Calakmul
— — the pyramid the forest is still trying to take back.
Not only on a wall.
“Two pyramids rise above a green that goes uninterrupted for sixty miles. Calakmul was one of the great Maya capitals, then it was abandoned, and the jungle closed back in. Today it is mostly howler monkeys and the long road in from Xpujil. Climb Structure II at first light and the canopy is below you, breathing.
Calakmul, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Calakmul lies in the southern Yucatán Peninsula, deep inside the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Mexico's largest tropical forest preserve at roughly 7,230 square kilometres. The city was the seat of the Kaan or Snake dynasty and rival to Tikal across the modern Guatemala border. UNESCO inscribed it as a mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Site in 2002 and extended that status in 2014. The road in branches sixty kilometres south of Highway 186 at Conhuas, a single ribbon of asphalt through tall forest. Most visitors come from Xpujil, an hour east of the turnoff.
Structure II rises about forty-five metres above the plaza, one of the tallest pyramids the Maya ever built, with a footprint that rivals Tikal's largest. The core is rough limestone faced with cut blocks, repeatedly enlarged over six centuries from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic. Archaeologist William J. Folan led the modern survey from 1982 onward and counted more than 6,750 structures across the central zone. Stelae sit at the base in long rows. Carved jaguar masks line the upper terraces, weathered soft by twelve hundred years of rainforest.
The reserve holds one of the largest stands of intact lowland tropical forest in Mesoamerica, with jaguars, pumas, tapirs and ocellated turkeys. Howler monkeys begin calling before dawn and that low engine sound is what wakes most visitors at the small cabins near Conhuas. Five species of wild cat live inside the reserve boundary. Birders count more than 350 species. The climate is hot and humid from May through October, drier from November through April, with daytime temperatures in the high twenties Celsius and a heavy stillness once the wind drops below the canopy.