Caracol

Originally thought to be a fringe player in the Classic Period of Mayan history, the city is now known to have been one of the key political centres. Located on the Vaca Plateau at an elevation of 500m in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, the modern name means “snail shell” on account of the winding access road to the site. The ancient Maya would have known it as Uxwitza meaning “Three Water Hill.”

Although famous for its altars and stellae, Caracol’s biggest draw is Caana, the “Sky Palace,” which remains the tallest structure in Belize at 43m. Designed with Mayan cosmology and numerology throughout, Caana has two sequential stairways to a top platform, which is itself topped by a trio of pyramids. The other major highlight is the celestial observatory, which still has the original wooden timber supports

Caana is a stunning structure to behold, but its tiered pyramid design doesn’t do it favors to the conventional camera lens. What looks imposing to the eye invariably comes out as squat and unassuming in pixels. If we’d had our drone with us we might have done it justice, but for now we just recommend everyone go see it for themselves.

Once covering 200km2 with a suspected population of 180,000, it covers an area larger than modern Belize City with double the number of inhabitants. Occupied as early as 1,200BC, Caracol flourished as Tikal’s main competitor, but ultimately collapsed with all the other Mayan city states around 950AD. Rediscovered by a woodcutter in 1938, the ruins were surveyed in the 1950s but major excavation didn’t occur until the 1980s.