The land begins to undulate more and more violently and the mountains grow closer and on the mountains we can now see the forests, a dangerous green spilling thickly down the slopes. We pass a horseback rider sitting straight in his saddle, a rifle strapped to his shoulder, the muzzle jutting forward, serving as an armrest. Finally, in the middle of a valley, on the banks of a slow river, ringed with high hills, we find San Ignacio.

We wait at the end of a long one-lane bridge for a rickety red truck to pass before Canek drives us across the Macal River. The metal surface of the bridge rattles loudly beneath us. Canek takes us through the twists and turns of the town, filled with old storefronts and narrow streets, and then we are back on the Western Highway, traveling toward the ruins of the Mayan stronghold of Xunantunich.

“The word means ‘stone maiden,’ ” says Canek as he drives us further on the paved road, alongside a wide shallow river. “The legend is that one of its discoverers saw the ghost of a woman on the ruins. It is set on a level hilltop overlooking the Mopan River and it guarded the route from the great city of Tikal, now in Guatemala, to the sea. It was a ceremonial center, along with Caracol, to the south, when this area had a greater population than the entire country of Belize has now. There was an earthquake in the year nine hundred that caused the abandonment of the city.”

“It’s amazing,” I say, “how the Maya just disappeared.”

“But that’s not right,” says Canek. “We haven’t disappeared at all.”

I turn and stare at him. He is very serious and his broad cheekbones suddenly look sharper than before.

“I didn’t know you were Mayan.”

“We have our own villages here and in Guatemala where we continue the old ways, at least some of the old ways. We don’t go in for human sacrifice anymore.” He smiles. “Except for during festival days. This is San Jose Succotz. The first language here is Mayan.”

He pulls the car off the road onto a gravel shoulder. To our left is a village built into a hillside. A pair of ragged stands flank a small drive that leads straight into the water to our right. On the far shore of the river is a wooden ferry, short and thick and heavy, big enough to hold one car only. We wait in the car for the ferry to make its way to our side of the river. Boys come to the car’s window, offering slate trinkets and carvings with Mayan designs. “You buy here when you come back,” says one of the boys to me. “Don’t believe what they say on the other side, they are escaped from the hospital, you know, the crazy house.” On the other side I see more boys waiting to sell their slate. Further down the river, women are scrubbing laundry against the rocks and children are splashing in the water.

When the ferry arrives, its leading edge of wood coming to rest on the gravel drive, Canek slowly pulls the car down the small drive and onto the ferry. An old ferryman patiently waits for Canek to situate the car in the middle before he begins to twist the crank that winches the wire that drags the ferry back across the river. The water is calm and the ferry barely ripples as the old man draws us forward with each turn of the crank. Canek and the ferryman talk in a language which is decidedly not Spanish. “We were speaking Mopan,” he says. “This village is Mopan Maya. I am Yucatec Maya but I know this dialect as well as my own.”

When the ferry reaches the far bank, Canek drives the Trooper off onto another drive, takes a sharp right, and begins the climb up the rough, rock-strewn road that will take us to the ancient fortress. Canek tells me we are only a mile and a half from the Guatemalan border. After a long uphill drive we reach a parking grove. When Canek steps down from the car he pulls from it a canteen of water and a huge machete, which he slips into a loop off his pants.

“That’s a fancy knife,” I say.

“The jungle overgrows everything in time,” he says.

As we climb the rest of the way, mosquitoes hover about my face and from all around us comes the manic squall of wildlife. The jungle rises along the edges of our path, green and dark and impenetrable. Canek, ever the perfect guide, offers me the canteen he carries and I stop to drink. Finally, out of the dark canopy of jungle we come upon the ceremonial plaza of Xunantunich.

The plaza is bright with sun, verdant with grasses and cohune palms and the encroaching jungle, as flat as a putting green. At the edges of the plaza hummingbirds hover among brilliant tropical flowers, darting from one bright color to another. Rising from the verdant earth in great piles of plant-encrusted rock are the remains of huge Mayan structures. There is something frightening in the immensity and the solidity of these ancient things, once hidden by centuries of jungle growth, like painful truths that have been unearthed. And dominating it all to our left, like the grandest truth of all, is El Castillo, a huge man-made mountain of rock.

Canek gives me the tour, as authoritative as if he had lived here when the plaza was still alive. He shows me a ceremonial stone bench in one of the temples and a frieze of a king and his spiritual midget in the little museum shack. “Midgets are sacred to the Maya,” says Canek. “They are the special ones, touched by God as children, which is why they have stopped growing. They are able to journey back and forth between this world and the underworld. Some still claim to see the sacred little ones walking along the roads.” He takes me to the residential buildings off the plaza, hacking with his machete through the jungle to get us there, and shows me the ball yard, a narrow grassy alley between the sloping sides of two of the temples. “The games were largely ceremonial,” says Canek, “and the ceremony at the end involved the sacrifice of the losers.”

“And I thought hockey was tough,” I say.

We make our way around the grounds until we face the immensity of El Castillo, which towers above us, cragged and steep, stained green with life, banded with a reconstructed frieze of beige.

“Can we climb it?” I ask.

“If you wish.”

“Let’s do it.”

I take a drink of water and we begin to ascend the long wide steps along the north side of El Castillo. The thing we are climbing is a ruin in every sense of the word, churned to crumbling by the jungle, but as we turn from the wide steps and climb off to the left and around, past the huge ornate glyphs of jaguars reconstructed on that side, the structure of the artificial mountain becomes clearer. It is a tower built upon other towers, an agglomeration of buildings perched one atop the next. From the path on the east side the vista is magnificent but Canek doesn’t stop here. He takes me around to the south side, where a set of steps leads to a wide plateau. We scoot around a narrow ledge to a balcony with steep walls on either side and a broad view east, into the jungles of Belize.

“You can go farther up,” says Canek.

“Let’s go then.”

“You should go alone, Victor. It is better alone.”

He gives me a drink of water. I look again down from the balcony and realize I am already over a hundred feet above the plaza. I take another drink and then head back, across the narrow ledge, to the south side. It appears there is no way up but then I spot a narrow set of stairs cut into the stone. I climb them, one hand brushing the wall, to a ledge where I find a similar set of narrow stairs, this set leading up to a high room, stinking incongruously of skunk. There is no way out of that room, but I follow the ledge to the west, to another room, with a set of steep stone stairs spiraling up through a hole cut into the room’s ceiling. I grab the steps above me to keep me steady and begin my climb. Slowly I rise through the ceiling and then step onto a narrow plaza with five great blocks of stone, seated one next to the other, like five jagged teeth. I am so relieved to be again on solid ground that it takes me a moment to calm myself before I look around. When I do my breath halts from the sight.