Eastward Ho!

Shawn and Scott arrived today! It was quite an ordeal, from my bus trip into Guatemala City, to their flight being delayed, to renting a car. We finally found an automatic with 4WD, a necessity for the rough roads ahead, and headed eastward to the absolute edge of Guatemala, the Belizean border, and the town of Rio Dulce.

On our way to Rio Dulce we stopped to visit Quiriga, another archaeological site. Surrounded by a sea of banana plantations and an abandoned railway hub, courtesy of the United Fruit Company, Quiriga is a beautiful, peaceful park, which belies it's busy history as a trading hub.

Quiriga was settled in the Late Preclassic, between 400 BCE and 250 ACE, and was originally under the control of Copan, another site to the South. The site was an administrative, religious and commercial center, providing strategic resources, access to rivers and an ocean port, linking cities from modern day Mexico to Honduras. In the Classical Period, from 200 BCE to 900 CE, Quiriga, led by King Caucac Sky, split with Copan, defeating their King Eighteen Rabbit. Quiriga entered an expansionary period, which lasted two generations, during which each ruler commissioned intricately carved sandstone towers, or steale, some over 10m tall, to tell their stories. Two generations later Quiriga's fortunes, as well as those of many other Mayan cities, waned, a result of environmental factors, like drought, compounded by over expansion and investment in impressive but impractical steale.

In Rio Dulce we stayed at Hacienda Tijax, an incredible experience in it of itself. To reach the hotel we had to cross a number of suspension bridges strung across a mangrove swamp. The resort itself consisted of all these charming little cabins, linked by causeways, with mosquito nets strung over camp cots, which made me feel even more like an archaeologist or explorer. The dining room was a thatched hut, which opened out onto the river and beyond it, the Atlantic Ocean. The balmy evening, cold beer and a power outage, perfectly timed during a spectacular sunset made for a great first day together.