Calakmul

Visited just recently (November, 2021). Since the site was carefully decribed by other travellers I will focus on transportation warning so you may avoid problems while trying to get there without your own car.

Arrived in the afternoon (21.11.2021) at Xpujil and immediately started to organize a transport for the next day to Calakmul ruins. As there are no public transport directly to the archeological site you have to arrange something on your own. There are several options. The easiest seem to be tour agencies offering full day package (transport, food, guide) for 1500 (or more) peso per person. Taxis goes there for similar amount of money (or if you negotiate hard for a bit less) – this include 3 hours waiting time on the place. This option is paid by trip so if there are 3 -4 persons it might be the best solution. Other option is to go by bus from Xpujil ADO bus station to entrance of Calakmul National Park (some 60 km from Xpujil, Entronque a Calakmul) and try to organize transport from there (additional 60 km to Zona Arqueologica).

As realized the options I tried to find an agency and ask them for transport. Just opposite my hotel in Xpujil (Becan Hotel) I found an agency - Tour In Calakmul By Abel, google coordinates: 18.50806987416214, -89.39426131904403. It looked as normal agency, the person inside was very helpful and communicative (he spoke very good English). After short negotiations he reveled that next day he …

For such a remote site, Calakmul was surprisingly easy to get to. I had considered leaving it off our itinerary at one point thinking that it would be too time consuming and complicated to visit without a rental vehicle. We visited in August 2019 after making our way to Xpujil from Palenque by bus. 

Calakmul might be off the beaten path but it isn't unheard of and Xpujil has become a mini tourist hub for the couple dozen tourists that visit the site. It felt like most foreigners were eating at the pizzeria (with budget accommodation in the back) at the corner of the main roundabout and this place should probably be considered ground zero for getting local info for the region. We might've even been able to find someone with a rental car already but as it turned out the pizzeria knew a guy with a car that could take us to the ruins the next day at a very reasonable rate. In the end we were a group of 6 in 2 cars. 

It is a long but not unpleasant ride into the park, once off the main road the scenery is pristine wilderness and you can't help but strain your eyes searching and hoping to see some wildlife cross the road. Aside from the checkpoints there really isn't much along the way but our driver pulled off to the side around 27km in (it is unmarked and has room for maybe 3 cars) where we …

Calakmul is one of those places that take people directly into one those famous American adventure movies. Hidden in the middle of a huge forest, it offers a great experience, combining culture and nature, to the brave souls willing to see it. Reaching Calakmul is not an easy thing.

There is only one road leading to the site. This road, if we can call it a road or a path, is already an adventure in itself. Full of holes, surrounded by forest, you can easily meet animals while driving, especially considering that you cannot speed anyway. Among the animals we saw in the site and on the way, we can mention many monkey, a coral snake, many ocellated turkeys, few wide pigs, few lizards and of course many birds.

To access the path leading to Calakmul, people must take the road linking Villahermosa. via Escarcega, to Chetumal. If you come from Escarcega, you have to drive on this road until the small village of Conhuas. Cross the village and few hundred meters after the end, you will find, on your right, the entry to the Calakmul path, with a guard to which you have to pay an entrance fee. This entrance is badly indicated so be careful. There must be a checkpoint at the very beginning. If there is none, you are probably on the wrong road.

Once on the Calakmul path, there is a 60 km trip to reach the ruins. Considering the state of the road, it may …

I visited this WHS in December 2015. Some say that it's all about the journey, not the destination. To me Calakmul truly deserves it's place on the list and is a very good example of how a mixed WHS should be. You won't end up in Calakmul by chance. The Mayan ruins are in the middle of the biosphere reserve on the forest border with Guatemala. I'd suggest getting to the Rio Bec Mayan cluster close to Chicanna/Becan/Xpuhil and visiting these ruins first and sleeping over to visit Calakmul first thing in the morning. I marvelled at House of the Serpent Mouth in Chicanna and spent a lovely afternoon exploring practically alone for hours on end. I was at the entrance to the 70km road to the site at around 07:30 and it turned out to be a wise choice. The road is full of potholes and turns and quite narrow at times to be a 2 way road. Being there early meant I could drive on without having to slow down because of other vehicles in the opposite direction (which I experienced on my way out!). The highlight of the ruins are the several carved stelae beneath the 'pyramids'. Climbing to the top is still allowed and it's a great experience to be high above the forest canopy and have a panoramic view of the biosphere. The peak of the recently discovered El Mirador in Guatemala can be seen on a sunny day and with binoculars. Structure 2 is …

I love remote sites! And who can withstand the experience of watching a WH-listed ancient Maya ruin with the background noise of howler monkeys? Calakmul is as much a natural site as it is cultural, although it was inscribed as a cultural WHS only. It lies in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in the south of the Yucatan peninsula, which is the largest nature reserve in Mexico. It’s a 110km / 2-hour drive from the nearest decent accommodation. At the turnoff from the main road, you first have to pay an entrance fee to the park and then you can drive on into the jungle. It’s the kind of road where you expect an oncilla sprinting across it at any moment (it didn’t happen, of course).

After about 20km I arrived at the visitor center. A nice place to stop for a quick look, and it’s also the last place where they sell drinks and snacks. They have a few Mayan objects on loan from the Museum of Anthropology, the rest of the presentation is geared toward the landscape. The final 40km is on a much worse road: it’s paved but it has a lot of potholes. It took me an hour to get there, fortunately, there are few other visitors so you can drive on any side of the road.

The small parking area probably is a sign of how few visitors come here, there’s room for 20 cars at most. Signing up in the guest book, I …

Two years ago in December of 2007, my family and I took a driving tour of the Yucatan in Mexico. Calakmul is certainly the highlight. We spent an evening in the town of Campeche and drove to Calakmul the next morning. The drive goes through pristine forests and after you turn off the highway, you are entering the Calakmul Biosphere. You can definitely notice the bird sounds and we even had to stop to let a family of wild turkeys cross the road.

The Mayan city of Calakmul is less restored than Chichen or Uxmal and so much more in its natural setting. There are no crowds of tourists unlike Chichen (thousands of tourist come to Chichen from Cancun by the bus loads just for the day) and we only saw a couple of other families there that day.

The best part of Calakmul is that you can still climb the pyramids unlike Chichen and Uxmal where they are totally off limits. There are several that you can climb and we did the two highest. On the main pyramid, you will have a 360 degree view of the country side and we sat up there for nearly an hour just looking at the forest to the horizon. Unfortunately when it got too hot we had to descend to some shade.

A local guide pointed out another pyramid in the southern direction in the distance which is Mirador just over the border in Guatemala. My understanding is that the World Heritage …