The rain was on and off. I split a taxi ride to the site with an English couple, thus saving our legs from a steep climb. The site is far from completely excavated, and they are continuing to work on portions of the site. A few of the pictures taken show the excavation and allow you to see the amount of over-burden the archeologists are dealing with.
The first few pictures are from the museum show cases, followed by ones from the site.
These ruins are impressive, and seem set closer together than the ones at Altun Ha, however at neither site is fully excavated, and although the plazas are currently larger at Altun Ha, who knows if this will stay true as the sites are fully investigated.
As their construction methods did not include the use of mortar, they did not use the true arch in construction, but used the more primitive Corbel arch as seen above. Two of the reconstructed rooms have been done with wooden lintels, I failed to inquire if this was a period technique or not.
The ruins here bring home to me how fleeting most of our modern constructions are. Each layer here was added on top of a completed previous layer, with the layers being added as near as we can tell in 52 year intervals, the length of the Mayan solar cycle. There are very few places where humans have lived built and improved for the 1,900 years this site was actively inhabited. The amount of manual labour that went into the construction of these ruined cities is daunting, and the only way I can really grasp how much sheer effort that went into the complex is to keep firmly in mind that it was not made in one generation, or even a few, but hundreds.
These pictures are only a few of the 150 I took of this site. There was no place where the view was decent to give a full view of the complex, though at a later date I may search the web for a picture or map of it.
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