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Excavated mounds at the Archaeological Maya site at Cerros on the Bay of Chetumal, Belize.
 
 

 
It was a crystal clear blue sky day the morning my guide Jorge Majil and I set out from the Corozal Bay Inn in the far northern Belizean town of Corozal, Belize. Marcia and Doug Podzun are the innkeepers of the wonderful little seaside hotel that is one of the best reasons I have found to stopover in Corozal as I make my way each time to and from the crossing of the Mexican border. They provide truly excellent hospitality as well as a friendly atmosphere with exceptional food on the only sandy beach I’ve found in the town.

Most adventurers seeking to visit Cerros hire a boat and guide with a tour from the village of Corozal but it is possible during the dry season between January and April to reach the site by car through the towns of Progresso and Copper Bank. Although Jorge is actually a fishing guide, he agreed to ferry me for a price from the end of the pier next to the Corozal Bay inn to the dock landing at the Belize Maya archaeological site of Cerros. I have never been one for the packaged tour and this holds especially true when I visit the ancient sites of the Maya. For so often the guide will expect to talk the talk and walk the walk according to his watch and not your desires to experience the essence of the locale.

 
 
 
Cerros is believed to have been an important coastal trading center in the Maya Pre-classic Periods between 350B.C. and A.D. 250.
 
 
   
With this understood, my fishing boat guide headed out across the southeastern corner of the Bay of Chetumal. Immediately I could see just off the bow of the boat the Maya archaeological site of Cerros rising quickly in the distance. Perched upon a hilltop on the direct opposite side of the bay from the Podzun’s inn, Cerros is believed to have been an important coastal trading center in the Maya Pre-classic Periods between 350B.C. and A.D. 250.

The Spanish word for ‘hill’ is Cerros, while the literal English translation for the term is ‘Maya Hill’. According to the completed studies of David Freidel of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and an associate Cathy Crane, that have surveyed and excavated Cerros, a Maya fishing village existed in Cerros for the first three hundred or so years of the mentioned period. At the time Cerros encompassed about seven and a half acres of land along the bay of Chetumal with a local population of some five to six hundred inhabitants.

The research of Freidel and Crane point to Cerros being a distribution point for salt and honey as well as Guatemalan Jade and Obsidian. From the distribution center at Cerros, the products went north up the Yucatan as well as down the New River to the formidable Belize Maya site of Lamanai less than two hours by motorboat today. From Lamanai it is proposed that the distribution network was linked to the Belize Maya Mountain cities of Caracol and Lubaantun as well to as the Guatemala ancient Maya city known for its magnificent towering temples, Tikal.

The tallest of its temple located at Cerros rises some twenty-one meters (sixty-three feet) above the main plaza floor.

 
 

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