Grutas de Juxtlahuaca

The Grutas de Juxtlahuaca are a limestone cave system in the hills of Quechultenango municipality, roughly 50 km south-east of Chilpancingo, reached through the village of Colotlipa. The whole system runs for about 5 km. Water seeping through rock formed in the Cretaceous has filled the chambers with stalactites, stalagmites, helictites and aragonite, and the cave has pools and a lake that visitors wade through. The last chamber is known as the crystal garden for its walls of clear aragonite crystals. The entrance is framed by two huge cocoxóchitl trees.

What makes Juxtlahuaca famous is its paintings. Together with the nearby Oxtotitlán rock shelter, they are counted among the earliest sophisticated painted art known in Mesoamerica, and they are the only deep-cave paintings in Mesoamerica outside the Maya area. The best known, Painting 1, about 2 m tall, shows a bearded figure in a black cape and striped tunic, arms and legs covered in jaguar skin with a jaguar tail hanging behind, holding a trident and a snake-like object over a smaller seated figure; some researchers read it as a sacrifice scene. Nearby are a red feathered serpent with green plumes and a red jaguar. Michael D. Coe dated the paintings to the Preclassic period, and they lie more than a kilometre inside, past the Hall of the Dead, where a dozen ancient skeletons lie under a crust of calcite.

The cave has been known since at least the 1920s. The state government sent Andrés Ortega Casarrubias to explore it in 1958, and the paintings were first documented professionally in the 1960s by Gillett Griffin of Princeton and Carlo Gay. Visits are only possible with a local guide from Colotlipa, who can tailor the route to your time and fitness. Not every section is open, because some passages are too difficult or risky without proper equipment, and a small side cave, Achakalli, is closed to tourists for safety.