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Published: July 13th 2006
Quirigua's Giant Stela
The site of Quirigua was very impressive with several massive and well carved Stelae.We were crossing a large inlet of normally turquoise water called the Bay of Honduras. We had left Belize and the costal town of Punta Gorda in our wake and we were headed towards Guatemala and the isolated seaside town of Livingston, at the inlet of the Rio Dulce. The calm, turquoise Caribbean waters I had seen the day before were gone, replaced by the tumultuous, gray sea that was forcing our small launch to repeatedly jump out of the water. The bone-jarring crash each time the boat landed was slightly lessened by the makeshift life-jacket seat cushions that separated us from the hard plank of plywood that was serving as our seat. Our bow was pointed directly into a forbidding seascape of dark storm clouds that blotted out the horizon and bathed everything in a gloomy light. A flash of lightning and the booming roar of the thunder let us all know that we were about to get wet - The miniature tarp roof over our heads didn’t have a chance at keeping the deluge off of us! Prepared for everything, the captain passed out tarps to wrap ourselves in, but he didn’t have enough to go around; I put
Approaching the Site
This is the path through the jungle trees that you take from the parking lot to Quirigua's main plaza. on my poncho instead. Our backpacks were in the open bow with a deflated kiddy pool draped over them for protection from the elements - We joked that, if worse came to worse, we could use the pool as a life raft. We all had our eyes glued on a small funnel cloud that had formed up in the clouds to our left and was trying, without any success, to reach the surface of the sea and become a full grown waterspout; we passed it by with out any problems as we moved deeper into the storm! At first it was hard to tell if it had started raining or if we were just getting wet from the bow spray, but it quickly became obvious that the rain had started. I put my sunglasses on to protect my eyes from the stinging impact as the raindrops slammed into my face and then I sat back and enjoyed the storm. As quickly as it had started, the storm had passed and on the other side we were greeted with our first view of the rolling, green, jungle-covered hills and palm fringed shore of Guatemala’s small stretch of Caribbean coast. We hadn’t
A Bearded Face
Several of the stelae at Quirigua have beards, which is a rarity in the Mayan World. seen another boat on the Belizean side of the storm, but as we emerged from the tempest on the Guatemalan side we were surrounded by fishermen in boats even smaller that ours, completely oblivious to the storm - It was apparently just a little bit of rain to them!
The boat let me off at Livingston’s main dock and I made my way past several men trying to sell me everything from nice hotel rooms to trips down the Rio Dulce - None of which I needed at the time. I headed up the hill from the waterfront, along Main Street, towards the immigration office. I filled out my immigration form and got my passport stamped without saying more than “Buenos Dias” and “Gracias” and then I checked into the Hotel Rio Dulce. The hotel was in a charming, pastel colored, two story wooden building with two giant wraparound porches and an atmosphere that would have been at home anywhere in the Caribbean. After stashing my bag in my room I went out to explore the town, running into several friends along the way. Had I not known better, I would have thought that I was still in Belize,
Hieroglyphs
Most of the stelae had wonderfully preserved hieroglyphs that tell the grand story of Quirigua. because the Garifuna culture that is so strong there was thriving in Livingston as well. Livingston’s large traveler population meant that there were several great restaurants and tourist shops everywhere and its relative isolation from the rest of Guatemala and its closeness to Belize meant that, in addition to Garifuna and Spanish, English was widely spoken. I ran into my two friends from the Cockscomb basin as they were getting ready to head up the Rio Dulce and then I went to have lunch with another person I had met in Belize who was from San Diego. We walked around for a little while before selecting a small restaurant that had an interesting menu. We both opted for the local specialty called Tapado, which was a spicy soup filled with various seafood and plantains - It proved to be an interesting dining experience! The soup came in a large bowl and I knew we were in for a strange meal when I saw the fish sticking out of the bowl, face down in the soup with its tail in the air! The fish was whole, as were the shrimp, the mollusks, the crab and the calamari, which made for a
Special Hieroglyphs?
A few of the stelae and some of the zoomorphs had these detailed pictures carved on them. I read somewhere that Quirigua had a rare 'longhand' type of hieroglyph - These could be them. lot of work getting at the meat - I had never thought of soup as a finger food before this trip! Despite the fact that everything in the bowl was staring at me (the plantains had the most disturbing stare of them all), the soup was delicious and I ate everything (almost). I spent the rest of my day exploring the town and reading. My dinner consisted of an excellent chicken curry dish at a small, but well known restaurant on the shore at the other end of Main Street (yes, Main Street starts and ends on the water and it is a straight road). I showed up at the restaurant alone and took a table by myself, but the server insisted that I move and he put me at a table with an unsuspecting English couple who were having a nice, quiet, candlelight meal - We all thought it was a little strange, but we could only laugh about it and it ended up being an enjoyable meal. The guy from San Diego had mentioned that he was going to be meeting up with two of his friends, also from San Diego, that had taken a different route to
The Plaza
This is the view of the plaza looking towards the only semi-restored structures. Livingston and I ran into them at one of the sidewalk bars. His two friends from San Diego ended up being two people I had met on Caye Caulker a week before - It is amazing how often you run into the same people when you are traveling! The next morning I had a leisurely breakfast on the porch of my hotel and then set off to find a boat to take me down the jungle-bound Rio Dulce to the town of the same name. I quickly learned that I had made a mistake when I arrived in Guatemala by not changing the time on my clock and that my leisurely breakfast had made me miss all of the boats. I ran down to the dock and found one colectivo boat that had not yet filled up and, therefore, had not left yet and they said they would wait five minutes for me to go and get my stuff. Naturally, thinking I had an hour left, I had not packed yet and I had to hurry. I ran up the formidable hill to the hotel, collected my laundry from the reception, crammed everything into my bag, checked out and made
Stela (1)
The next few pictures are of the many stelae at Quirigua. I can't identify which ones they are, because I lost a large portion of the pictures and the order is now off. it back to the boat in what must have been a record time and then we were off down the Rio Dulce, a trip that is famed among travelers for its beauty.
The journey down the Rio Dulce was a lot of fun. Shortly after leaving the dock we put Livingston behind us and entered the narrow, jungle fringed canyon where the river had cut its way through the costal mountains. The scenery was great and we all scanned the forest, which grew right down to the water in places, for the elusive wildlife that our boat captain said he occasionally sees on the trips - Other than birds, we saw nothing. The captain stopped the boat and asked everyone if we wanted to take the slow, sightseeing trip to Rio Dulce, or if we wanted to get there quickly and we unanimously opted for the slow trip. We then headed down a small inlet into a very narrow jungle channel that had a few eco-lodges on its banks and we pulled up to a small dock where a man waited to show us around. The place was an ecological co-op where the locals were trying to find a
way to make a living off of the forest without destroying it. They had several hiking trails winding through the pristine tropical forest and the man that met us at the dock walked us down a few of them to a small waterfall, explaining the flora and fauna to us as we went. Along the way we stopped at a craft store and we saw the lodges that could be rented for overnight stays - It was a lovely place. Next our boat stopped at a small hot spring at the base of one of the cliffs where there was a small pool, lined with a jumbled rock wall, that we could wade in - Two of us got out of the boat, but the water was just short of scalding and we decided not to swim. We passed a large growth of lily-pads filled with bird life and then we entered into a large body of water that was ringed by small mountains. There were storm clouds in the distance that shrouded the mountains in a misty fog and added a strong sense of mystery to the journey - The view excited the adventurer in me and I felt
a strong urge to go and explore the mysteries of the ‘Misty Mountains’, but it was not meant to be on this trip! We pulled up to the dock in Rio Dulce, beneath what is said to be the longest bridge in Central America, and set about finding places to stay. The people on the dock recommended a remote river-side lodge hidden back in the jungle and it was one that someone else had recommended to me as well, so I jumped onto another launch and headed through yet another rain storm to Casa Perico. Casa Perico was a wonderful place. It consisted of a large restaurant/bar/sitting area (with an enormous TV?) that was built onto an elevated, dock-like structure. The area was open on three sides and the dorm area was on the second floor, which was also open, beneath the massive palapa (palm thatched) roof. It was a peaceful place to sit and watch the rain and talk with the many travelers that were staying there. There was a giant, all-you-can-eat, curry buffet for dinner that evening, which was delicious and a lot of fun. There were also a few traditional style dugout canoes that were available for
our use - I just had to try one! Unlike normal canoes, which are fairly stable due to their flat, wide bottoms, dugout canoes are completely rounded and very tipsy! I struggled the entire time to keep from sinking, but I managed to paddle the boat through the jungle swamp and into the main channel of the river without many problems. I did have one scare when a launch, which was running at full speed, passed right by me, nearly sending me down to the murky depths of the river, but I foresaw the impending danger and managed to get the bow turned into the waves at the last second! I spent a very peaceful night beneath the mosquito net and in the morning I set off for the town of Rio Dulce and a bus to the next small town on my trip.
I was headed to the town of Quirigua and the Mayan ruins of the same name. I was dropped off on the side of the highway about ten minutes walk from the town center and my chosen hotel. The journey from Rio Dulce didn’t take nearly as long as I had expected and I still
had the whole afternoon to see the ruins, so I stashed my bag in my room and headed in the direction the lady at the hotel desk pointed me in. I walked past the church and down the hill where I found an old, apparently abandoned set of railroad tracks. I followed the tracks for about fifteen minutes, passing several simple homes and empty fields, before I came to an unmarked dirt road that I was supposed to follow to the archaeological site. The dirt road passed through the center of a seemingly endless banana plantation and I wasn’t entirely sure that it was the correct road, so I was happy when a man who worked at the ruins stopped and offered me a ride the rest of the way. Shortly after getting into the truck we got stopped at one of the strangest road crossings that I have ever seen - It was a banana crossing! We sat and talked about the ruins while we watched bundle after bundle of bananas fly by, hanging from an elevated monorail train. Shortly after the banana crossing we pulled into the archaeological site and said our farewells. Quirigua was a mysterious ruin
to me, mainly because I had heard very little about it and what I had heard was somewhat mysterious in origin. I knew that the site was known for its large stelae and zoomorphs and that several of the faces on the stelae had beards, which is not common in the Mayan world, but I was not expecting such a grand site and I was completely blown away by it. The trail from the parking lot led through a shady grove of massive jungle trees and then opened up into a large, green, grassy plaza surrounded on all sides by un-restored, jungle covered mounds of giant jumbled blocks that used to make up Quirigua’s buildings. There were several enormous stelae scattered throughout the plaza, some rising eight meters (24 feet) out of the ground and all of them expertly carved, and many grotesque, but beautifully carved zoomorphs depicting both real and mythical creatures of importance to the Mayans. I examined each of the detailed carvings, most with impressive glyphs telling stories of important happenings nearly two-thousand years in the past, and all done with an artistic touch that suggested major influences from Copan, a site just over the border in
Honduras that is well known for its sculpture. I was also surprised with the quality of the stone blocks used to build the structures, because all of them were expertly carved and very large, almost like what you would find in Peru - Most of the other Mayan sites used rougher stones and relied solely on a thick layer of lime stucco to smooth the buildings out. I spent nearly two hours exploring the site and I marveled at how I had never really heard about the place - It turns out that Quirigua is one of Guatemala’s three UNESCO World Heritage sites, so it is no surprise that I was so impressed. I turned down several rides during my walk back to town, because the scenery along the road was just too nice to pass up. The walk back passed through the same beautiful banana plantations as before, but, heading back to town, the horizon was filled with the giant triangular peaks of a few of Guatemala’s volcanoes and the late afternoon light bathed the whole scene in a warm glow - It was a truly pleasant walk! Back in town I was greeted by firecrackers and honking horns
as several pickup trucks passed, each with a beauty show contestant sitting in a palm lined throne in the back and waving to the crowd. I sat and watched the festivities for a while as a giant loud speaker strapped to the roof of one of the trucks told everyone what was going on. On the way back to the hotel I passed a foosball arcade and a large carnival that was being set up in a plaza like place next to the church - For such a small town Quirigua seemed to be very lively!
Early the next morning I was standing on the side of the two lane highway where I flagged down the first bus going in my direction, which turned out to be a nice, air-conditioned Pullman - Still no chicken bus!. By the end of the day’s whirlwind journey I had taken one bus, five different colectivo vans packed full of people and I had walked across another international border, this time into Honduras.
Note: I had an unfortunate CD burning accident in Honduras and most of my pictures from this leg of the trip didn't get copied, so you will have to The Jungle
The United Fruit Company had the decency to protect the ruins from destruction in the early 1900's and now there is an island of tropical forest surrounding the site in a sea of banana plantations. use your imagination to see Livingston and the Rio Dulce. Thankfully, some of my Quirigua pictures survived.
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