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                San Ignacio and Xunantunich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            The first pictures are from the very enjoyable [for most people] little town of San Ignacio.  A great blend of locals, gringo's and ex-pat's with a small town feeling that makes many people stay for a very long time.  The scenic Macal River runs through town and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.  Every year they have a 3 day canoe race from San Ignacio to the Gulf Coast in Belize City and it's one of the only reasons I might have actually considered returning there someday.

            Xunantunich is a small/medium but impressive ruin site that gets few visitors.  It is a very easily accessible site just off the main highway and 4 miles west of Benque Viejo, the border town to Guatemala, and 15 minutes west of San Ignacio.  I recommend it to anyone visiting the area.  Caracol, several hours south, is larger and more popular but is very much out of the way, a 2-3 hour trip each way because of bad roads, and several guides I spoke with said bandits from Guatemala [only a couple miles away] have been known to cross through the forest and set road blocks to rob tourists.  The little I've seen and heard of Caracol made the time/risk factor unappealing and I'm glad I saw Xunantunich instead. 

Click on the image and help prevent aids.

 

A small park down the street from Midas Resort.

Some guy crossed this quickly in a little motorcycle before I could get my camera out. I crossed it on foot.

Two rivers meet at this park, the Macal and the Mopan.

The intersection.

More aids awareness.

Chinch bug?? Great, now I've gotta watch out for bad cops AND deadly little bugs.

Macal River.

A little aids prevention narrative.

The main Dusty street going through town. Eva's, on the left, has great breakfast and internet service.

The intersection where the bad cops 'let me' get their money, it was dark. I've heard that those two cops are in trouble, I hope it's bad for them.

The small hand-cranked cable ferry takes you across the Mopan River to Xunantunich, about a mile up hill from the river.

The name means "Maiden of the Stone" because many locals claimed to see the ghost of a woman walking around the site.

Aerial map if you want to follow along. The big structure, El Castillo, is the south side of the site.

Some details of the rise and fall of Xuna.

El Castillo now, it's about 130' high.

Before/during excavations.

Plaza 1 looking east.

Who can guess what this is?!?!

West side of El Castillo.

Halfway up.

This banded stucco decoration originally went all the way around the building. Those visible today are recreations.

Plaza one with a single visitor in pink, is she the Maiden of the Stone?

I think this is some type of sociology experiment, it was in front of the following picture...

There were hundreds of names written here, I didn't see any other grafitti in the site.

The east side of El Castillo.

Halfway up the front side, looking west.

Standing on Plaza 3, north end of the park, looking south at El Castillo.

Without flash, 1-2 second exposure, better for this type of thing if you can manage a longer exposure, or just use a tripod like a real photographer.

The flash washes out the subtle shadows that help make the details visible.

Here's my ride. I should've stayed there - 4 hours later I met this trips' greatest mood destroyers in uniform. There, I won't talk about it anymore.