Ichkabal: The Ruins That Rewarded the Drive

Local Perspective – from a local since 2005 · Riviera Maya / Bacalar · June 2025

First, a bit of history — the short version

Ichkabal means “between the lowlands” in Maya, which tells you something about where it sits — tucked into a kind of valley depression in the jungle, elevated on a natural platform. This location in the valley depression is already quite unique in that few other ruins have been found to be in a valley. The city was occupied for an extraordinarily long time: from roughly 400 BC all the way to about 1500 AD, nearly two thousand years of continuous presence. Its peak was somewhere between 200 BC and 600 AD, which puts it as a contemporary of Calakmul and Tikal, two of the most powerful cities in the ancient Maya world. Researchers believe Ichkabal may have been a political and dynastic seat of the Kaanul — the so-called Serpent Dynasty — the same royal lineage that, at its height, controlled a vast swath of the lowland Maya world and rivaled Tikal for dominance.

And yet somehow this place sat completely hidden until 1995, when archaeologists finally registered it as a site. The jungle had simply swallowed it – and still does for most of the structures that are easily observed to be sitting underneath jungle dirt and trees (those are not mountains rather unearthed structures!). The pyramid that anchors the site rises over 40 metres — taller than anything at Chichén Itzá — and three of Ichkabal’s structures outsize the famous Temple of Kukulkán. It earned the nickname “the Mesoamerican Egypt” at some point, which feels over the top until you see the scale of what’s here. The site covers 30 square kilometres. And almost none of it has been excavated yet.

At one point 70 archaeologists were reportedly on site working to unearth and learn about these ruins. Over 699 human burials have been found, along with more than 60,000 artefacts and over a million pottery fragments. The public opening finally came on January 11, 2025, after years of negotiations between INAH and the local ejido communities who hold the land. It was a long time coming.

The drive itself is half the experience

We left Bacalar on a Sunday morning just after eight. Head west from town on the road toward Xul-Ha, passing through the ejido communities and small agricultural ranches that line the route — a working landscape, unhurried, with grazing cattle visible through the tree line and laundry on fences. The road narrows once you leave the main highway and becomes proper jungle-lined: a green tunnel that feels a long way from the cenote bars and hammock hotels of the lagoon. It takes about 40 to 50 minutes from central Bacalar, depending on your pace. There are no signs telling you how close you are. Then a new access road appears — smoothly paved, and you know you’ve arrived.

At the entrance

As is the case for many ruins, the local ejido community has rights to earn an income from visitors parking so we pulled up to the parking area on the side of the road and paid the $50 MX pesos. It was a Sunday morning and we had the place to ourselves. The entrance to Ichkabal is another 300 meters walking, if that, and on this trip, a little wild fox trotted along in front of us as a nice welcome treat to the ruins before disappearing into the undergrowth. The visitor facilities are genuinely new — clean bathrooms, a covered welcome area, information panels — and it felt like walking into something before the world had found it. The birdsong was constant and layered — not background noise, but something that wrapped around you as you walked with only the crunching of the dirt path below our feet. Whoever said ruins are silent has never been to one in the jungle at eight in the morning.

The ruins: a valley, a platform, and what’s waiting above

What makes Ichkabal genuinely unusual — even for someone who’s spent two decades visiting Maya sites — is the topography. The site sits in a natural depression, a low valley, and the main ceremonial complex is built atop a massive elevated platform that rises above it. You approach from below, climbing up toward the structures, towards the clouds, as massive jungle trees tower over you. The effect is theatrical in a way most sites aren’t. Most ruins sit on flat land and you judge scale by standing next to a wall. Here, the platform itself is the first monument.

The architecture on top follows what archaeologists call the Petén style: tall, steep pyramidal bases stacked with superimposed platforms, decorated with carved lintels and relief masks. The triadic groupings — three structures arranged around a central axis — appear repeatedly, and you start to understand how much of this city was built with intention, symmetry, and ceremony in mind. Much of the site is still unexcavated; the jungle begins again just beyond the cleared areas, and you can see the tell-tale low mounds in the vegetation that mark buried structures. Ichkabal isn’t finished revealing itself.

We walked the path around the main complex for well over an hour. We had the whole place to ourselves. There is something rare about standing somewhere this significant with no one else around — no one narrating, no queue for the photo, no loud foreigners sweating into oblivion, no performance of tourism. Just you and a city that waited two thousand years to be found, and another thirty to let anyone in.

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The Maya Riviera I moved to in 2005 has changed enormously. The sites that were quiet are quiet no longer. But every so often something opens up — literally — and you get that window again, the one where you can walk somewhere extraordinary and hear only birds. Ichkabal is that window right now. I don’t know how long it will stay that way.

Go before everyone else figures it out but do so quietly and respectfully, please. Treasures like these last longer without mass tourism.