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Published: March 16th 2009
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Xunantunich Ruins
Mike sitting pretty. After a few days in Caye Caulker (and the Blue Hole dive Ally loved so much) we rented a car to head to the far west of Belize close to the Guatemala border. We did it by car rather than the local "chicken bus" (so called because locals take their chickens with them sometimes) because we are soft. Actually, we had to make it back to Caye Caulker to meet up with a saling boat to head south down to coast towards Guatamela and Honduras and time was a factor.
Driving in Belize is interesting. They drive on the right hand side of the road, most of the time. I wasn't sure about the speed limit, it seemed more a case of how good your vehicle was. And there was a police check-point set up, which we didn't know if we should stop at or not, so we didn't and we didn't get chased, so I guess that was ok.
First stop was the Belize Zoo, which I'd read great reports about. They call it the "best little Zoo in the world", and it's best known for a rare black Jaguar. Unfortunately "blackie" passed away a couple of months ago, which is a shame. I think Ally and I set a record for the shortest time spent at the Zoo, but I did take a lot of photos.
Further out west, ver close ot the Guatemala border are some of the best Mayan ruins in Central America, called Xunantunich (pronounced Soo-nahn-tuneech). Absolutely fantastic experience. I thought about the Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto a lot (it is supposed to be fairly accurate). I also had the Mental as Anything song Apocalypto going through my head, but that didn't really make sense. To access the site, you have to cross a river via a hand-cranked ferry (really old local working the crank, but Ally helped). The dominant structure rises 40m above the jungle floor - and is stil the second tallest man made structure in Belize (a few feet shorter than another similar ruin). It was an incredible experience to walk around and climb these buildings (no restrictions, or safety considerations) and think about the society that flourished, and then failed here. At it's peak, around AD 650, the population of Xunantunich was 130,000, which is twice the current population of Belize City. About 15 km away, on the fringe of San Ignacio is another ruin called Cahal Pech (which means place of ticks, although I didn't see any). It's the earliest known site, settled between 1500 and 1000 BC. The decline of the Maya has always been sommewhat mysterious and romantacised... particularly around the legend it disappeared at the peak of it's power. Their society was incredible advanced... they developed a detailed calendar, and their architecture was as impressive as any in the world at that time. There is no doubt there was a golden ear, but the decline was far from supernatural. Their population grew beyond what they could manage, there were increasingly violent power and territory conflicts, they sacrificed countless thousands (when it came to the impressive buildings, the heavy lifting was done by slaves). Nearer the end, records indicate a prolonged drought, which would no doubt have led to an increase in the human sacrifices to appease the rain god... it seems people just started to leave - to move north or south. New Mayan settlements were founded, far simpler and many still exist. Others integrated into other ethnic groups. Then the Spanish arrived, and that finished off what remained of the big settlements.
A night in San Ignacio followed. Interesting experience - a border town, with a lot of tourists passing through and a lot of dodgy characters staying put. We failed to find a bar we felt comfortable enough to stay for a drink in (the one we were going to go to wasn't open, and the following night was the scene of a near-fatal stabbing).
The next day we set out early for a tour of the ATM caves (Actun Tunichil Muknal - which means something like "cave which is a burial site"). Real Indiana Jones style experience. After a long hike through remote jungle, we had to swim through a river to access the cave entrance and squeeze through some pretty tight places. On our tour were two people who shouldn't have been. One really fat American (suffering a little Montezuma's revenge) who Ally and I initially thought was a few stubbies short of a good day at the cricket, but as it turns out was normal enough. And a German woman who was claustrophobic (and had a ding dong blue with her husband when she refused to continue at one point). The cave had tens of thousands of pieces of pottery left as offerings to the dead, and several dead left as offerings to the gods. The most incredible was the completely intact skeleton of a teenage girl - her only injury was a broken clavicle. Most of th eremains were of young men and their injuries indicated they did not go willingly to apease the gods. One had two broken legs, and two broken arms which were tied together behind his back. The thought is they were from about AD 200. It was a really amazing experience.
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