This beautiful ruin is located just on the border between the states of Yucatan and Campeche.
Getting to Xkipche was quite an adventure. In the days before I could meet up with my friend Balta, I hired an American who lives in Mexico, Dan Griffin, to take me around. I requested to go to Xkipche one of the days we were together. To do that, we hired a local guide who knew the site and could get us permission (and keys) to go through the 7 or 8 gates we'd have to go through to get across the properties (mostly cattle ranches) in the 4 or 5 kilometres between the main road and the site. We got through the gates without problem, but found the dirt road close to the site a washed out, muddy mess. We had to leave the truck and walk the last couple of kilometres. The site is heavily overgrown, so Oswaldo (our local guide) cleared paths for us with his machete. I remember photographing here when the only sounds were the wind in the trees, the birds and Oswaldo's machete as he cleared paths around this building. It was an amazing experience - a site truly buried in the jungle.
At the end of November, I took my third trip to Mexico since 2014 to photograph Mayan ruins. I visited a number of ruins not open to the public, overgrown and hidden in the jungle, in order to continue working on my
series of infrared images of Mayan Ruins. Many people think that the large ruins (Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Labna, Sayil, etc.) comprise the totality of Mayan civilization in the Yucatan, but there are literally hundreds of smaller or satellite cities spread throughout Yucatan and Campeche. I am so drawn to these beautiful, sometimes remote, ruins, partially overgrown, but still standing after more than a thousand years.
If you'd like to read about this trip, I have a
blog post about it that you might enjoy.
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