Bonampak is a small site, but is known for the painted murals which are preserved inside one of the temples. Most Maya paintings have been lost to time (it has been over a THOUSAND years), but these are incredible. There are three rooms with paintings on all four walls, each a different theme. (One of them supposedly depicts a pot-bellied dwarf, but we really couldn't find him.) Anyway, we just stood in awe looking at them....
After Bonampak we took a boat 45 minutes up the Usumacinta River (which forms the border between Mexico and Guatemala), to Yaxchilan. (Our boat captain was maybe 11 years old, and handled that thing like a Jaguar.) Yaxchilan is a remote site, only accessible by boat, and it is pretty darned mystical, in my opinion. It sits deep in the jungle, and everything is overgrown with moss and vines. There is a passageway through one of the temples (completely pitch black inside), and it is populated by a whole lot of bats and some big-ass spiders (at least 10 inches across). Extremely creepy, and extremely cool. We stayed the night in the Lacondon jungle, in a Lacandon Maya village. It was a pretty weird place, but I'm glad we did it. We really didn't get to talk with any of the locals, which was a shame. They are an interesting bunch, many of the men still wear the traditional clothing, which is basically a white nightgown made out of a cotton sheet-like material. We saw men riding mountain bikes in their gowns, and one guy (boy do I wish I had gotten a photo) pushing a wheelbarrow in his "nightie" and rubber boots. We took a walk in the jungle with a French couple who were there with us, and met up with a shirtless Lacondon guy who turned us around, afraid that we'd get lost in the jungle because dark was approaching.
The next morning we were driven to a crossroads where we met up with another minibus. Our driver to the crossroads was a boy so young he could barely reach the pedals of the truck, and had to crane his little neck to see over the steering wheel! (He was actually a pretty good driver - and it was a stick shift!) The minibus took us to the river, and we took another 45 minute boat trip on the Usumacinta, this time in the opposite direction - across the river to Bethel, on the Guatemalan side. We cleared immigration and got stamped back into Guatemala, and were off to Flores in a bus.Tomorrow we're off to Tikal - we'll keep you posted!
2 comments:
Loved your blog and jealous of your stops. In college I did a 4 week IDS course in Mayan art an architecture. Two professors, two students and myself ground-based at Merida.
Hit tons of sites from Chichen Itza to Uxmal to Palenque and everything that lie inbetween these mega-sites. Sadly the profs did not lay the course so we could go in Guatamela to see Tikal or Yax, sadly.
Tikal has those killer pyramids featured in Star Wars, but it'd be hard to argue it over Chichen Itza as the King of the Mayan sites. Just sayin' ;-D
Oh, and the ATM cave sounds awesome. Got to see the "Grotos" of Loltun and carvings / paintings were all over the walls, but all pottery and loose artifacts had been removed by archaeologist and taken to some big Mexican museum.
The Crystal Lady. WOW.
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