There are too many historical Mayan sites in Mexico, and the government is struggling to preserve them. Sometimes they fail, like the highway bisecting Tohcok. A side effect is that it makes visiting this small site very convenient – as long as you happen to show up when the talkative caretaker arrives on his bicycle to unlock the gate and show you around.
On Saturday, our goal was to explore 4 small Chenes sites – a Mayan architectural style consisting of highly detailed facades and entrances shaped like monsters. Aside from Tohcok, the main difficulty was actually getting to the individual sites. Looking at a map, the 4 sites appear clustered close together. As it turns out, none of our 3 maps were to scale. All in all we traveled about 300 KM to visit all the ruins. On our way to our second set of ruins, Hochob, we realized this scale as it took us another hour of driving after Tohcok. Luckily, there was a shrimp and octopus cocktail stand on the side of the road to sustain us.
Dzibilnocac posed additional challenges. Its nearest village goes by multiple names on road signs: Iturbide, Vincent Guerrero, V. Guerrero. One of our 3 maps had 2 of the names which eventually led us in the right direction. Of course, to reach V. Guerrero, you have to pass through the village of Dzibalchen which is currently under construction. Most of the roads end in a pile of rubble – unsurpassable by our little Chevy rental car and making us wonder if the town was orchestrating a large protest. Passing this labyrinth does reward you with being the only visitors to this peaceful and largely unexcavated site.
The village of Vincent Guerrero does not have a place to eat, but happily Dzibalchen, the town of road construction, does have a restaurant, which gave us sustenance to tackle the final site on our list: Tabasqueno. Its challenge was its location down 2 KM of dirt road followed by another 2 KM of a rocky ravine – tricky to navigate in a compact car. Yet again, we were rewarded with an empty parking lot, a single caretaker, and beautifully carved buildings.
All of these sites currently pale in comparison to the large-scale restoration that has taken place at ruins like Chichen Itza. However, mounds of dirt-covered ruins surround all of them giving an idea of how impressive the area must once have been.
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