Caracol

Today our group splits up to go on optional tours. There is a big group going to Tikal in Guatamala. We chose to go to a less visited site called Caracol with another couple.

The overnight rain is quite loud on the metal roof.

Woke up early and went out to look for birds for a short time. Found this woodpecker that kept hitting the metal trim rather than the wood. It made quite a racket.

Our driver and guide Leo arrived 35 minutes late at 8:05 with three others in the van already. We had a quick stop at a grocery store on the way there. There is a brand-new modern grocery store with wide isles across the street from our hotel that is owned by some Mennonites. The prices are about 10-15% higher than at this jam-packed store with narrow isles.

The forecast is for rain all morning, so delaying our arrival is OK. Leo has a knee injury, that’s why he’s doing the Caracol trips vs. cave guiding. I got the impression that guiding for Actun Tunichil Muknal also known as ATM or for cave tubing pays better. We will be going cave tubing tomorrow.

Leo is from the town of San Jose, same as our driver from yesterday. He has Maya heritage, and speaks some Yucatán Maya. He talked about school and being forced to speak English in school. Now students can speak dialects in class. He speaks English, Spanish, Spanglish, Creole, and a Maya dialect. Leo worked as a manual laborer for three years during the initial excavation of the Caracol site. It was fun that he could point to places that he worked.

The road to Caracol was partially paved last year. The funding came from Taiwan and Kuwait. The last 27 miles are not paved yet, but are being worked on. The progress so far cut the travel time from 4 1/2 to 3 hours. It is supposed to be finished in 2025. As we drove by, they were working on new, higher, bridges now. Sometimes you can’t go because the current bridges are underwater.

Leo explained that some stabilization/restoration needed to be done at the site to preserve walls that they found. For example in the terraces below, the smooth stones were uncovered, but the rough stones were placed to hold the dirt in place, so the upper walls didn’t fall down. This was found buried, and the rough stones are often the stones that would have had a smooth face, but had fallen down. It really wasn’t possible to put them back.

Caracol was the largest Maya city in Belize. Probably near the size of its rival Tikal. Most of it has not been excavated. It was founded around 350 BC but inhabited before that time. It had collapsed no later than 950 AD.

Caracol had a large middle class as well as upper class. Dwellings for both have been found. Our guide, Leo, worked on this structure.

We saw remains of middle class as well as upper class structures.

You do need to be careful at times visiting the site, there was a large fire ant mound near this dwelling.

The royal structure is the tallest structure in Belize and has several levels, an intact carving, and some rooms.

Across the plaza from the Royal structure was another with intact carvings at the base. The lower part of the carving was the god of the underworld, the middle is the jaguar and the upper part is the rain god.

There were also astronomical observatory buildings. Mayans were concerned with the position of the sun and the planet Venus.

Many stele were removed by the first archeological expedition from University of Pennsylvania. A replica of one of the stele is at the site.

Every Maya site we visited has a ball court for the Maya Ballgame.

Caracol and also Lamanai have the distinction that Liquid mercury was found under the center stone of the ball court. They don’t really know what it was for.

You can climb all the temples, so I did, my watch showed 100 stories climbed.

After touring the site, we had a picnic lunch.

We hadn’t seen or heard many birds at all which surprised Leo a bit. As we were getting in the van to leave, we heard some birds in a tree right by the van.

We also saw a few butterflies:

We did see the Geoffrey’s spider monkey, but it was very high in the dense tree and I didn’t get a good photo of it.

On the way back we stopped at Rio on Pools to look around. We didn’t know this would be included on the tour and hadn’t brought swimsuits and towels along.

I swam at the hotel when we got back after dark.