By Nadia Sussman
for the Mercury News

Buried beneath millennia of jungle growth in Guatemala's northern reaches, the ancient Maya metropolis of El Mirador is worth the walking. And walking, and walking some more.

Go now for the rare chance to experience lush tropical forest and have the ancient city — more and more of which is being uncovered by archeologists every year — largely to yourself. Soon, both the wilderness and the solitude may be harder to come by.

	The Mercury News

El Mirador owes its extraordinary state of preservation to its remoteness. About 50 miles from the nearest road, a stone's throw from Mexico, the region is approachable today only by a trek or by helicopter.

But if a coalition of environmentalists, corporate leaders, and politicians has its way, it will soon be become a tourist destination, complete with a narrow gauge train to carry visitors there. The group touts large-scale tourism as the only way to stop illegal logging and encroachment by farmers and ranchers, which has reduced the jungle by 13 percent over the last 21 years.

"The old idea of leaving the forest pretty and green because it's got orchids and monkeys and parrots, and oh my gosh! — and in the states we get this romantic vision of this — it won't work," said archaeologist Richard Hansen, Director of the Mirador Basin Project and head archaeologist at the site. "Because here's a guy, with a little family, they're starving to death, the kids are hungry, they're crying, and what is he going to do? He's going to go out, he's going to do whatever it takes to feed his family. So the idea is — and a lot of times, in this case, it's cutting the forest."

Hansen said the region needs an "economic justification to save the forest." "These cities are crucial to that," he said. "Our bet is that people will come to see this.'' He hopes that in a few years, tourists will number in the tens of thousands, as opposed to the current trickle of hikers and celebrities who arrive by helicopter at a cost of about $1,000 per seat. His many influential supporters include Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom and Hollywood celebrities like Mel Gibson.

Locals and experts are debating how increased tourism will shape economic development in nearby communities. Hansen wants tourism to replace all logging, sustainable or not, in the archaeologically rich area around El Mirador. He says ''the fact this has been opened up for logging is the equivalent of using the Grand Canyon as a landfill for Los Angeles" and that earnings from tourism for local communities will far surpass logging income.

	Jose Fernando uses a metal de-barker to remove the hull from the hardwood logs at the Integral Forest Association of San Andrs lumber yard in San Andrs, Guatemala. (Photo by David M. Barreda) ( David M. Barreda ) Source: Mercury News

His foundation has raised money to rent land from local cooperatives in order to prevent most logging. Environmentalists who have spent more than a decade developing the sustainable forestry model argue that paying people not to log will undermine years of work teaching people how to use forest resources responsibly, something that the Guatemalan government in the 1990s encouraged by granting local towns the right to sustainably harvest wood and plants from certain areas in exchange for patrolling those tracts of jungle. Many communities developed logging cooperatives, but some allowed their tracts to be razed.

Regardless of how the tourism plan turns out, there is still time to explore the region the old fashioned way: on foot and by pack mule.

Before I set off on the two-day jungle trek, Josué Guzmán, a young archaeologist headed there, warned that the trip would be 60 percent mental, 40 percent physical. After several hours on muddy, hoof-pocked trails, his meaning became obvious.

The mud sucked at our feet and threatened to pull our boots off. Conversation dwindled. Darkness fell in a wilderness more remote than most people today have ever experienced. We pressed on with our headlamps, this time to Guzman's quiet mantra, "one hour more," arriving at our bare-bones campsite long after dark. After another, thankfully drier day of walking, we arrived at our destination.

	Carmelita, a town of several hundred, is the northern-most point for trips to the Maya archaeological site El Mirador. From here travelers must load their food, water and other supplies on to mule trains and hike two days into the jungle. (Photo by David M. Barreda) ( David M. Barreda ) Source: Mercury News
	A wood worker turns a wooden table leg, cut from a hardwood tree in a nearby forest, on a lathe in the town of Uaxactn, Guatemala. In the 1990s the Guatemalan government declared large tracts of northern Petn as a nature reserve. In one swoop some existing communities lost their economic livelihood and they organized to form community concessions whereby they could sustainably steward the forest and its lumber. (Photo by David M. Barreda) ( David M. Barreda ) Source: Mercury News
	Julio Fuentes, a Guatemala City-based archaeological worker sits with his hand drum in a boat headed for the island city Flores. Fuentes works for three months a year at the Maya archaeological site of El Mirador. (Photo by David M. Barreda) ( David M. Barreda ) Source: Mercury News
	Carmelita, a town of several hundred, is the northern-most point for trips to the Maya archaeological site El Mirador. From here travelers must load their food, water and other supplies on to mule trains and hike two days into the jungle. (Photo by David M. Barreda) ( David M. Barreda ) Source: Mercury News

After two days in the jungle, El Mirador feels surprisingly urban, even for an abandoned city. Tents occupy the base of the ancient stone-and-lime architecture, with nearby open-air kitchens serving a steady diet of beans, rice and tortillas. The jungle that once fully laid claim to this place has been subtly manicured by the legions of workers and archaeologists who make this their temporary home each year.

During the day, workers from surrounding communities steadily pick, shovel and brush away dirt at excavation pits cut into buildings so thick with overgrowth that they look like hillsides. You can go from one pit to the next and watch as archaeologists uncover everything from giant masks on the sides of temples to household pottery left when the last families took flight.

The largest pyramid, La Danta, exceeds even the pyramids of Egypt in volume, Hansen says. A climb to the top of the mountainlike edifice, offers views of unbroken jungle canopy gently rising over the peaks of pyramids in other Maya cities.

The Maya here were gifted engineers and artists. Along the canals where rainwater collected — the only source of water in a region without lakes or streams — intricate reliefs demonstrate the culture's dedication to public art even on utilitarian structures. The Maya here also left behind freestanding carved reliefs honoring dynastic leaders, and a thousand years later, codex-style ceramics.

Today, technology at El Mirador juxtaposes the modern with the ancient. To store enough rainwater for the dig season, workers have built underground reservoirs based on ancient Maya water systems. At the same time, satellite Internet keeps archaeologists connected to the outside world.Visitors can see ancient burial tunnels and towering twin pyramids, the taller one rising 230 feet above the jungle floor. At a temple known as Structure 34, masks symbolizing the king Great Fiery Jaguar Paw flank huge, curving white steps. Underneath the stairs, archeologists have tunneled to reveal an earlier façade also decorated with masks whose intricate red-and-black paint hints at the original colors of the city.

While the monumental structures bear the glyphs and insignias of kings and deities, they also reveal the traces of the daily lives of common people. Archeologists are excavating neighborhoods where families lived for centuries, and often built new houses on top of the old, until the city's final abandonment around A.D. 900.

Archaeologists for decades have been trying to piece together how and why the Maya collapsed. El Mirador's contribution to the debate is that it pushes back the origin of the Maya several hundred years before what had once been assumed to be the society's peak. Now it's becoming clear that Maya civilization ebbed and flowed several times over more than 1,200 years.

After three days at El Mirador, I was loathe to leave. Riding a mule over the sakbe or ancient causeway on the way out to give my aching feet a rest, I considered it the contradictions. This is a story of a metropolis that for centuries struggled for dominance with the surrounding forest. Now both are endangered by human development.

A train may make El Mirador easier to reach some day, but there's nothing like walking in on your own two feet.

The road to el mirador

Where it is
El Mirador is about four miles south of the Mexican border in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, home to thousands of animal species, including jaguars, tapirs and the scarlet macaw. The reserve was created in 1990 to protect a vast — and shrinking — tropical forest ecosystem and more than a dozen ancient Maya cities shrouded within.

A bit of history
The unpopulated wilderness that surrounds El Mirador once teemed with hundreds of thousands of people, who worked the land intensely, cut trees and diverted massive quantities of rainwater in complex reservoirs.

The city flourished during the pre-classic Maya period from 300 BC until its abrupt fall and abandonment around AD 150. It was later eclipsed in power by Tikal in Guatemala, Copán in Honduras and Palenque in Mexico, among others. El Mirador saw a partial resurgence during the late classical period (AD 600-900). When the last inhabitants left, luxuriant forest engulfed the site.

Why go
Monumental architecture is the mythic draw for most visitors, and it's breathtaking. Each year, the ancient city is temporarily repopulated with more than 200 archaeologists and workers, who are slowly exposing the pyramids and plazas of the city.

Getting there
Here's your dilemma. The archaeological dig season coincides with the rainy period from June to October, when water is plentiful for the camp. So while February to April is the easiest, driest period to travel, you might want to consider slogging in during the rainy season.

The trip to El Mirador begins in the island town of Flores, a regional capital and tourist hub with pastel-colored buildings. The island is on azure Petén Itzá Lake, and the population is largely Spanish speakers of mixed European-indigenous descent.

Flores' businesses largely cater to travelers on their way to the more accessible and better-known ruins of Tikal, a short microbus ride away. Several tour companies also organize small group treks to El Mirador for five to seven days.

From Flores, a microbus will take you three hours up the bumpy road to Carmelita, where the trail departs for El Mirador. The road, which was flanked by dense foliage just 15 years ago, winds through agricultural and ranching settlements that have sprawled as farmers migrate north and ranchers clear-cut for cattle.

Located at the end of the road, Carmelita is a modest town of wood-slat homes arranged around a defunct airstrip. For a century, locals have made their living collecting forest products, such as chicle, a sap used in chewing gum; xate, an ornamental palm frond; and allspice. They also have developed a sustainable logging industry aimed at protecting the forest ecosystem.

Patricia Pinelo, who operates a small store and the town's communal telephones, can arrange treks to El Mirador with advance notice. Men from town serve as the guides and mule-drivers for most hikers. Mules carry clothes, food, water and camping supplies.

The trek
The path to El Mirador, which departs from Carmelita, is deceptively leisurely at first. But the mud and rain and sheer length make it grueling. The trails can be waterlogged and uneven. Rubber boots available at local markets are recommended during the rainy season.

The first day is particularly challenging, as the trails weave back and forth through forested lowland swamps known as bajos. The second day's walk is longer, traversing anr ancient Maya-built causeway that connects the ancient city of Tintal with El Mirador.

Roughing it
Visitors and workers alike stay in tents at simple campsites. Bathrooms consist of latrines hidden with black plastic. Insects are plentiful and hard to avoid. Open-air showers of rainwater warmed on a fire and poured from a bucket are remarkably refreshing after the sticky heat of the day.