Caracol

Caracol is the biggest Maya city in Belize, and it was bigger than Tikal at it's most powerful (it also defeated Tikal on a couple of occasions and sacrificed Tikal's leader). However, not a lot of the site has been excavated and restored, in part because of finances and also because it was only discovered more recently in the 1950's. It is located not far from Tikal and close to the Guatemala border. As such, there have been problems with people from Guatemala coming to the site and robbing tourists. So we had a military escort that accompanied all of the vehicles going to the site, and armed guards sat on the pyramids to watch over us. It was a bit unnerving, but the site was beautiful.



Interestingly, the Maya in this area built big reservoirs to collect and store water instead of relying on rivers and lakes. The reservoir pictured here still holds water and it is used the provide water for the toilet facilities on site and also for the archaeology students to do laundry and shower.