Yaxchilán, Chiapas, Mexico
This obscure fourth-century site, along the Usumacinta River at the Guatemala border, draped in thick strangler vines and echoing with shrieking howler monkeys, is a tourist-free standout among Mexico’s many ruins. Visitors approach by boat, then enter through El Laberinto (The Labyrinth), a limestone building with painted stucco panels and topped with decorative cresteríasdedicated to ruler kings like Moon Skull.
Mystery: Yaxchilán was mysteriously deserted in the ninth century, but pilings along each side of the river suggest that it was the site of a sophisticated suspension bridge, previously thought invented in the Western world.
Visit: Travel like Mayans, by water, on Mountain Travel Sobek’s Chiapas Wildlife Adventure, which includes whitewater-rafting runs along the Rio Santo Domingo and stops at Yaxchillán and other ancient ruins. mtsobek.com
—Adam H. Graham
Sergio Alfaro Romero
In 1943, an explosive volcano in Mexico’s remote mountain state of Michoacán began spewing lava, eventually burying the villages of San Juan Parangaricutiro and Paricutín under a coal-black layer of chunky lava.
Mystery: The crucifix-topped bell tower of the San Juan Parangaricutiro Church just so happened to be spared from the destructive lava, while the vacated church’s altar, at the other end of the church, is also entirely intact.
Visit: Abercrombie & Kent’s tailor-made Mexican Colonial Splendors trip takes you to the lava-buried site from the sleepy Purépecha mountain village of Angahuan, 30-minutes away.
—Adam H. Graham
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