miles around, which makes it a critical lifeline for area residents; the only way to get from A to B.


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We drove by a group of kids walking to school with their backpacks…

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…as well as farmers doing their work on horseback.

It was almost as if the different generations were living in different centuries!


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Scenes along MX 307: Loading produce.

The highway was built through the heavily forested hills of the Lacandon jungle. It’s the kind of road that requires continuous maintenance:


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The jungle closes in on both sides of the road

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we passed one area where a newly downed tree blocked the lane

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A bit further along, two guys with shovels were working to clear a mudslide that nearly closed the road altogether.

In the land of the Maya, any time you see an isolated hill with a conical shape, good odds that it’s a pyramid that’s never been cleared.


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This formation (above) is a good example. There are hundreds of Maya sites that have been identified, but never excavated due to lack of funding.


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Scenes along MX 307, including the “Abarrote Dos Hermanas,” (Two Sisters Grocery).

There were no towns of any size along this route. Instead, there were clusters of ramshackle homes strung out alongside the highway, a few here, a few there. The people’s lives and economic status were on full display for anyone driving past, out there on their wide open porches, and hanging on their clothes lines.


Some of the homes had traditional thatched roofs, a time-tested construction method that has the advantage of low-to-no cost for the materials and labor, which is usually supplied by friends and neighbors, using dried palm leaves grown locally and prepared in advance. A big enough group will knock out a roof like that in less than a day. There are two problems with thatched roofs: they require frequent re-weaving to keep them from leaking, and they harbor entire colonies of creatures, ranging from fruit bats and mice to scorpions and venemous millipedes. That’s the main reason why anyone with the means will go for corrugated sheet metal instead, despite the fact that metal roofs are much more costly, as well as being unbearably hot when the sun shines on them, and prone to blowing away in the more serious tropical storms. They’re considered worth the expense, the discomfort, and the risk, because metal roofs are so much cleaner, they require no maintenance to speak of, and they produce a lovely tympanic symphony in a hard rain.


One thing about this road that was a serious annoyance was the extreme prevalence of Topes, the speed bumps installed for the purpose of slowing traffic in populated areas. MX 307 had more topes over less distance than any road we’d driven, and that was really saying something. Every house, every bus stop, every side lane, they all had their own Tope, sometimes more than one (a small PRE-Tope, warning of a larger Tope yet to come). Both Mike and I were constantly on the lookout, but some of the older bumps were so blackened by skid marks that they blended with the asphalt, making them easy to miss. We hit a few of those booby traps pretty hard, despite our best efforts.


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Topes, speed bumps made of concrete and asphalt, are increasingly common in every part of Latin America. When strategically placed by road junctions and in populated areas they serve as a cost-effective method for passively enforcing speed limits. Poorly designed Topes can damage your vehicle if you hit them too hard, so drivers learn rather quickly that it’s best to treat them all with cautious respect. Some Topes are wide, and gentle, painted in bright yellow stripes, marked by multiple warning signs as you approach. Others come at you with no warning at all, and they’re sharp enough to blow your tires if you strike them at speed. (It’s not uncommon to see a shack beside the road near a bad Tope, advertising Servicios Vulcanizadora (Vulcanization: old-fashioned tire repair). Regardless of what you might think of them, Topes are an irrefutable fact of life on Mexico’s Highways. All you can really do about them is SLOW DOWN! (Which is pretty much the whole point). This is a challenge you don’t get to win.

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When we got close to Bonampak, we had to stop and pay a fee of fifty Pesos each for entry to the “Zona Arqueologica.”


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The attendant explained that there would be separate fees of 100 Pesos each for entry to Bonampak or Yaxchilan.

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A mile or so up the road, we were stopped again by a young Mayan lad, who explained the setup

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Unlike the other Mayan cities we’d been to, visitors were not allowed to drive themselves to either of these sites. We weren’t planning to go to Yaxchilan, but if we did, the closest they allow you to get by road is a parking area near the Usumacinta River. For a fee of 400 Pesos each, a launch takes you down river to the ruins, and brings you back again.

As for Bonampak, private vehicles were not allowed on the road from the highway, so visitor parking was here, by the turnoff from MX 307. There was a van that would shuttle us the last five miles to the ruins (and back again), for a fee of 100 Pesos each. The extra fees were unexpected, but I honestly didn’t mind paying. The money went to a co-op that benefitted the local community, and the income was obviously much needed.


Next up: Bonampak, the City of the Painted Walls

Cartels controlling the road -- sounds like something to give a huge miss to.

BONAMPAK

The van dropped us off where the road ended and the footpath began, but we still had to walk at least half a mile to the site. The day was mostly sunny with a few high clouds, so it was quite warm, and terribly humid. I wondered why the van hadn’t taken us the whole distance. Why make us walk all that way in the heat? Mike surmised that they were keeping us humble, and that may have been true; Bonampak is still sacred to the Lacandon Maya, and they’re very protective of their property. When we reached the ruins, we were met by a half dozen Mayan men from the nearby village. Guardians, there to keep the place safe from us tourists.


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Bonampak-Satellite View

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View from the back seat of the Bonampak transport van

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Walking in to Bonampak

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Site Guardians (Mayan men from a nearby village).

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Thatch-roofed palapa used by site caretakers.

Just inside the entrance, there was a shady palapa, atop a low platform edged by ancient steps. That’s where we paid our 100 Peso entrance fees, to a different group of Mayan villagers. This was a solemn transaction, duly witnessed and recorded. Each of us was given a receipt, which we were instructed to show to the guards who controlled access to the temples.


There didn’t appear to be all that much to see here. Front and center was an unremarkable, medium-sized pyramid, topped by several smallish structures, some of which still bore traces of faded red paint:


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Main pyramid and temples at Bonampak.Traces of the original red paint are still visible after 1200 years!

There were also several free-standing stelae, each protected by a small canopy, and a lesser pyramid, topped by a rectangular building that was itself protected by a free-standing roof. That building was the reason why we’d come to Bonampak. Officially known simply as “Structure One,” it is smallish, some fifty feet long, and twelve feet wide, divided into three rooms, each with its own door to the outside.


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Bonampak: Structure One, protected by its own free-standing roof, is on the right

After Bonampak was abandoned, somewhere around 800 A.D., those doors were sealed off by an accumulation of debris, and they remained that way for more than a thousand years. On the outside, the temple was just another nondescript mound of rubble, half buried by tropical vegetation. On the inside, out of view of the world, Structure One was protecting something wonderful.


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Several views of Structure 1, the Temple of the Paintings

Each of the three rooms was painted, floor to ceiling, with elaborate murals. There are scenes that flow together and wrap around the corners, and hundreds of individual characters. Each room had a different theme: the birth of an heir, victory in battle, sacrifice and celebration. Taken in sequence, the murals tell a story of events that took place 1200 years ago, shortly before the city was abandoned.


Painted murals on the interior walls of temples and palaces were not uncommon in the world of the Maya, but that type of art almost never survives. The pigments degrade, the underlying plaster crumbles, and all that’s generally left are traces, perhaps a swatch of color, or an outline on ancient stucco. Bonampak is the singular exception to this law of the jungle, the one place where Mayan murals have been found largely intact, and the reason why can be traced back to a fundamental principle of of chemistry. The debris in the doorways didn’t seal the rooms nearly well enough to protect the paintings from the tropical climate. Quite the opposite: rainwater pooled outside the building and seeped through the limestone walls, thoroughly saturating the murals. As the mineral-laced moisture evaporated, it left the surface of the paintings covered with a sheen of calcite, a hard, translucent glaze. This cycle repeated, over and over, building up layer upon layer of a coating that served to protect the paint and the plaster. If it had been planned that way, it could not have done a better job, with the net result that the murals are still with us, and in surprisingly good condition. In the 1980’s, the Mexican government brought in a team of specialists who spent three years removing the coating, cleaning the paintings, and stabilizing the underlying stucco. The results of those efforts left the murals looking better and brighter than ever, but still fragile, and extremely vulnerable.


Bonampak was never a “lost city.” The temples have always been known to the local Lacandon Maya, who use them for religious purposes, but it wasn’t until 1946, when the villagers showed the murals to an outsider, that the rest of the world became aware of what had been preserved here. Since that time, the paintings have been extensively studied, using advanced techniques like infrared photography and thermal imaging, which brings out latent detail that can’t be seen with the naked eye. As exciting as this might be to a Maya buff like myself, Bonampak is not all that well known to the average tourist, and visitor numbers have always been quite low. On the day Mike and I went there, we had it entirely to ourselves, and because of that, the caretakers graciously allowed us to walk all the way inside each of the rooms, and to take our time when viewing and photographing the murals. When tour groups arrive, and the site gets even slightly crowded, everyone has to line up and wait their turn to view the paintings. No one is allowed to enter the temple, the way Mike and I did. There is a seperate queue for each room, and when it’s your turn, you step up to the threshold, and peer in through the doorway. Each visitor is allowed just 20 seconds with each of the three rooms, and I’m told that the limit is strictly enforced. The point is to protect the murals from the moisture in our breath, which is a serious concern.

As a photographer, capturing decent images in that temple was an enormous challenge, even without the restrictive time limit. The only light in those small rooms is what comes in through those small doors. You’re not allowed to bring in any photographic lighting, you’re not allowed to use a flash on your camera, and you’re not allowed to use a tripod. We were fortunate in having clear skies, at least, but those interiors were really quite dim. I set my cameras to a high ISO, used a wide open lens, a slow shutter speed, and I held my breath with each shot. How did I make out? I’ll let you be the judge.

Next up:The Temple of the Paintings

ROOM 1

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Reproduction of Room One by Latin American Studies.org

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Composite photo of the lower wall

Room 1 is entered through the door on your left as you face the temple, and it is in this room that the remarkable story begins. The paintings travel around the room in four distinct segments, beginning with the panel nearest the floor. We see a procession of lesser nobles, including musicians, and men wearing elaborate god masks, lined up around the walls, against a bright blue background. Above them is a narrow band containing hieroglyphs on one side, and images of captives or menial workers on the other. Next is the widest, most impressive panel, in which we have Chaan Muan II, the Lord of Bonampak, presenting his new son and heir to the nobles of his court. These are clearly important personages, sumptuously dressed, each in a different costume, standing in a line before their ruler; each of the two longer walls features a separate, but similar scene, against an orange background. Finally, the vaulted ceiling, which is filled with designs representing the Mayan version of heaven, and images of gods.


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One of the most interesting scenes is a segment of the lower panel featuring musicians and costumed dancers. Early visitors to Bonampak were in the habit of spritzing kerosene on this and many of the other panels to brighten the colors for their photos. By the time anyone realized it was damaging the paintings, it was too late to do anything about it. When the National Geographic Society conducted their study of the murals, they meticulously recreated some of the panels with the additional detail gleaned from high tech photography. The resulting images were published in their magazine in February of 1995.


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Original photos from Bonampak, juxtaposed with National Geographic’s masterful restorations.

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ROOM 2

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Reproduction of Room Two by Latin American Studies.org

Room 2 is entered through the door in the center, and presents images that set a much different tone. These are battle scenes, in which the Lords of Bonampak vanquish seemingly helpless villagers for the purpose of taking captives. Captives were the fuel of Mayan society, the energy source that made it work. Slave labor built their monuments, raised their crops, transported their goods, and more. The pool had to be continuously refreshed, because the bloodthirsty Mayan religion required a constant supply of expendable humans to serve as sacrificial offerings to their gods. In one panel, Chaan Muan II, dressed in all his finery, grasps a terrified villager by the hair, as the man struggles desperately to free himself. In another, a row of bound captives sit weeping in pain, their fingertips dripping blood after their nails were ripped out. A corpse lies sprawled in the foreground, a realistic use of perspective. It was this panel, more than any other, that debunked the notion that the Classic Maya were a peaceful people ruled by learned astronomer priests. The Maya nobles depicted here were anything but peaceful.


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The details in the murals in Room Two are not as crisp as what you see in the other rooms, but perhaps that’s just as well. These are scenes of violence and cruelty, graphic depictions of the outcome of a one-sided battle, and of the vast divide between the Mayan nobility and the common people. National Geographic’s restoration brings all this to life with startling clarity.


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ROOM 3

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Last, but certainly not least, is through the door on the right. This is where the prisoners captured during the battles in Room 2 are sacrificed. There are celebrations, with music and dancing and gigantic hats that look like a collaboration between Dr. Seuss and Hieronymus Bosch.

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In addition to the damage caused by early visitors and their kerosene, there is other damage to the panels that appears to be vandalism: the faces of some figures have been scraped away, and on others, the eyes have been gouged out.


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According to scholars, this was in fact deliberate, but it wasn’t vandalism. Many of these painted characters represent specific individuals who lived in that era. The mutilation of their portrait may have been a way to nullify the power associated with their legacy. Such “de-Facing” of art was not at all uncommon among the Maya; it’s actually thought to predate Mayan culture, as it is a practice that originated with the Olmecs.

One of the upper end panels depicts a particularly graphic scene in which a group of noble women pierce their tongues with stingray barbs to draw blood, as an offering to the gods. The heir to Chaan Muan II, presented to the court by his father in Room 1, is seen here with his mother, preparing to participate in his first bloody sacrifice.


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This scene of blood sacrifice is one of the clearest, most interesting images at Bonampak, and National Geographic’s restoration efforts have taken it up a full order of magnitude, revealing even the tiniest details. If slaves were the fuel that powered Mayan society, blood was the fuel that powered their religion. Many Mayan temples were originally painted red, and that’s hardly a coincidence.


It’s almost unimaginable, but artwork such as this must have covered the walls of nearly every important building in the Mayan world, documenting the lives and the fantasies of all their kings in graphic, colorful detail. The Mayan cities as they appear today, pyramids and temples built of weathered limestone, the only color coming from vegetation sprouting in the cracks between the blocks; those ruins bear no more than a passing resemblance to the original constructions that stood on those crumbling foundations. The Maya loved color. The evidence of that is abundantly clear, especially when we look at the Bonampak murals. These places would have truly been something to see, back in their glory days. (As long as you weren’t on the losing side of one of those one-sided battles.)

Next up: The rest of the ruin

The caretakers eventually called time on my photo session, so Mike and I explored the rest of the site, very little of which has been cleared and opened to the public. There were several interesting sculptures, and two of the stelae ranked among the best I’d seen anywhere, tack sharp detail chiseled into the stone. One of those, at almost 20 feet in height, is among the tallest that have ever been found, anywhere in the Mayan world. The rest of it, the pyramids and temples, were a bit anticlimactic after the splendor of the Amazing Murals.

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Mike at Bonampak:He came, he saw, he climbed another pyramid!

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A worn, limestone carving that looks a bit like a sarcophagus

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When viewed from another angle, the carving becomes a smiling serpent

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One of several round stones with incised markings, or channels? Possibly sacrificial altars.


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Stelae #1 at Bonampak. Carved from a single 20 foot limestone slab, it's one of the tallest in the Mayan world.

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Details of the intricate carving on stelae #1


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Stelae at Bonampak

We only stayed at the site for about an hour and a half, but after we’d maxed out the time we were allowed to spend with the murals, there wasn’t much point to hanging around. It wasn’t all that late in the day. Not yet, anyway, but after all the explicit warnings about traveling MX 307 in the dark, we were anxious to get going. We thanked the caretakers for their kindness, and said our farewells, then made that long walk back to the parking area. The van that brought us from the highway was there waiting for us, and in what seemed like no time at all, we were back at my Jeep, safe and sound.

Next up: A fast run back to Palenque!

A FAST RUN BACK TO PALENQUE!

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Ruta Maya Road Sign, complete with its own Tope

We knew what to expect on the drive back. Our old friend MX 307, only this time we’d be traveling in the opposite direction. We had enough time, so there was no real reason to be nervous, but even with the familiar road and no pressure, I had this niggling sense of dread, almost like we were being watched. Considering the lawless reputation of the area, even back in 2015, it’s entirely possible that we were! Even so, I had no regrets about having made the drive. Bonampak, our 14th (and last) Mayan ruin, was the one site that finally put a human face on the people who built all of this amazing stuff.

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We came to the downed tree, still blocking the road (this time on our side of the highway)...

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...and another group of schoolkids who looked like they were waiting for a ride

With Mike doing the driving on the way back, I was free to use my still camera to catch a few scenes along the road, in sharper focus. Like their Mayan ancestors, native people in this area are lovers of color. Beyond the more populated areas there were farms, rural homesteads, and verdant pastures, with horses and cattle grazing. It was a bucolic, incredibly peaceful scene, which made it hard to reconcile with everything we’d been hearing about trouble from smugglers and criminal gangs.

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In some areas, the road was like a tunnel through the trees.

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As always in rural Mexico, we saw plenty of alternative transportation.

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Scenes from our return journey along MX 307

We made it back to Palenque well before sunset, and headed straight to the Hotel Chablis for a couple of cold ones, and a little route planning. The first time we were in Palenque, we tried to drive to San Cristobal de las Casas, a charming colonial city on the other side of the Sierra Madre. Not only did we underestimate the time required, we also ran into that Zapatista road block halfway to Ocosingo, and were forced to turn around. Tomorrow, we were going to try that drive again. The road was notoriously slow and dangerous, so we were looking forward to it! (Ha!)

Next up: The Road to San Cristobal de las Casas

INTERMISSION

My last post completes Part 2 of this report, making way for the third and final segment: our drive back north to the border, with stops in San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca, and San Miguel de Allende, where we experienced all three days of Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead celebration. There will be no more Mayan ruins in Part 3; (I hear some of you breathing a sigh of relief). Instead, there will be colonial cities, extraordinary mountain roads, picturesque villages, and, for the grand finale, the most amazing Fiesta I’ve ever experienced.

Unfortunately, I’m going to need a little time to finish putting all that together, so, once again, I must ask for your patience while I hit the pause button on these posts. Realistically, I should have it all done in the next four to six weeks (possibly sooner). As soon as it’s ready, I’ll be back with the conclusion.

In the meanwhile? Stay cool (and Happy Trails),

Rick

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Yee Ha!