While I’d seen many giant stone heads in Mexico, it was an encounter with a ‘wild’ stone head in a field that really excited me.
Rather than a crispy-clean Olmec head in a modern museum.
Such an ‘authentic’ sacred site – a lost head, exists at El Baul in Guatemala.
The Giant Stone Head of Guatemala
El Baul archaeological site seems lost, sitting amid sugarcane about 5 km from the sweltering town of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa.
After leaving the Finca El Baúl – Sugar Refinery HQ and its small museum of Pipil sculpture, which I reached by taxi, I set out on foot towards the fields.
But soon hitched a ride in an old US-school bus taking workers back to town.
They dropped me at a dirt path leading into a jungle of high sugarcane, where I wandered the damp track.
Then a lightning storm came crashing!
My poncho saved me from a soaking – yet I was wet from sweat.
So the rain cooled me.
Locating the stone head was difficult
After 30 minutes, I was ready to give up when I encountered a lone worker—carrying a machete and bag.
In broken Spanish, I explained what I wanted from this jungle of sugar cane.
Walking towards a grassy mound – a lost temple platform; he led me to the ancient stone head.
Facts about the Pipil ruins at El Baul
The ruins of El Baul are from the little-known Pipil civilization and their city of Cotzumalguapa, which flourished from 650 to 950 AD.
“Cotzumalguapa was most likely the seat of a powerful state, which exerted political control over a vast region of the Pacific coast.”
SOURCE: https://web.archive.org/web/20071023135932/http://www.authenticmaya.com/Cotzumalguapa.htm
Of the Pipil ruins in the area, it’s El Baul—aka Cotzumalguapa—that’s the largest and most probably where the king’s palaces were located.
Studies show the city’s wealth derived from the production of cacao, and they traded the seeds across Mesoamerica for ritual drinks.
El Baul remains a sacred site
The site of the El Baul stone head near Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa has been a place of worship for over 1400 years.
Today, Pipil descendants and Maya go to El Baul to pray, light candles and burn copal—pine-incense, and leave offerings of liquor. And, sometimes sacrifice chickens.
The blackened face of the colossal stone head is from the smoke of ritual fires and the wax of dripping candles.
The cane worker was friendly, especially after my tip.
(He deserved it. I’d never found it without him. Probably would’ve gotten lost – since I couldn’t even see a horizon amid the forest of sugarcane).
He happily—but sternly posed for a photo (below).
His expression and cheekbones – strangely similar to the giant stone face of this surreal ancestor.
Do you agree?
Afterwards, he continued homewards.
And I wandered the 5 km back to the town.
People stared at the lone gringo wandering amid their forgotten corner of Guatemala.
All smiles.
Everybody returned my greetings; I’d offered about 100 “Buenas Tardes”—Good Afternoon(s) on my stroll.
And me, still elated with my stone head encounter.
So when arriving in Santa Lucia, I zipped into a dive bar for cold beers and chicas (but that’s another story).
Travels in Guatemala – 2010