After visiting Yaxchilan, and having lunch in Frontera Corazal, we visited Bonampak. The site is in the Lacandon Indian reserve, and we had to change to an Indian owned minibus as no others are allowed in. The Lacandon community has a website. Like Yaxchilan the site was very quiet, because of the distance from Palenque.
Our first sight of Bonampak
The Stelae is in the foreground, the Temple of the Paintings at the rear. The murals are in the covered chambers on the right.
The site reminded me a bit of Ek Bahlam - again the site is only partly excavated and the main interest is found in a room part way up a large structure at one end of a plaza. The Temple of the Murals is much narrower than the Acropolis at Ek Bahlam though, and the big draw is the murals in three rooms rather than a stucco mask.
Close up of the Stelae. It shows a bloodletting ceremony with Chaan Muan II in the centre, his mother on the right, and his wife, Lady Rabbit of Yaxchilan behind him.
In 1946 a group of local Lacandon indians showed the murals to the photographer Giles Healy. The murals are the most extensive and well preserved examples of Classic Maya art so far found and date from 790-792. Recently murals dating from 100BC were found at San Bartolo in Guatemala. Probably all Mayan rooms were originally decorated in a similar way.
Stucco relief above the entrances to the chambers containing the murals
The murals are very impressive but as they are so fragile access is limited to three people in each room at any one time and flash photography is not allowed.
This is the only picture I managed to get of the murals, it's a bit shaky, but you can see the colours.
The murals in the first room show a ceremony thought to be held to designate an heir. The second shows scenes of a battle and the torture of prisoners. The final room shows a bloodletting ceremony.
Our cabana.
There are good pictures of the murals here and a reconstruction of what they originally looked like here.
For about two hours in the evening a sermon was broadcast over the tannoy from this evangelical church. Many of the Maya in this area are now evangelical christians.
After visiting the ruins we stayed in a cabana in the Lacandon village of Lacanjá. The next morning a collectivo picked us up and took us to Frontera Corazal to take a lancha across the river to Guatemala.