El Mirador

There's a small working team of archaeologists at El Mirador, excavating and guarding it from looters. The only permanent building at the site, and probably the only permanent building within a couple of days' walk (apart from the pyramids, of course) is used to store a collection of incredible finds and artifacts before they're taken back to the university in Guatemala City. The pots and bowls in the picture are nearly 2,000 years old; to see them and feel their weight and texture was an amazing thing.

The archaeologists have their work cut out - everywhere around the pyramids there are pieces of stone too regular to be naturally shaped, and shards of earthy red pottery undisturbed for centuries. The picture top right is of a piece of stone with an eye carved onto it we found on top of La Danta. The "pictures of pictures" are pages from National Geographic magazine, artists' impressions of what the city now called El Mirador would have looked like at its height, when it was home to 10,000 people for several centuries.

But now nature has reclaimed it and the Mayans who built it have disappeared (although it was two of their ancestors who helped us get there). The forest seems barely to have noticed the rise and fall of a civilisation; on top of the pyramids, in the cool, still air, the insects and birds call to each other exactly as they always have done, and the tops of the trees reach upwards and create a quiet, unstoppable roar as the breeze runs through them. Nothing here has changed for hundreds of thousands of years.

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