Xunantunich: My Favourite Mayan Ruins


Lauren at Xunantunich

While Mexico receives most of the attention when it comes to ruins, the Mayan kingdom reached down into parts of Central America, including modern-day Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

By this point, I’d spent six weeks travelling through the Yucatan and I have to confess I was starting to feel ruined out, but after hearing that the ruins of Xunantunich were easily accessible from San Ignacio and were likely to be void of tourists, I knew I’d regret skipping out on them.

And now, a pronunciation lesson: Xunantunich is pronounced shoo-nan-too-nitch.

It means “stone woman” in the Mayan language, because the ruins are supposedly haunted. And I am glad I only discovered this just now while researching for this post. Back in the 1800s, people started spotting a woman dressed entirely in white with bright red eyes. She would appear in front of El Castillo — the main pyramid at the complex — climb the stone stairs and then disappear into a stone wall. No thank you!

River at Xunantunich

Despite the complicated name, making the trip out to Xunantunich from San Ignacio required little brain power.

Vibrant chicken buses crawl their way out of town every so often, and after 15 minutes of bumpy riding, a huge sign by the side of the road lets you know you’ve arrived. Total cost for the journey? 1.50 Belizean dollars or 75 U.S. cents.

From the bus stop, you’ll board a hand-crank ferry from the 50s that takes you across the bright green river whenever the operator feels like doing so. We handed him a small tip for our 30 second ride.

Belize ferry

My boyfriend, Dave, and I were the only people to both get off the bus and board the ferry, so I was instantly struck by a sense of isolation. Once we reached the other side of the river, we were surrounded by trees and countryside, and aside from the paved road leading up to the ruins, few signs of civilisation. The only sounds were the trickling of the river and the buzz of crickets.

I looked ahead, knowing we had a mile-long hike uphill ahead of us, then started walking.

I’d read online that cars and pickup trucks often make the ride across the river and up to the ruins, and that you could most likely flag them down for a lift when they passed, but nobody else seemed to be visiting Xunantunich today. I walked in silence up to the ruins, feeling as though we were the only people for miles around.

Xunantunich scenery

Of course, I was soon proven wrong when we got to the entrance and met the jolly woman at the ticket office. We handed over our 10 Belizean dollars entrance fee — 5 USD — and ambled inside.

And there was nobody there.

I’d visited several Mayan ruins in Mexico in the month before heading into Belize, and every single one of them had been crammed full of people. While I’d assumed Xunantunich wouldn’t be quite so popular, I wasn’t expecting to have the entire square mile complex to ourselves.

It turns out that Xunantunich isn’t a hugely popular destination for travellers, and even less so during the midday heat, when we were there.

Lauren at Xunantunich
Mayan ruins in Belize
Xunantunich ruins

Back when Xunantunich was at its peak, at around 800 A.D., it was a major ceremonial site, with something like 200,000 people living within an area of 75 square miles. The city consists of six plazas and more than 26 Mayan palaces and temples, all of which you can explore and climb all over.

What I found fascinating was that, until you reach the entrance to the complex, you’d have no idea these structures were even there. There’s so much jungle and wildness surrounding the site that you can’t see it until you’re right there inside of it.

Belize jungle

This was my favourite tree:

Tree in Xunantunich

We clambered over the smaller ruins for a while, before turning to the main attraction. El Castillo is the name given to the 40 metre high pyramid that dominates Xunantunich, and unlike its namesake at Chichen Itza, you’re free to climb all over it.

So that’s exactly what we did.

xunantunich-pyramid
Dave climbing the pyramid
Xunantunich views

The views from the top were breathtaking, and we could see the jungle sprawling for miles around. To the west, just one kilometre from Xunantunich, lay the Guatemala border, our next destination, and I spent a significant amount of my time gazing into the country with excitement.

Lauren at Xunantunich

Given the heat and the generally lazy theme of the day, Dave and I perched ourselves up on top of El Castillo for a full thirty minutes, taking photos of each other with the view and chatting about our upcoming travels.

For the entirety of that half an hour, we were the only people up there, and if I wasn’t starting to get sunburnt I could have spent a full afternoon taking in the view.

Fun story! Dave and I had recently run out of sunscreen and popped into a souvenir shop to grab some. The only bottle they had on offer was *Mayan sunscreen*. It wasn’t until several days later, as we were rapidly getting more and more burnt that I bothered to look at the ingredients and realised the vast majority of it consisted of carrots.

Guatemala border

If you can see that white line in the distance, by the start of the hill, that’s the Guatemalan border.

Monkeys at Xunantunich

We climbed back down the pyramid when a group of loud people joined us at the top, and opted to spend a few minutes lingering around the smaller ruins before heading back to San Ignacio

As we wandered past the ruins and through the trees, I heard a deafening sound that chilled my bones.

GREEAAARRGGGHHHHCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

“What’s that?” I hissed urgently at Dave.

The world began to spin as the only thing I could logically think about was that there was a dinosaur at Xunantunich, and it sounded hungry.

Have you ever heard howler monkeys before? If not, listen to the audio in this video that Dave took while we were there!

They sound like freaking dinosaurs, right?!

We stayed for a few minutes to take some video then quickly left.

I am not a fan of howler monkeys.

Xunantunich river

Xunantunich: Well Worth a Visit!

Long-time readers of the site will already be aware that I’m far more passionate about things that aren’t ruins when I travel — food, mostly — but I’ll still never deny my unexplainable compulsion to explore them. Even if I know — and I do — that I’ll most likely struggle to maintain my interest beyond a couple of hours, there’s always a small part of me that yearns to see them for myself.

I was fortunate to visit several of the Mayan sites in Mexico: Coba, Chichen Itza, and Tulum, and while I’d possibly not name them my biggest highlights in Mexico, I was glad to have seen them.

Xunantunich was one of my highlights of Belize.

I’m a bit of a contradiction in that two of the things I love most when I travel are the incredibly famous, over-the-top-overly-expensive-and-overrun-with-tourists attractions, but also the places that few tourists choose to visit. I don’t go off the beaten track in particularly dangerous places, but if I don’t know anyone who’s been somewhere, and it seems safe, it immediately makes me want to check it out.

Xunantunich checked the second box.

We spent two hours in total checking out the ruins, and saw maybe half a dozen other people while we were there, too. After Mexico, I know how tricky it can be to explore Mayan ruins in solitude, but it was simple in Belize. The fact that it’s easily accessible from San Ignacio is just another bonus.

So if you like ruins, or you like exploring kickass sites without the crowds, or you like monkeys that sound like enormous dinosaurs, come to Xunantunich! It’s a wonderful place to spend a few hours.

Does Xunantunich sound like your kind of place? Do you also think that howler monkeys sound like dinosaurs?

Related Articles on Belize

💙 20 Incredible Things to Do in Belize: The 2023 Edition
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🇧🇿 Stepping Back in Time at Cahal Pech
🚌 San Ignacio to Placencia via the Worst Travel Day Ever
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About the author

Lauren Juliff

Lauren Juliff is a published author and travel expert who founded Never Ending Footsteps in 2011. She has spent over 12 years travelling the world, sharing in-depth advice from more than 100 countries across six continents.

Lauren's travel advice has been featured in publications like the BBC, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Cosmopolitan, and her work is read by 200,000 readers each month. Her travel memoir can be found in bookstores across the planet.

7 Comments

  1. October 30, 2016
    Reply

    How lucky to visit a Mayan ruin with no people around! It most have been so peaceful and quiet – apart from the incredibly loud monkeys of course! Why did evolution make them so loud? Ha, do they thrive in empty forests after they’ve driven everything away with their endless shouts? Anyways, as I said before, Belize is an option for my next year’s travel so I love reading this type of posts!

    • November 4, 2016
      Reply

      Your question had me doing some research and I learned that they’re in the Guinness Book of Records for being the loudest land animal in the world! And that the monkeys with the smallest testicles make the loudest sounds! Ha.

  2. Gary Bryan
    July 25, 2018
    Reply

    Her description of the site is spot on! Me and my wife went there on a excursion from our cruise, well worth it!

    • August 3, 2018
      Reply

      Thanks! Pleased to hear that :-)

  3. December 4, 2019
    Reply

    We recently visited Xunantunich. We stayed in closeby San Ignacio. I found your blog as I was looking how to pronounce Xunantunich. Thank you.

    It is a very nice Mesoamerican site indeed. We enjoyed it very much. Hopefully, no one falls from the top so it will remain a place for people to climb for many years.

  4. Jerry
    August 29, 2023
    Reply

    Xunantunich is incredible. Our family visited as part of an excursion from a cruise in 2019. We took the ferry, etc. In our case, the site was much busier, but not overrun by any means. We did notice armed soldiers in the distance, leading us to wonder if robbery, etc. has been an issue.

    My wife and daughters made it to the top of the temple but, alas, my vertigo showed up in a BIG way about two thirds of the way up, so I had to tap out.

    Americans should know this is NOT some gentrified tourist attraction! There are no guard rails, etc. It’s basically like, “OK there it is, you can climb it.” And, as you get higher an higher on the temple, the steps get steeper and narrower!

    BUT…it is a fantastic experience, and the views are incredible (even at 2/3 of the way). My kids later said this was their favorite part of our entire trip.

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