10-24-08 The ruins of Xtampak

Xtampak is the largest Chenes ruin, and it seems has almost half of all standing examples of Chenes buildings. It is a long 40km out of town, constant hills though on a white road. White roads are roads made of crushed limestone. When they are new, they can be as good as asphalt, but when they get old they can be deeply rutted, and worse for bikes are the constant loose rocks that make your bike bounce around. The ride was hot and long, one of the more difficult, but for the people back home, this ride put me over the 500 mile mark.

The morings are just full of mist.

Happy to see the caretaker has this sweet bike. He claimed the stearing wheel helped him navigate the rough road. Maybe so.

The ruins are well studied, but recently there as been a large crew working to clear and uncover many new structures which were very intersting. Many new architectural elements otherwise unknown have come to light, most importantly two new unique masks, a new monstermouth doorway, and a 'twin tower' complex otherwise a Rio Bec style.

Recently the most intersting structure, the three story palace was tunneled into and a substructure was found in a Puuc like style. The implicatons for this are very interesting because it has believed by many researchers that the Puuc style came from the south, and that Chenes was a intermediary style. New digs in the Chenes region in the Puuc region have basically dissmissed this idea as overly simplified.

The palace has decorative stairways, almost totally vertaical.

Classic Chenes style structures.
Chenes style masks, very much like those seen at Xkichmook.

One of the many building being cleared.


Hard to see, but this is part of a maze of stones that have been removed from the structures. This path noodles though the forest with the stones sorted by type.

This is the stairway of the largest pyrimid at the site. It is made of huge roughly worked blocks, associated with an astonomical complex.

The serpant palace, one of the several monster-mouth doorways here. Too bad all the stucco has melted here.

On the back of the 'serpent palace' this remarkable sculputure has been uncovered. It is entirly unique. The mask appears to be a jaguar, but the body is more like a milliped. Each stairway riser has small hook like legs, giving it an appearance of a very much like a chinese new years dragon. It is decending down the staircase, which can only be compared to the the post classic Castello at Chitzin Itza, though to be a style originating in central mexico.

A new monstermouth doorway, also enirely unique. This structure, like Kabah appears to be an arch structure, which must have been very large. The monster mask appears on both sides of this structure.

Some plazas are still full of stones.

Distance rode: 80km
Trip total: 872km