El Ceibal & Dos Pilas Archaeological Sites Guatemala

It can’t be avoided. If you want to get to the town of Sayaxche in the Peten region of northern Guatemala (and points beyond) you have to get on a low-tech little ferry and cross the Rio La Pasión. That includes horse-drawn carts, 18 wheelers, and us. Rio La Pasión is a pretty grand name for a fairly ho-hum waterway and an even more forgettable town but this is the gateway to the lovely Dos Pilas and El Ceibal Mayan archaeological sites, home to rightfully famous carved stone stele.

Waiting for our turn to cross the Rio La Pasión on this ferry powered by a collection of outboard motors and hope.

The Dos Pilas archaeological site

This stele a the Dos Pilas Mayan archaeological site was more than 15 feet tall and covered in still-legible carvings of Mayan glyphs.

The Dos Pilas site dates back to AD 629. It’s small, remote (a two-hour drive plus a 30-minute walk from Sayaxche), mostly unexcavated and very lightly visited. We counted 30 names in the visitor registration book for the entire previous month. It does, however, have something that few other Mayan archaeological sites have: stone stairs decorated with glyphs as well as some of the tallest and most intact stele (traditional carved stone story-telling slabs) in the known Mayan world.

Just a couple of the stele at Dos Pilas Mayan archaeological site which still have extraordinarily crisp and detailed carving.

The Dos Pilas Mayan archaeological site offers a unique twist on the stele: stone stairs carved with Mayan glyphs.

The carved stairs look like mini stele lying on their sides and they made us wonder what the buildings they lead to must have looked like. We were left wondering since the structures themselves remain unearthed. The steps were only discovered in the 1990s so who knows what else is under there.

Archaeologists discovered unusual stone stairs carved with Mayan glyphs at the Dos Pilas site in Guatemala.

Dos Pilas also has some impressively tall traditional stele. The worn originals are protected by palapa roofs and replicas are placed conveniently nearby. There are also two natural springs (pilas), hence the site’s name and a bunch of caves in which archaeologists found evidence of Mayan rituals. Did we mention that the Dos Pilas site is also free?

Archaeologists discovered unusual stone stairs carved with Mayan glyphs at the Dos Pilas site in Guatemala.

The few people who visit Dos Pilas Mayan archaeological site in northern Guatemala are greeted by this lone stele in front of an unexcavated mound which conceals a building.

The El Ceibal archaeological site

One of the few structures which have been excavated at the El Ceibal Mayan archaeological site in Guatemala. The four stele around it are placed at the cardinal points.

The city of El Ceibal (also sometimes referred to as Seibal) peaked around 840 AD in what is called the terminal period in the timeline of Mayan civilizations. It certainly proved terminal for El Ceibal as the city was mysteriously abandoned not long after its peak.

Yes, the Mayan carving on this huge stele at the El Ceibal archaeological site in Guatemala, is original.

Like Dos Pilas, El Ceibal’s claim to fame involves carved rock. When we’re done oohing and ahhing over the diorama we notice some huge stele near the caretakers’ quarters. The staff brush those off as mere copies and send us on our way, into the site itself, to see the real things. And they are remarkable.

Yes, the Mayan carving on this stele at the El Ceibal archaeological site in Guatemala, is original.

At El Ceibal you can see more than a dozen massive stele all of them amazingly crisp and clear. Very few structures have been unearthed here, but one small structure is visible with stele placed around it at the cardinal points and there’s an unusual round stone building at the site too.