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A tour of the three Pipil sites around Santa Lucia can be an exhausting and frustrating process, taking you through a sweltering maze of cane fields. Doing the whole thing on foot is certainly the cheapest way - you can find children in the plaza or by asking in your pension who'll act as guides - but it's far easier to hire a taxi in the plaza; reckon on US$10 to visit all three sites. If you want to see just one of them, choose Bilbao, just 1km or so from the centre of town, which features some of the best carving. If you get lost at any stage, ask for " las piedras ", as they tend to be known locally. In 1880, more than thirty Late Classic stone monuments were removed from the Pipil site of Bilbao , and nine of the very best were shipped to Germany. Four sets of stones are still visible in situ, however, and two of them perfectly illustrate the magnificent precision of the carving, beautifully preserved in slabs of black volcanic rock. To get to the site, walk uphill from the plaza, along 4 Av, and bear right at the end, where a dirt track takes you past a small red-brick house and along the side of a cane field. About 200m further on is a fairly wide path leading left into the cane for about 20m. This brings you to two large stones carved with bird-like patterns, with strange circular glyphs arranged in groups of three: the majority of the glyphs are recognizable as the names for days once used by the people of southern Mexico. In the same cane field, further along the same path, is another badly eroded stone, and a final set with a superbly preserved set of figures and interwoven motifs. The second site is about 5km further afield in the grounds of the Finca El Baul , reached by following 3 Av, the only tarmacked road that heads north out of town. The hilltop site has two stones, one flat and carved in low relief, the other a massive half-buried stone head, with wrinkled brow and patterned headdress, possibly that of Huhueteotl, the fire god of the Mexicans, who supported the sun. The site itself is still actively used for pagan ceremonies, particularly by women hoping for children or safe childbirth. In front of the stones is a set of small altars on which local people make animal sacrifices, burn incense and leave offerings of flowers. The next stones of interest are at the finca itself, a few kilometres further away from town, where the carvings include some superb heads, a stone skull, a massive jaguar and an extremely well-preserved stela of a ball-court player (monument 27) dating from the Late Classic period. Alongside all this antiquity is the finca's old steam engine, a miniature machine that used to haul the cane along a system of private tracks. As the finca has its own bus service you may be able to get a ride: buses leave from the Tienda El Baul, a few blocks uphill from the plaza, four or five times a day, the first at around 7am and the last either way at about 6pm. On the other side of town is the third site, at Finca Las Ilusiones , where there's another private collection of artefacts and some stone carvings. Perhaps the most striking figure here is a pot-bellied statue (monument 58), probably from the middle Preclassic era. There are several other original carvings, including some fantastic stelae, plus some copies, and a small museum crammed with literally thousands of small stone carvings and pottery fragments. To get there , walk east along the highway for about 1km, and turn left by the second Esso station.
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