On the Mirador Trail

© Mike Reed

 

 

As we jumped out of the bed of the small pickup truck at the road-end village of Carmelita, we shook the road dust from our clothes and hair and began grabbing our gear and stuffing day packs and fanny packs with the essentials for the four-hour mule ride ahead. It was already mid-afternoon and it was important that we arrive at our first night’s destination before dusk. Night envelopes the tropical forest floor long before it does the sky, and under the canopy, the darkness is total. Recalling the condition of that same trail three summers back however, I was not concerned about the time. I looked forward to a pleasant ride through majestic forest, then watching a glorious Petén sunset from the summit of one of the forest-covered pyramids at the huge unexcavated site of Tintal where we were to camp.

 

We were a group of six Maya archaeology enthusiasts headed by pack train into the Mirador Basin, a 2200 square kilometer upland of karstic basins and ridges that is rapidly gaining distinction as the cradle of lowland Maya civilization. It is like no other place in the Maya world for its extraordinary physical setting and vast urban landscape of ancient cities whose origins reach back to the very beginnings of the Maya civilization. In the past quarter century, findings from investigations at Mirador Basin sites have prompted scholars to rethink their understanding of the long period of cultural development leading up to the great Maya kingdoms of the Classic period. Previously held ideas that lowland Maya culture remained less developed until cultural influences from beyond the lowlands led to a great societal transformation near the end of the Late Preclassic period were overturned in the early 1980s as investigation reports filtered out of the Mirador Basin with descriptions of the largest and earliest Maya cities ever found. Moreover, it was found that most of these great cities were abandoned by the end of the Late Preclassic. According to Mirador Basin Project Director, Richard Hansen, it is as if there was a separate Maya civilization that rose and fell before the rise of the great Classic kingdoms.

The Mirador Basin is tucked against Guatemala’s northern boundary with Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and is at the center of the largest remaining tract of tropical forest wilderness in North America. Its remoteness, rugged terrain, and forbidding hydrological conditions have for years presented considerable obstacles to travel into the Basin by all but nomadic gatherers of forest products, and have effectively guarded the secret of the great antiquity of its numerous ancient sites. The forty five years that have passed since the first archaeological reconnaissance and mapping of El Mirador and Nakbé by Ian Graham have allowed sufficient time for looters to dig trenches and tunnels into virtually every structure we encountered, and cart away a great deal of the priceless heritage of this unique region. However, the size and scale of these sites and their architectural complexes guarantee many decades, if not centuries of work to unwrap the layers of forest, humus, and rubble covering every structure, plaza, and causeway in the Basin and reveal the treasures beneath.

Erik, Dwayne and I had previously traveled sections of the Basin’s trail system. Three summers back Dwayne and I did a 155 kilometer loop from Carmelita which took us to Tintal, El Mirador, Nakbé, La Florida, and a host of smaller sites strung along justabout every ridge the trail crossed. Erik had hiked the same trails only seven months before this trip. He now shouldered the considerable expense of joining us from his home in New Zealand to explore this amazing place with people who shared his strong sense of fascination with the ancient Maya. Merlina, Gaye and Niles were experiencing the Basin for the first time. Gaye, Niles and Dwayne are fellow members of the Pre-Columbian Society in Philadelphia. Merlina and I connected at a California symposium on the San Bartolo murals, and as we shared common interests, she expressed her strong interest in joining my next trip to the Mirador Basin sites.

Dwayne had done considerable research to find a good local outfitter for this trek, and had decided on the services of Henry Sanchez, who operates Onca Tours from an internet café in Flores, the department capital. Locally based mom-and-pop outfitters like Henry provide similar, if not the same services – taking visitors to remote or hard-to-reach places – as the pricier upscale tour companies based in Guatemala City or outside of the country. These local entrepreneurs fill a valuable niche in providing services to the budget-conscious, especially young travelers. Henry keeps his fees low by avoiding the middlemen, taking care of logistics, and guiding the groups himself. Transportation, mules, mule skinners and cooks can be obtained or hired inexpensively on the local market.

With everything in order we mounted our "bestias", as mules are called, and headed into the forest in single file, with Juan, Henry’s father in the lead. Erik opted to hike the entire route, leaving him free to weave in and out of our line when fallen trees blocked the trail, or the hundred other things that might slow a mule train came up. Juan joined us at the last minute when Henry’s cook backed out of the trip. Juan, originally from Mexico spent most of his 68 years in the Mirador Basin forest as a chiclero – collecting the latex of Chico Zapote trees, from which chewing gum (chicle) is made. His familiarity with the terrain and archaeological sites of the Basin, and his substantial knowledge of the forest plants and animals, and their usefulness was awesome. I took full advantage of his expertise throughout the trek, and my respect for him grew tremendously as the days passed.

Not far out of Carmelita, Henry rushed forward yelling for Juan to stop. He wanted to know why we were on the trail to Nakbé, when we were going to Tintal. Juan replied that he thought Nakbé was our destination and he had directed the mule skinner with our supplies to meet us at La Florida camp, about three hours up the trail. I could sense Henry was holding back his frustration out of respect for his father and for our sake. However, I also understood the implications of this mistake for us – we would be on the trail far longer than we had expected, and worse – we would surely not arrive at Tintal before nightfall. This was not a good start to the trek. Our pleasant afternoon ride was about to turn into one of those unforgettable Petén adventures that is more fun to retell than to experience. In fact, it was the most grueling seven hours of travel I can remember.

The Nakbé trail was horrible from the start. The jumble of large irregular bedrock depressions, called bajos that occupy more than half the land within the Mirador Basin were still inundated from the recent heavy rains. The trail crossing the bajos turned into a deep mass of gooey clay, through which our mules struggled to maintain their footing. Bajos are formed by chemical weathering of the limestone bedrock as rainwater pools and percolates into subterranean drainage networks. Layers of clay eroded from the surrounding uplands line the bajo floors and impede rainwater absorption creating long-lasting seasonal wetlands, or swamps. Bajos contain a biota highly adapted to the alternating cycle of inundated and dry-as-a-bone wetlands. The descent of trails into bajos is a dramatic shift from the high mature tropical forest of the upland ridges to the low and spindly thorn brambles of the bajo interiors. Large concentrations of twisted and fluted Palo Tintos – Logwood to the English in Belize – are common within the Mirador Basin bajos. Gnarled climbing cacti are often seen wound around the trunks of Palo Tintos, making these bajos an altogether unique and strange-looking environment to pass through.

We were continuously scratched and jabbed by thorny vines and the machete-cut branches of the enveloping forest as our mules sought the better footing of the trail’s edge in the bad stretches. Worse for me, my saddle straps gave way on four occasions, tumbling me into the wet clay as I leaned outward to avoid being impaled against sharp branches. This was clearly not my day-- but worse was to come. Not long after being warned to avoid touching the evil-looking spines of the Escoba palms, which were plentiful in the bajos, my mule slipped, pinning my arm against a spine-covered Escoba trunk. It took heavy duty tweezers and a twenty minute break to extract the spines embedded deep in my arm, and then several months for many of the broken tips to finally come to the surface. The Escoba, thereafter on the trek was called, "the Mike Palm."

Several hours before La Florida, I had begun to feel ill. Waves of nausea continually passed over me, and it took all my strength to stay in the saddle, while ducking overhanging branches and avoiding the sharp points of machete-cut branches and the Escobas. Negotiating the slipping and sliding of my mule through the bajo muck with a low-grade fever was slow torture. I fought the temptation to inquire as to when we might get to camp, not wanting to face the distressing reality of the situation. We finally caught up with the supply mules at La Florida and I asked if we could just camp there. Henry replied that we would not reach El Mirador the next day if we stopped. The supply mules were directed to Tintal and departed.

Soon after leaving La Florida darkness fell. With only a few flashlights between us, we found the cutoff to Tintal, and plunged into the darkness on that little-used trail. Not even Henry or Juan knew anything about the condition of this trail. However difficult the first stretch had been, this trail was worse – mostly deep wet clay or completely under water. All of the branches, thorny trees, and vines still had to be endured as we plodded through the swamps, but now we rode along in total blackness, those with flashlights warning the others of dangerous branches ahead. The constant soft rhythm echoing back from Juan, then each of us in turn, warning of branches ahead – "rama, rama, rama, rama" – became a soothing mantra, and helped me out of my gloom.

We eventually found ourselves in an extensive maze of swamp. Dimly lit by flashlights, the twisted and gnarled Palo Tintos rising out of calf-deep water looked absolutely surreal – like being in a dream. Even Henry and Juan became disoriented amid the tangle in the limited light, and we reached several dead ends, which were too narrow for our mules to turn around. Finally Erik, who was wading on foot through the calf-deep water and trying to keep us with us, reached the end of his thread and demanded we stop. Realizing the situation, Henry relented, and in the ensuing discussion with his father, it became clear that we had lost the trail. We rested for a half hour in inky blackness to conserve our flashlight batteries while Henry and Juan fanned out on foot through the water trying to find the submerged trail. Weak with fever, I was willing to spend the entire night in that swamp rather than continue on, but as we rested, my fever subsided and I began to feel much better. Finally, we heard Henry’s shouts that he found the trail, and we moved on. We soon found our way onto dry land, and continued along the base of a ridge for another hour or more until we eventually spied the lanterns of El Tintal camp – four hours after darkness had fallen. I was beat, but managed to down a celebratory beer before falling into my hammock as the others ate dinner. I couldn’t even take off my mud-caked boots.

The next morning, after a feverish night, I considered returning to Carmelita with an outgoing group camped nearby. However, several ibuprofen and a dose of the antibiotic, Cipro had me feeling much better within an hour, and the sickness abated. As the mules were being loaded with our supplies, I noticed a small round hole oozing fresh blood on the neck of one of them. Curious about the wound, I approached Henry, pointing out the puncture and the dripping blood. I had heard stories of vampire bats feeding on cattle and horses but I thought it must be a rare thing to see. However, Henry confirmed my hunch that the wound was the work of vampire bats, which created the incision, then lapped up the dripping blood during the night. I made sure my mosquito net was securely touching the ground after that.

I had been looking forward to exploring more of the large unrestored site of El Tintal on this trip after our brief taste of what it had to offer three years before. Camping there, we had climbed a high tree-covered pyramid from which two other large pyramids could be seen. We also explored some of Tintal’s palace complexes, snapping photos of piles of colorful ceramic shards and metates (corn grinding stones) outside of the looter’s tunnels that pierced every structure. In one of those tunnels I was attacked and stung on several parts of my face when I crawled into the narrow tunnel and encountered a hornet’s nest. I was unable to do more than back out on hands and knees while several were stinging my face.

The long mule ride to El Mirador on the second day was a more pleasant experience as the trail was in far better condition and passed through fewer stretches of bajo than the previous day. I felt good enough to alternate periods of riding and walking, giving Erik a chance to hop in the saddle and catch his breath from time to time. The day wasn’t without mishaps though. This time it was Gaye’s turn. In one muddy place, her mule slipped and fell, throwing her seat-first onto a cluster of machete-cut spiked branches protruding from a stump. One of the sticks had pierced the outer part of her backside and dangled from her pants as she stood up. The stick was gently removed, and the wound cleaned and covered, as we contemplated the thought of how bad it could have been. Luckily for Gaye, the wound was far enough to her side to allow her to continue in the saddle, and she took the whole event in stride, as part of the adventure. We laughed about it later as we shared various "tall tales" Gaye could use at home to explain what looked like a bullet wound.

We crossed several deep arroyos (dry stream gullies) that day, a feature I had not seen in other parts of the Petén. Juan told us that arroyos crisscross the basin and fill with flood waters during periods of very heavy rainfall. He added that during Hurricane Stan last year, flood waters in the arroyos prevented overland travel to and from El Mirador. I could just imagine these ten foot deep chasms filled with the overflow spilling from flooded bajos at such times! The clay hardpan that coats these upland bajos slows the normal rapid percolation of rainwater into the limestone bedrock, creating the seasonal wetlands within them. However, during major rain-producing events, like hurricanes, the bajos may rapidly fill with water, causing some to overflow into lower bajos, carving out these arroyos along linear joint systems in the soft limestone bedrock.

I had recently read that an elevated causeway connecting the sites of Tintal and El Mirador had been mapped during the 2005 excavation season. Causeways had important ritual functions for the ancient Maya, beyond the obvious uses. Most causeways linked various sectors within Maya cities, but they sometimes joined outlying and more distant sites to important seats of power. Causeways are plentiful in the Mirador Basin, linking many of the larger cities, as well as small sites to larger ones. They can be seen in aerial photos extending out from El Mirador, like the spokes of wheels – evidence of El Mirador's dominant position in the region. We found that the trail did follow causeways at various times that day. I could tell when the trail climbed onto a causeway because of the distinctive vegetation that prefers the loose fill of these roads. The causeways always had an aspect of open woods in contrast to the dim light of the upland and bajo forests. I found walking on causeways very pleasant and easier for us to pick up the pace.

The trail stayed on a broad causeway for a considerable distance before arriving at the West Gate of El Mirador’s huge West Group. We climbed onto the enormous artificial platform of the city core, and threaded our way between low mounds and soon arrived at the small open plaza that holds the guard station and small campground. It is a welcoming sunlit place, and it felt good to be back. I recognized Juan Carlos, the chief guard, who was in residence on my previous visit. He had been very friendly and helpful to me and I was happy to see him again. He was pleased that I remembered him. We crossed the little plaza with its stone-outlined helicopter landing pad and pulled up to a metal-roofed palapa under some tall trees on the edge of the great platform.

Our arrival at El Mirador, in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve was cause for Dwayne’s much anticipated toast on top of El Tigre pyramid. He retrieved some cold Yeungling beer from the cooler and we headed for the bright sunshine of the summit platform. After two days in the dim light of the high forest, the light and the views from the top were as refreshing as the beer. We took a group photo, showing six rather mangled, but happy people. Around us rose other tall structures, looking like giant bubbles rising out of a forested caldron. Two kilometers to the east, towered the Danta Complex, the tallest structure in Mesoamerica. On a distant ridge, thirteen kilometers away, Nakbé's east and west groups formed what looked like the jagged rim of a low jungle-covered volcano crater.

I lingered on Tigre’s summit after the others returned to camp, enjoying the magnificent ocean of tropical forest extending in every direction, imagining El Mirador as a real city of massive complexes, towering pyramids, and bright plazas – all painted in loud Guatemalan colors. I recalled laying in my hammock in the same campground three years ago, reading an article by Richard Hansen in a Spanish-language archaeology journal about evidence found on El Tigre of a battle in which chert and obsidian projectile points remained in the places they came to rest, indicating that this skirmish occurred at the time of or after the abandonment of the city. A number of green and black obsidian points, traced to the Pachuca obsidian source in Central Mexico hinted of a Teotihuacan connection to this conflict. Later that day, I caught a glimpse of a small chert point off to the side of the wooden steps near the top of El Tigre. Leaving it where it lay under the vegetation, I marveled at the odds of encountering such an artifact which could be connected to an event I had unexpectedly learned about that very day.

Now realizing it was getting dark under the forest below, I shouldered my day pack and carefully picked my way down the steep face of El Tigre, turning on my flashlight by the time I reached the broad plaza at its base. I found that one of the guards was waiting for me in the plaza to make sure I made it safely back to the camp, a courtesy that is characteristic of many Guatemalans I have met. Arriving back in our camp, I found the hammocks were set up and Juan was cooking our dinner over an open fire . I relaxed into my hammock and chatted with the others. After two very long and rigorous days of travel through the Basin’s forests, ringing in the New Year that night was not a remote possibility for any of us. We ate the simple delicious meal Juan had prepared for us sitting upright in our hammocks. After the meal, two bottles of Scotch made it around, as we told stories and chatted by the flickering light of the campfire.

We had all of New Year’s Day to explore El Mirador. I was especially interested in the work carried out there in the three years since my first visit. We planned to visit the East Group in the morning, leaving the Sacred Precinct, where we were camped for after lunch. Juan Carlos and another guard accompanied Henry and the rest of our group, leaving Juan behind to take care of camp chores and have our lunch ready when we returned. As we skirted around the Central Acropolis, I asked the guard if it might be possible for me to explore the massive temple/palace complex later in the day. He cautioned me that there are no paths up there and barba amarillas are commonly encountered there by workers. After stepping within inches of a coiled barba amarilla (fer-de-lance), an easily agitated and aggressive pit viper, on that trail near the Central Acropolis, three years ago, I was not inclined to go exploring up there on my own, although I wanted to see its many structures.

El Mirador is located on a wide upland ridge, surrounded on three sides by bajos. Evidence from sediment core samples indicates that the bajos were lakes during the long period of growth and development of the Mirador Basin cities. The ridges ensured good drainage during the heaviest periods of rain, and easy access to the water and rich aquatic resources of the shallow lakes. The lakes provided soil and fertilizer for upland gardens, and crops could be grown year round on the margins of the lakes and by creating "chinampas," – raised gardens along the lakes’ shallow margins. They could also harvest various animal resources in the lakes, including mollusks, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and water fowl.

The size and scale of El Mirador is mind-boggling, especially in light of its great antiquity. The West Group, the city’s Sacred Precinct is more than a square kilometer of massive pyramid- temple complexes, broad plazas, and palace acropoli. The largest pyramid complexes – and there are many – rest on raised platforms containing large ceremonial plazas set before massive flat-topped pyramids. These truncated pyramids are actually high base platforms supporting triadic pyramid-temple groups arranged around patios perched high above the city.

At the East Gate of the Sacred Precinct Juan Carlos pointed out the great defensive wall built close to the time when the city was abandoned. The wall encircles the eastern half of the Sacred Precinct, which lacked the protection provided by the steep slopes of the city platform above the bajos in the western half of the city core. We passed through the East Gate, descending onto the kilometer-long Puleston Causeway linking the East and West Groups of the city. The land on both sides of the causeway is labeled "unmapped" on my map, but contained numerous linear mounds arranged in quadrangles around small patios, identical to the numerous other such structural assemblages we encountered along every upland ridge that the trail had crossed. These linear mounds of rubble, always trenched by looters were once the palaces of the elite groups that ruled the sites. Masonry walls likely supported thatched roofs during much of the Preclassic, but may have been vaulted later after the technology was developed. The walls of these structures had long ago collapsed into jumbles of blocks, as tree roots pried them apart, scattering the blocks when the trees eventually fell.

There were looter’s trenches and tunnels in virtually every structure we encountered in the Mirador Basin. These were the work of organized teams of looters, as well as small groups and individual local campesinos, who know how and where to trench and tunnel to find the hollow niches containing bones and offerings interred under the plaster floors of these structures. A decorated ceramic bowl or drinking cup in good condition could bring more money than these men could ever earn growing corn or as a member of an archaeological work crew. From the scale of looting it is clear that this practice has been going on for many decades in the Mirador Basin. In fact, looting began in earnest there in the 1960s. If there is an upside to looter’s tunnels, it is the access they provide to the interiors of the montículos, as the mounds are called in Guatemala. It was an effort to escape the brutal midday sun that drove archaeologist, William Saturno into a tunneled mound in 2001 that led to his discovery of the magnificent Preclassic San Bartolo wall murals, now considered one of the greatest discoveries in many decades. The ancient Maya practice of building new structures directly over older ones tended to preserve the buried structures from the damaging effects of the elements and destructive tree roots that tore apart the exteriors of the last-built structures after abandonment. In the case of San Bartolo, and again at Cival – another Preclassic site in the northeast Petén – looter’s trenches unintentionally revealed masterpieces of Maya art which demonstrate the high degree of cultural sophistication and societal organization of the Maya long before the beginning of the Classic period.

We walked along the Puleston Causeway for a short distance before cutting to the left and threading our way between several palace quadrangles. We gathered in front of a plastic sheet-covered trench entering a palace mound. Juan Carlos said we were going to see a discovery made last year during a survey of looter’s tunnels. I entered the trench, and just inside the mound was the rounded corner of what looked like a large bench, with a peeling layer of stucco over the exterior. The stucco at the bench’s base gracefully curved to merge with a stucco floor level. The top of the bench caught my attention because it appeared to be molded into a pillow-top design, reminding me of scenes from Classic period pottery showing rulers seated on pillowed benches. On top of the exposed corner of this bench – if that is what it is – was a broken chert ax blade and scattered around the tunnel floor were waxy Sierra Red pottery sherds from the Mamom horizon, near the end of the Middle Preclassic, around 400 BC. The presence of such old sherds does not necessarily indicate a similar age of the bench, as they may have been part of the rubble fill under the floor of the structure. Nevertheless, if we were really looking at the exposed corner of a bench, it would be further evidence of the great antiquity of such symbols of elite power. 

The wide causeway continued on a straight course to El Mirador’s East Group, symbolically unifying the two largest precincts of the city. A trail made its way up the steep, slippery embankment of the huge platform that forms the base of the great Danta Complex, said to be the tallest structure in ancient America. A pyramid centered on the platform directly above the causeway blocked direct access onto the platform from below. The trail skirted around the pyramid and we found ourselves in a large and very wide plaza with numerous high structures. To the right we could see the high Pava Temple through the well-spaced trees. Pava has its own triadic temple group atop the base pyramid, reaching a height of eleven stories. The Lower Danta Plaza appears much larger than any of the plazas in the Sacred Precinct.

At the east end of the plaza, we encountered a second high terrace upon which rests the Danta Pyramid. We stopped at a large excavation pit partially covered with plastic sheeting. Under the tarp, a section of staircase rose up the side of the terrace. The exposed staircase had large rounded steps, very different from the steep, narrow steps of many Classic period staircases. In the center a narrow section of stucco had been removed along a line of steps revealing as much as five to six inches of stucco coating the large blocks of the staircase. It was astonishing to see such thickness of the stucco coat. Amazingly, the stucco was still intact and in pretty good shape, considering its long exposure to the elements before its burial under forest debris. I had never seen or imagined anything quite like it in the Maya world and I couldn’t imagine why so much plaster would have been needed. The blocks that formed the stairs were enormous too. Each block was something like a meter long and more than a foot high. These megalithic blocks are a feature of El Mirador we were to see a lot more of that day, then again at Nakbé.

Climbing the embankment, we skirted around the south side of the massive Danta Pyramid and found ourselves at a work site with a number of large covered wooden containers holding liquid stucco placed around a large shed. In front of the shed a long steel cable climbed up the side of La Danta’s huge base pyramid, suspended between a tree on ground level and one high atop the pyramid. There were pulleys and wooden boxes to haul the liquid stucco up the cable to where workers are stabilizing the very steep-sided upper pyramid. I recalled reading that the beautiful stonework on the upper pyramid was in danger of collapse and this was obviously an early stage in the stabilization process. Juan Carlos said that the liquid stucco vats need to remain in that state for a long period of time before they are ready. I asked if local trees were cut and burned to produce the powdered lime. Juan Carlos replied that because we are in a protected forest, all of the stucco must be brought in from Carmelita by mule train.

We then climbed up the side of La Danta using the steep trail used by the workers. The very private upper plaza of La Danta, with its tall central pyramid and two side pyramid/temples was almost unrecognizable from three summers ago. At that time, coming from Nakbé to El Mirador our mules were tied to some trees below as we ate a leisurely lunch in the upper plaza after taking in the breathtaking views from the summit platform. After lunch we had taken time to explore the silence and solitude of the little plaza and we watched as one of our group did a free climb up the beautiful stone wall on the south side of the upper pyramid. The stonework was still something to behold after more than 2000 years.

Now three years later, the little plaza was a mass of excavation pits and trenches around the front and sides of the center pyramid. There was a mass of scaffolding for the stabilization project on the pyramid’s back side. We examined last season’s work, where a mixture of stones and the stucco from below already covers and protects a large part of the upper pyramid. I remembered from my last visit how impossibly steep that side was and how the upper part was pocked with small rock slides where trees had fallen, most likely during storms. This was the rescue work I had recently read about. Juan Carlos said that much more is planned than stabilization. He told us of plans to completely restore much of the massive complex, including a new coat of stucco over the exterior. I tried to imagine what La Danta might look like covered with stucco, and perhaps even painted the deep red color that coated it more than 2000 years ago. This would be an initial step in the restoration and development of El Mirador for future tourism, part of Richard Hansen’s vision for the long-term conservation and development of the Mirador Basin and its extraordinary archaeological sites. A detailed summary – loaded with photos, tables and maps – of development plans for this project can be seen on the website of the Global Heritage Foundation, an important and influential supporter of Hansen’s vision for the future of the Mirador Basin.

I lingered to process all this information, as the group moved to the excavations at the base of the beautiful stone wall on the pyramid’s south side. When I caught up with them, Juan Carlos was pointing out some recently excavated walls around small structures at one corner of the center pyramid. These were the remains of a small Late Classic period elite group, that resided in the small upper plaza of La Danta centuries after the abandonment of the city. Before this trip, I had read about ceramic evidence for Late Classic occupation of areas within the ruins of El Mirador and Nakbe. We were presently looking at the remains of one of these communities. Juan Carlos pointed out the distinctive size of the cut blocks identifying these as Classic period structures. My mind reeled at the thought of these Maya – at the pinnacle of their civilization living among the ruins of the greatest ancestral city and kingdom from their own distant past, just as we were admiring these very ruins twelve hundred years after them.

We crossed to the other side of the little plaza where deep trenches had been dug along the base of the central pyramid and one of the two flanking pyramids. We were looking into a cross-section of construction phases within the small plaza. The trenches extended as much as eight feet below the level on which we stood, and Juan Carlos pointed out eight distinct levels of stucco floor surface superimposed over each other, representing ancient renovations of the upper parts of the Danta Complex. Around the side of the central pyramid were more walls of Classic period structures built into the side of the pyramid. In the same trench, beside the front stairway of the flanking pyramid, Juan Carlos pointed to part of a large stucco mask that once flanked the stairway. Most of the mask was either gone or yet unexcavated. The mask looked to have been buried during a later phase of construction of the pyramid, a common practice in ancient times. There would surely have been a corresponding mask on the other side of the staircase, but no trenching had been carried out there as of yet.

All of these excavations were carried out during the 2005 work season. The work will continue again in the spring of 2006. Aside from the small Late Classic community, all of the building activity on La Danta took place during the Preclassic period, which ended around two thousand years ago. On La Danta, the archaeologists are only scratching the surface of what lies buried under the forest covering El Mirador and the other great Preclassic cities of the Mirador Basin.

As always, I was the last to grab the safety rope for the final ascent to the top. Once there, I pulled my regional maps, compass and binoculars out of my day pack and plotted the direction to look to find the pyramids of Calakmul. This was something I had been thinking about since I had easily spotted the distinctive profile of La Danta from the top of Calakmul’s Structure 2 six months earlier. However, finding Calakmul’s two large pyramids was much more difficult than I had imagined – even with my good binoculars. I needed a good point of reference on the northern horizon to use, and it was not easy. The low ridges there had few features other than some being slightly higher than the others. I finally chose a knob on one of the higher ridges, which was close enough to the direction of Calakmul to come back to, as I scanned the ridges below the horizon for a pyramid-shaped mound. Looking through the tropical haze for a man-made feature among the forested ridges 40 kilometers away was maddeningly tedious and required steady hands on the binoculars and the mindfulness to keep handy my point of reference on the horizon. Although it seemed like I could make out every large tree on the far off ridges, together they made a confusing mosaic of various shades of green, brown and yellow. I might have given up the task as hopeless had I not promised myself I would find Calakmul from La Danta on this trip.

Then, in a blink of an eye, a gleaming white pyramid suddenly appeared right where one should be. I could also make out the outline of a larger forest-covered pyramid just to its left. This had to be the recently restored Structure 1 and the forested backside of the larger Structure 2 at Calakmul. I handed the binoculars to Juan Carlos and tried to show him my reference point, and from there, where to find the pyramids, but he was not finding it.

Finally, I took back the binoculars to find a better way to show him where to look, but when I retraced the direction of my gaze from the reference point, the pyramids were no longer visible. Then again, Structure 1 suddenly appeared shining in the distance. Taking the binoculars away and looking in the distance, I realized that when the clouds were shading Calakmul, the pyramids blended in with the forest, but under direct sunlight, the white limestone blocks of the newly renovated Structure 1 shined like a beacon.

I again shared the binocular view with Juan Carlos, the other guard, and Erik, who had remained with me when the others descended back down to the upper plaza. Juan Carlos was beside himself with excitement at seeing the great temples of Calakmul. He had spent years working at El Mirador, accompanying visitor groups up and down its pyramids, and never knew that Calakmul could be seen from El Mirador. With all the difficulties we had finding the pyramids, I wondered if anyone had even tried or succeeded in seeing them before. With our mission accomplished, we used the rope to guide ourselves down the steep face of the pyramid. Juan Carlos eagerly told the others about seeing Calakmul, and I felt the satisfaction of having been able to give something back to these guards, who go out of their way to show visitors like us the wonders of this great city where they work.

Returning to camp, we sat in our hammocks eating the lunch that Juan had ready for us, then rested, before resuming our tour of the city. I had asked Juan if he could wash my very muddy pants and shirt from the first day’s ride, and I found them hanging over lines strung between posts and already dry. As we lazed in our hammocks, I asked Erik about his previous travels and found he had traveled extensively throughout the world in the 70s, visiting many of the places I had heard so much about during my own journeys back then. I recalled having crossed paths with many young vagabonds, who had spent long periods of time traveling throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America–usually along routes that seem politically inaccessible today, like the overland route from Istanbul to Kabul and into India. Erik had been through Latin America early in the 70s in much the same way I had traveled only a few years later. Those were special times to me and I could tell they were to him too.

With much more to see, we pried ourselves from our hammocks and headed off to explore the nearby Monos Complex. Our camp was midway between the Tigre and Monos pyramids and very close to both, but one would never know this from below. Without forest cover, both structures would have towered above the camp. Covered with tropical forest, El Mirador's giant temples are hidden from view until one is at their base. Even then, their summits are often lost in the trees. Monos is smaller than Tigre, but would still dwarf in size the pyramids of most other major Maya sites. Monos sits on a raised platform on the southwestern edge of the Sacred Precinct, and has two sets of triadic pyramid groups – the huge central pyramid of the first triad serving as the base for the second triad. I found it curious that the upper temple group faces a slightly different direction than the lower group. From the summit, Juan Carlos pointed to the ridge directly to the south of us rising out of a bajo. He told us that it is another large complex and part of El Mirador, although separated from the West Group by the bajo. Through the binoculars I could see the red marker flag he had placed on a tree on the wide flat summit platform several months earlier.

Descending Monos, we headed over to see Structure 34, a small temple group in the huge lower plaza of El Tigre It is the most fully excavated and restored structure at El Mirador. On our 2001 visit, only the temple on top of Structure 34 had been excavated. Now the little temple sat atop a terraced pyramidal base with a stucco-covered central staircase. To the left of the staircase, an earspool in the form of a jaguar paw, complete with claws was all that remained of an enormous stucco mask. The temple complex was protected from the elements by a large high metal-tubing-framed awning. The temple itself, had walls reaching six to seven feet. A section of the rear wall of the temple was missing, leaving a precipitous drop to the temple’s base platform, then a long sloping drop to the platform of the city. Although now looking brilliantly white from the restoration and stabilization work, this rear wall was conspicuous as one of the few standing walls at El Mirador in 2001. When Structure 34 was initially excavated by Richard Hansen, he found the remains of whole ceramic containers crushed from the collapse of the upper walls. This was interpreted as an indication of the rapid abandonment of the site, likely due to warfare.

At the base of the staircase, a tunnel led into the interior of Structure 34's low base pyramid. I wondered if it was the same tunnel excavated by Richard Hansen in 2003, and filmed by a National Geographic crew in an attempt to locate a "tomb-sized" cavity detected by ground piercing electrical impulses. The footage, featured in the National Geographic presentation, "The Dawn of the Maya," showed Hansen bursting with enthusiasm at the thought of finding the first tomb of one of the kings of El Mirador as his workers tunneled into a structure. Hansen’s joy turned to nervous anticipation, and finally disappointment and resignation when the tunneling failed to find the sought-after tomb.

As it was getting late, some of the group elected to call it a day and return to camp. With a sense of urgency at still having much to see and so little time, a few of us elected to continue over to the tall Leon pyramid on the far side of El Tigre. The trail took us to a large plaza with the Leon pyramid on the west side, facing an elongated structure with a north/south axis on the east side. I recognized this configuration of structures as an "E-Group," an orientation of structures whose origins reach far back into the Middle Preclassic in the Maya lowlands. E-Group configurations have been identified as one of the earliest manifestations of temple groupings at lowland Maya centers and were important enough to be preserved intact in many Maya cities long after the grouping-style was discontinued. It was long believed that E Groups served as astronomical markers for the ancient Maya calendar because early excavations at sites like Uaxactún revealed alignments of these structures with the rising sun on solstices and equinoxes. It was later discovered that while this is true for some sites, not all E Groups were so aligned.

Merlina, Erik and I scrambled up the steep path that climbed what remained of Leon’s central staircase. In a few places, the riser blocks, measuring a meter across were still in place. We watched the sunset over the Tigre Complex from there, and surveyed the other tall structures from this vantage point. Descending to the E Group plaza, we were met by Juan Carlos, who came over to make sure we found our way back to the camp.

That evening we were invited to see some ancient ceramic samples kept at the guard station. We walked over after our meal and Juan Carlos brought out several examples of ceramics he keeps to show visitors. The pieces were enchanting. One large bowl was painted in deep earth tones with stylized flames extending from a missing part of the bowl. Another was a rich brown with an incised spider monkey on one side. There were several other bowls with painted designs as well as a large drinking container.

It was brought to our attention that on the previous night, New Year’s Eve, the guards had gathered for a small celebration, but had no alcohol for a toast. As I had brought along a few small bottles of Guatemalan aguardiente for just such an occasion, I gave my bottles to Juan Carlos so the guards could make a belated toast to the New Year. Then we headed back to our hammocks looking forward to an early rise for the trek to Nakbé the next day. My hammock had become a refuge of quiet for me to collect my thoughts of the day and to wrap myself comfortably in my blanket as I was lulled to sleep by the noises of the forest. A strong wind came up in the middle of the night, causing the tree crowns to thrash about as they swayed to the gusts. In the distance, a family of howler monkeys roared like lions at feeding time.

We headed out of El Mirador the next morning, feeling like we too had barely scratched the surface of what lies under the protection of its forest cover. As we saddled up, a family of howler monkeys made its way through the trees above the camp, tempting us to linger. We didn’t want to let go of the experience, but there was more to see down the trail, and time and distance tugged at our sleeves as Nakbé held its own distinctive delights, and I was determined to allow a few hours on the trail back to explore the large site of Wakná. Our miserable first day on the Mirador trail had already faded into my memory, crowded out by the beauty and intensity of what we had seen and learned. There was already no question of a "next trip" for me. Riding and hiking the trails of the Mirador Basin offers an utterly unique experience for visiting what has to be one of the most exciting collection of sites on the frontiers of Maya archaeology.