Chacchoben Mayan Ruins
I booked the Chacchoben Mayan Ruins tour through Carnival partially because I had a lot of onboard credit to use on this particular cruise.
The other option is to book through The Native Choice. I used them for Kohunlich Mayan Ruins last year after my Carnival Kohunlich tour was canceled. With them I had a much smaller group. It was just me and a family of three. They provided us with unlimited bottled water and a sack lunch on the ride back. I probably will use them in the future when I book Dzibanche. I don’t believe Carnival even offers that tour.
The good thing about Carnival is the meeting point is at the end of the pier. With The Native Choice I had to walk through the port and outside. Then a few more blocks to their office. You could also take a cab for $5.
This is a little confusing because I don’t see anything Carnival. I see people with NCL clipboards and I see Virgin Voyages banners hanging. I asked someone and was told these are for all cruise lines and Chacchoben is always on the end. This is my spot despite the VV banner.
I just realized I’m in the wrong line. This is Chacchoben exclusive. Which is a small group tour. I’m supposed to be in next line with two people in it. It turns out all of the other people were taken to the bus early.
The bus is pretty packed but not so packed that I have someone sitting next to me. We have a total of 44 people. I had to sign a waiver form.
This is the nicest tour bus I’ve been on. It feels brand new. Nice comfy seats.
Tray tables, overhead compartments, and TVs.
That’s an identical bus over there.
A lot of nice looking buses.
All of the vehicles look new here. I guess since it’s a fairly new port. That or they got some covid money. I’ll probably come back in 30 years and they’ll be using all the same stuff.
Our tour guide says when ships aren’t in port, Costa Maya is a ghost town. The tour guides and port workers don’t live there. Our guide lives two miles from Belize. Tonight she goes home for the rest of the week.
The tour guide is taking orders for these sterling silver charms that you can get personalized during the tour. It’s $44-54 depending on how many letters you get.
I don’t think this is a one way road. And there are only two lanes!
There are a lot of fruit stands around. A lot of pineapple availability. Last year they had a competition on who could grow the biggest pineapple. The winner was 10 pounds. The pineapple…not the person who grew it.
Burial ground.
Chacchoben was discovered in 1972 by an archeologist who was flying over in a helicopter. It was uncovered in 1994. They opened it to the public in 2002.
I have been to both.
We arrived at 10:45. Our guide had mentioned we would get assigned a local guide at the site. I’ve seen that at other places. I don’t know what happened but that didn’t happen. So maybe we didn’t get as much information as we were supposed to. I will say the best place for that was at Altun Ha in Belize. They broke our bus down into three smaller groups and each group had a local guide.
In Mayan Chacchoben means the place of the red corn. There is evidence that people lived at this site as far back as 200 BC, but people lived in the surrounding area back to 1000 BC.
This is the admission price had you visited the ruins on your own. That’s about $3.50. Doing Tulum and Coba on my own from Barcelo Maya Riviera was so much cheaper than cruise ship excursions.
This first structure is known as Temple 24. There are staircases on all four sides of it. This tour goes in a circle. At the end we will be in front of this temple. Here are the two sides and back of it.
This temple has five levels and is 36 feet tall.
This area is referred to as The Grand Plaza. A smaller plaza is located on the other side of the Temple 24.
There are a lot of groups out here and it’s easy to lose your group. I just re-joined mine.
This is an example of the color the structures would’ve been back in the Mayan times.
The Sacred tree of the Mayans. The Mayans believed it’s roots reached the underworld and it’s high branches symbolized the upper world.
This shows you the circle we are about to go in. The main temple we just saw was #3. At the end we will be in front of it which is #4.
This area is naturally flat so all of the mounds we see in this area are Mayan structures that have not been excavated. This is a temple that has not be excavated. This is one of those sites where it’s very possible you could come back in 20 or 30 years and see temples that are currently still covered.
The next two structures we are going to see are in the Acropolis Plaza which is atop this platform. There are two ways up to the Acropolis Plaza.
The first way is these 13 steps which our guide calls “the smart way.” Around the corner are 32 steps which she calls “the adventurous way.”
Which way do you think I’m going?
The adventurous way.
That is a broken stela they have roped off and covered to protect it from further damage.
Let’s go.
And this is looking down “the adventurous way.”
You do have to go down a few steps to get over to where the others came up.
Between these two structures is “the smart way.” These two are known as “The Twins.”
So if you came the other way you go up these steps to the next temple.
This is known as Temple 1. It stands 42 feet tall with two unrestored structures on top of it.
Temple 1 has multiple rooms at the bottom of it and a single staircase going up to the top.
They do have benches up here if you want to take a break.
This is known as the Temple of the Vessels. That shaded area was built to preserve what is left of the original red stucco from further deterioration by the sun.
This is a bit treacherous. My group didn’t go around to the front so I’m doing this on my own.
The sun is making it impossible for me to get a good shot of the part that still has the original red stucco.
My group is gone so I need to catch up.
I see our guide up ahead.
Here we have more structures that are mostly covered.
This is a housing development.
Like I was saying yesterday in Cozumel, you just see the foundations of these houses because that’s all that was made out of stone. We are standing by the back part of houses. 10 people lived in each house.
People were buried in the foundation of their houses.
Mayans liked flat foreheads and crossed eyes. Our guide is saying that what they put on the forehead also crosses the eyes.
At other sites I’ve been told they would put something between a babies eyes so they would focus on it and go cross-eyed.
This is what a Mayan ruler would have looked like. A lot of jade which they did not have around here. They had it in Belize and Guatemala. You may remember from Altun Ha that was where the Jade head, the crown jewel of Belize, was found.
This is the Mayan class structure.
That’s an all spice tree. They had those at Altun Ha as well. The leaves smell like cinnamon. That’s where we were told dead bodies would be covered in them to take the smell away.
I am walking between two houses.
These are the front steps to the houses. This is basically like a street with houses on each side and one at the end.
Look out for the ants.
We are heading back to the front side of the temple we started at.
This is the front of Temple 24. Rulers are believed to have been buried at this temple but looters got here before the archaeologists so they were not found.
That’s a chewing gum tree. You can see the slashes in it from where people got the gum.
This is the altar where offerings were left for the gods. They did not sacrifice people on the altar here. Here they threw people off the top of the temple.
We were given 30 minutes to do whatever we wanted and be back on the bus.
I climbed as high as allowed on this temple.
On the way out I encountered a monkey family.
And we are back where we started.
I used the bathroom and grabbed a couple of Tecates for $3 each. Some people were grabbing cups of pineapple. That was probably a good idea with all the fresh pineapples we saw on the way here.
That’s my ride 1160.
We were scheduled to pull out at 12:30 but we were 8 people short. It wasn’t long but we did leave a few minutes late.
This was one of those tour guides that didn’t talk on the way back. It was totally silent.
Like I was saying earlier they have a lot of new looking taxis in Costa Maya.
I didn’t see these cup holders before.
We arrived back at 1:40 which was just a few minutes behind schedule. It would be nice if they dropped us off by the ship where they picked us up. But they dropped us where we had to walk through the entire port to get back to the ship.
I enjoyed the tour. It is the shortest of the three Mayan ruins tours you can do from Costa Maya. The other two are 6-7 hour tours where this one was only 3 hours.
