The Ruins of Cancuen
After running out of cash in Lanquin (why would you build a tourist trap and make it impossible to withdraw or change money!?!), we started heading back north toward Peten. After a day of travel, we set up a base in the town of Raxruha, a bit south of Sayache. The next day, we continued our Maya Marathon at the ruins of Cancuen. During the Maya classic period, Cancuen was the end of the water-navigable line of the trade route following the Umacinta River from the gulf into the center of what is today Guatemala, and an important member of the Petexbatun Kingdom that we have been talking about for a few days.
Lanquin-Semuc Champey
Leaving Coban behind, we embarked on a particularly dilapidated minibus for a remarkably loud and shaky ride on a largely unpaved road to the town of Lanquin, gateway to some of the more remote natural wonders of Guatemala. We settled into a surprisingly inviting hippie resort called El Retiro, complete with thatched roof bungalows, an all-you-can-eat buffet, hammocks, and a sauna down by the river, and headed out towards Semuc Champey and the caves.
We Saw A Quetzal!
After so much ruin-hopping in the hot, mosquito-ridden jungle, we decided to head back south to the cooler climates of the mountains. Setting up camp in the unremarkable city of Coban, we visited a fascinating museum full of Mayan artifacts (can't get away from the old stones) and took a walk in a refreshing cloud forest.
The Ruins of Ceibal
Ceibal, or Seibal, was another important city within the Petexbatun kingdom that we have been discussing for the last couple of days. It is located on a bluff overlooking the Rio del Passion (which joins the Petexbatun further down stream) and we booked a tour with the same boatsman that we had used for Dos Pilas and Aguateca from the Cafe del Rio in Sayache.
The Ruins of Aguateca
In our last post, we talked about the Petexbatun kingdom, seat of a dynasty that soon found itself under a lot of pressure to defend itself. One of the actions they took was to found a twin capital at Aguateca that outlived the original by some 50 years but still saw a violent end. Aguateca sits on a singularly impressive location atop a massive limestone escarpment overlooking the Petexbatun River. The escarpment fractured in a series of earthquakes many thousands of years ago, cleaving it with a fracture some 800 meters (a half mile) long, 30 meters (90 feet) deep and 2 meters (6 feet) wide with perfectly vertical walls. With the ravine on one side and the cliffs of the bluff on the other, Aguateca sat on a perfectly defensible location.
The Ruins of Dos Pilas
From Sayaxche, we arranged a guide to the isolated ruins of the Mayan city of Dos Pilas, capital of a medium sized kingdom today known at the Petexbatun Kingdom, with a minor stopover in Arroyo de Piedra with the friendly boatman on the far side of the river at the Cafe del Rio. This was one heck of a trip, involving an hour boat ride up the Petexbatun river, followed by a three-hour horse ride through the jungle and the slash-and-burn to the site. Dos Pilas, together with its sister city Aguateca (which I will talk about in my next post), are unique in that they are among the rare classic-period Maya sites that are heavily fortified.
Sayaxche
Our first stop back in Guatemala was the town of Sayaxche, a transportation hub of sorts and, most importantly, the closest point to not one, not two, but three nice looking Mayan sites just a little off the main tourist track.
Crossing the Border Again
After exploring the ruins of Bonampak and Yaxchilan in Chiapas, Matt tried hard to book us a boat to the off-the-beaten-path site of Piedras Negras, which he had been dreaming about for a while. After hours of bargaining and tying to find other tourists to come with us to split the costs, he reluctantly had to give up his Indiana Jones fantasy, as we simply did not have enough pesos for this little adventure.
San Andres, an Autonomous Community?
After we had done the readings and seen the documentaries, it was time to see the real thing for ourselves: we took a day trip to the Autonomous Community of San Andres. About one hour away from San Cristobal, San Andres Sakamch'en de Los Pobres is a large village set in misty hills, near the main highway, and next to a couple of army bases. It is mostly famous for being the place where the Peace Accords were signed by the Mexican Governement and the Zapatista EZNL in 1996. Today, it is mostly a poor, sleepy, fairly unremarkable village village.
Tierra y Libertad – the Zapatistas
Colonial cities, Mayan ruins, indigenous villages and beautiful scenery may be the main drawn to Chiapas, but among the local textiles and various crafts, visitors to the tourist market in San Cristobal will find more intriguing souvenirs, such as t-shirts printed with a red star and little cloth dolls representing balaclava-sporting guerilleros.
The Ruins of Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan was one of the more powerful Mayan cities, often playing a role as a swing state in the conflicts between the Mayan superpowers of Tikal and Calakmul. From its position on a peninsula in the Usumacinta River, Yaxchilan was able to control the only waterway into the heart of the Yucatan peninsula and therefore control most of the long distance trade across the Maya world. Today, the ruins of Yaxchilan are notable for their remmarkably well preserved lintel carvings (carvings on the tops of passageways), a couple of particularly well preserved and imposing temples (including one with a near-intact roof comb and sculptures of human figures on the facade) and some carvings that still include a some of the original paint.
The Ruins of Bonampak
After moving on from San Cristobal, we headed into the Chiapan hinterland to explore some more of the Maya ruins that the region boasts. The first of these was Bonampak, a smallish Mayan city that flourished toward the end of the Classic period as a client or ally of Yaxchilan. What makes Bonampak so special, though, are its beautifully preserved murals, which are the only ones surviving today.
The Sights of San Cristobal
This post is just a quickie to highlight some of the noteworthier things in San Cristobal, including the Cathedral, the church of San Francisco, the Casa de las Sirenas, the home of Diego de Mazariegos, the Arcotete and the Temple of Santo Domingo. The descriptions here are in the same order as the pictures below, if you want to follow along.
San Cristobal de las Casas
As we mentioned before, we decided to stay for a little while in San Cristobal, Chiapas. This town is, in fact, one of the more interesting places that we have encountered on this trip. It is quite similar to Antigua, in Guatemala, in some ways. It, too, was a colonial city and the Spanish capital of Chiapas (a district of Guatemala at the time). The city saw itself as a rival of Antigua, and many of the buildings there were designed with the express purpose of surpassing a certain feature of Antigua. The look of San Cristobal is therefore very similar to Antigua. However, the feel of this city is very different indeed.
The Ruins of Palenque
After our day at Tonina, we headed on to the somewhat more important ruins of Palenque. Palenque is much more what one thinks of when imagining Mayan ruins: a sprawling complex set in thick jungle, with temples rising out of the trees in some places and trees rising out of the temples in others. Palenque's conformity with an archetypal Maya site has a lot to do with the fact that it was among the first to be discovered (in 1790) and studied. Thus, Palenque was instrumental in the formation of our modern collective imagination in regards to the Maya and their civilization.
The Ruins of Tonina
While we decided to stop and take some Spanish classes in San Cristobal, our timing was not exactly perfect: we arrived on a Wednesday and classes start on Mondays. So we took advantage of the gap to travel just a bit around Chiapas and see a couple of Maya sites. The first of these were the ruins of the city of Tonina, a site that (like most other Maya sites) reached its apogee in the 6th to 9th centuries.
Welcome to Mexico
Because our 3 month visa was about to expire, we left our lovely Guatemalan mountains for the potentially greener grass of Chiapas, Mexico. Our Mexico guide mentioned that the Guatemalan side of the border was corrupt while our Guatemala guide warned of extortion on the Mexican side, yet our crossing of the border was almost boringly uneventful.