Maya

Sometime around 1450, the Chajoma Maya moved their capital to Jilotepeque Viejo in order to make it inaccessible to their hostile neighbors. The city itself had been built a few hundred years earlier and they hoped moving their capital here would help them keep their warring neighbors out. It didn’t work. They were captured and ruled by the Kaqchikel Maya and eventually removed from the site shortly after the Spanish conquest of 1524. The site was never used again. ...

Before leaving Chichi, we took a short hike up to Pascual Ab’aj, which is a Maya sacred site that survived the arrival of the Spanish. There used to be a carved idol at the site, but some Catholic Action members defaced it in the 1950s. It’s still an active site, though. You can see real Mayans conducting rituals there every day. Lost and Found Even the cows knew we were lost ...