Our second excursion we decided to go on while were are the treehouse lodge was to two Mayan ruins sites. The bigger of the two was Xunantunich. It was discovered in the late 1800's by a hunter. When he discovered the ruins, it looked like a hill, but upon closer examination it was found that there were huge buildings and temples under the hills. This just amazes me. You can see from this picture how big a temple was hidden under the hill. The building in the foreground of this picture has not been entirely excavated so you can see how it would look "hidden" under the hill.
The view from the top of the high temple. Interestingly, there were many many buildings surrounding these buildings that you can see, but they haven't been excavated yet, so it looks like hilly jungle.
This is a reconstruction of some of the carvings that would have been on the side of this structure.
A cool staircase going down.
Another view, from the right side of the huge temple/pyramid.
Nearby was a termite mound. It was in the trees. Our guide gave us termites to eat. They tasted like wood/ carrots.
My termite got stuck in my bottom teeth. (Gross!!)
This building was the private palace/ home of the royal family.
In these trees were a family of howler monkeys. We heard them the whole time we were in the jungle. They made a noise that sounded a lot like a dinosaur.
These ruins are right on the border with Guatemala. In this next picture the road you can see in the distance running all the way along the picture is the border of Guatemala.
The ruins were still being excavated. It was clear that it wasn't continuously being worked on.
The ruins were across a river. They had a hand ferry to take us there.
The second set of ruins that we went to was called Cahal Pech. It was right in the middle of a city. It didn't have as big a grand central building, but I really enjoyed looking at these ruins better. There was no one at these ruins. Literally, no one. There were several buildings and they had halls and separate rooms and passageways. There were a couple of courtyards. It was quite beautiful.
This was the royal family's courtyard.
Our guide didn't explain much about these ruins, but that square hole at the top makes me think there was some kind of fountain there. So fascinating.
In one of the rooms was the remains of paint. You could tell that they had decorated the walls.
I find Mayan ruins completely fascinating. They are so grand and well built, and yet, the people walked away from them and just left them to be buried by dirt and trees. So much work literally left to go to waste.
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