11-05-08 The Ruins North of Xuphil

We moved rooms from Xuphil to a small town Zoh Laguna, once a logging town. A bit too late. I found that the cardboard room in Xuphil was not only home to bats, moths, and misquitos, but also a healty flee population. Taking a shower in our new place I counted 32 flee bites, and I´m sure there were more.

The area to the north of Xuphil, and below Dzibalchen is for the most part archeologically unknown. There is no doubt that there are many ruins, but the area is so large with so few inhabitents it is hard to know what may be there. This area is between the Rio Bec and the Chenes regions, two closely related cultures, so the area is almost certainly just like the north and south. There are at least 3 large ruins about 35km north of Xuphil, but I have not heard about anybody going there, but since there was a small faming community close to these ruins I wanted to ask around.

The road north of Xuphil


Knowbody knew about any ruins to the west of the town, the ones we were looking for. We were directed to an older man who had some large mound type ruins on his farmland and decided to go. He had hurt his toe. It was bandaged the then end of it was black, so we had to wait for his son to get back from school. After waiting an hour I decided we should just ride around for a bit. Riding north with a GPS we found a road that seemed to lead toward the ruins we were looking for. Down the path there was a turnoff just where the ruins should be, but a huge tree had been intentionally bulldozed blocking the path. For the most part you can step over trees, but not this one.

We went back to town and rode to the ruins. They were quite large, and I have never heard any mention of these before. No standing walls or buildings, but many stones that left no doubt there was late classic structures here. Fronting one of the two large pyrimids was the remains of a few stella and a most unusual stone that was unique but clearly related to ruins to the north. This ruin had another unusual feature that ruins in this area have, rounded, illregular plazas. The Maya nearly always built square, or otherwise geometric plazas, but here there are large curved and U shaped structures, very much like Roman ampithertres. We asked our guide about the ruins to the north and west of town again. He did not know, but we started talking about the road we went down, and said that indeed there the ruins there were big. The road had been intentionally blocked because too much hunting and logging had been happening, and that now there were was no way to go there. The property to the west was owned by a person out of state, and his family were the cartakers, and there was no way we could go. There are at least two significant ruins on this property. Shoot!

An unusual stella, plain but with a boarder like one seen in doorways of southern Puuc ruins.

A capitol which would have topped a doorway pier.

Distance rode:60km

Trip Total: 1341km