Chiantla Viejo – Guatemala

Chiantla Viejo is a site, in the mountains, about 5.5km from the town of Chiantla. (This town has an interesting main square and church with a very ornate, painted ceiling.)

It’s a small site and there doesn’t appear to have been any work carried out there. If you had already seen any of the other major sites in Guatemala or Mexico it will be slightly underwhelming but it gives an idea of what most of the Mayan sites throughout Central America would have been like.

It might seem like sacrilege but the area itself has been used, for quite some time, as the local cemetery, concrete tombs of the more recent past sitting on top of the Mayan mounds.

In relation to the ‘debate’ about the concrete covering of all the structures at the Zaculeu site near to Huehuetenango. There are definitely signs at the lower leverls (and on some of the steps) that the structures did have a facing of stucco. However, to take one example and then extrapolate for all the buildings at other sites and from top to bottom, I think, it making too much of an assumption.

Getting there;

From Huehuetenango. Take a bus to Chiantla from Huehuetenango which leaves from near the junction of Calle 1 and Aveninda 3, Q4

If you don’t want to walk (which would take you about 1 hour and a half) then look for colectivos that leave from the centre of town heading towards El Pino Alto. Coming back just flag down anything that looks like it takes passengers, Q5.