Caracol - March 16, 2008

Caana Temple, Caracol

Guatemala has Tikal, Mexico has Chichen Itza, Honduras has Copan. Belize has Caracol. These are major sites of Mayan ruins within their respective countries. Belize has many(!) other sites of ruins as well. There is some speculation that Caracol could be the largest Mayan site from the ancient world. However, as Belize doesn't have the money to excavate the entire site, there are a lot of structures and other items still hidden by the jungle and the soil.

Caracol was the last tour I arranged for with Pacz. Bob, at Pacz, wasn't sure the tour would even happen. They need a certain number of people to go on the tour and that number looked like it might not be met. At least as early as Saturday morning, the 15th. However, once I returned from A.T.M., Bob assured me the tour was on. When I had arranged with Delia to stay in San Ignacio, one of the reasons was Caracol. Another was Mountain Pine Ridge National Park. On this day, I would get to see both.

The day started out overcast, but quickly became sunny and hot. We drove east through San Ignacio to some very rutty dirt roads - we would spend most of the day on those roads. They are not well maintained and our driver said that he constantly has to perform maintenance on his vehicle.

The first stop was some sort of military checkpoint. There were many other tour vehicles at the checkpoint as well. It turns out they were waiting for us. Apparently, in the recent past bandits would attack the tours going to Caracol. To prevent against this, the Belize military set up a convoy. All tours going to Caracol had to convoy together with military vehicles at the front and rear of the convoy. I am happy to say that we encountered no bandits.

We arrived at Caracol and toured the ruins for about 3 hours, after which we had lunch. Caracol has not been restored like Tikal has been. It is in a state of what I will refer to as arrested decay. At Caracol, you can climb around on all of the structures, even use the front steps to climb the temples. I would think it makes it very hard to maintain archeological finds if you allow inconsiderate tourists to damage your find. But that is just me.

We went through the Raleigh Group, the Central Acropolis, the South Acropolis (where we saw an empty tomb), the ball court (precursor to the modern day basketball?), and then headed over to the really big structures, the Barrio Group and the Canaa Temple.

The Raleigh group was our first stop. It is composed of several excavated residential structures. They are not fully excavated but you can see some of what remains of the structures and, of course, climb on them.

From there we went to both the Central and South Acropoli (I wonder if that is the plural of Acropolis.

Sometimes, and I am not sure of the schedule, archeology students from a United States University come down and excavate the site ruins. They also have an area at the site where the live and work, and we walked by that as well. The students weren't there when we visited.

Next was the ball court. The Mayans played a game that is probably similar to our version of basketball. Our guide, John, told us that the loser wasn't always sacrificed. Sometimes the winner was and, in that case, winning was an honor. Sometimes no one was sacrificed. I believe the rules had to be agreed upon in advance.

From the ball court, we walked over to the Barrio Group.

The Barrio Group contains the Temple of the Wooden Lintel. I think that is the structure I climbed on. Whichever structure I climbed on, it was very impressive. Very hot - the stone absorbs the heat to some degree. And very well preserved, at least for now. There are 4 structures in the Barrio Group, at least one of which was a taller temple than the structure I climbed on.

Finally, on to the Canaa Temple. If you ever see pictures of Caracol, the Canaa Temple is analogous to the Temple of the Jaguar at Tikal. Most likely, Canaa Temple is the one picture you have seen to represent Caracol. It is impressive. And very tall. You can climb up to the top - I heard the view was very grand. Me, I made it up the first set of steps and decided I could happily live without going to the top.

The steps, both above and below me, were very steep and not very wide. There are no handrails. It would have taken me forever to get up and down. As it was, I had to sit on each step and gingerly feel for the next down the first set of steps.

Canaa was the end of the 3-hour tour. We walked a short distance off the site to the picnic area and ate the lunch. Caracol also had a small museum/gift shop next to the picnic area.

Because of the military convoy, all tours had to be complete by 2 p.m. The last military vehicle left at that time and all other vehicles had to leave before the military did. After about 45 minutes of lunch, our driver rounded us up and we headed off to the Mountain Pine Ridge National Park.

Temple of the Wooden Lintel

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