New work at Caracol makes it tourist friendly
It is not what you’d call an easy drive, particularly following a heavy rain. But on Monday cameraman Brent Toombs and I finally made it to an ancient Maya site in Cayo that, thanks to a multi-million dollar facelift, may one day become one of the nation’s most popular destinations.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Guatemala may have Tikal; Honduras Copan; Mexico Chichen Itza but in Belize, Caracol is king. Translated to mean snail in English, the remnants of Caracol are slowly emerging from beneath the jungle to claim a place of prominence in the modern Mundo Maya. Since it’s rediscovery in the early 1920s, archaeologists have discovered the earliest dated carved stellae in Belize at Caracol, dating back to 400 A.D., and unearthed the massive structure called Caana or “Sky Place”, believed to have been completed around 800 A.D.
At the peak of its existence, the Mayan city of Caracol covered some sixty-five square miles and was home to more than a hundred thousand people. Today, archaeologists from all over the world have a field day excavating its more than seventy-five structures.
Jaime Awe, Archaeological Coordinator
“Caracol is certainly one of the most amazing sites that we have in Belize. It has the tallest and largest human made structure in this country.”
According to archaeological coordinator, Dr. Jaime Awe, Caracol’s influence in the region spans thousands of years.
Dr. Jaime Awe
“Besides constructing large monumental structures, we know that they were politically involved with other sites in the region. We know that Caracol entered wars against cities like Tikal, Naranjo and Bital, Ukanal and that in many of those occasions, Caracol was the triumphant site. But Caracol is also important to us as a country, as a culture, because it gives us a symbol of what the ancient first Belizeans or ancient Belizeans, were able to accomplish in our own country.”
Janelle Chanona
“For the past two years, the Government of Belize has invested two point seven million Belize dollars to restore Caracol to some semblance of its former glory. By all accounts, they have succeeded.”
But it has not been easy. More than a hundred and sixty people call the archaeological site home…working from dawn to dusk shifting through soil for secrets. Nestled deep in the Chiquibul Forest, accessibility to Caracol has proved challenging.
Dr. Jaime Awe
“Everything that we use here has to be trucked in. We have no water here, so we have to bring in water from twelve miles away from the Guacamayo Bridge. All the food, we have a hundred and sixty people who work here full time. It’s taken us two years, but in the two years that we’ve been here, we have converted what used to look like just hills with trees to some of the beautiful temples and palaces that you can now see when you come to the site.”
Financed through a fourteen million U.S. dollar loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, the rebirth of Mayan sites like Caracol is part of the Ministry of Tourism’s, Tourism Development Project. The plan is to turn the trickle of tourists into a steady stream of visitors.
Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism
“Like the reef, like the rainforest, like the caving, archaeology is a particular brand of tourism that attracts literally hundreds of thousands of people to Belize. So I think the excavation work, the new visitor’s centre, access to Caracol will open up the Cayo District certainly to a lot more archaeology enthusiasts to visit Belize. And it will certainly develop offshoot industries, hotels nearby, gift shops, restaurants. So the work here really is firstly to preserve certainly our very profound Mayan culture, and secondly, it is promote and build tourism to this district and to Belize.”
Dr. Allan Moore, Director, Tourism Development Project
“If we may look at Xunantunich, which gets about two hundred people per day on an average, and that’s going up because the cruise ship tourism is increasing. So we might look at Caracol somewhere around four, four-fifty, five hundred a day, providing the accessibility is taken care of. The road condition is not too pleasant right now, but we hope to address that situation pretty shortly.”
But at this rate, setbacks aside, it won’t be long before the magnificence of Caracol captures more of the world’s attention and respect. Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
Anytime but the dry season potential visitors may want to check with the B.T.B. before embarking down the road to Caracol.
