File:Sketch map, Maya ruins in central Acanceh Yucatan, 1977.jpg

The type of thing people did before online maps when one couldn't find a paper map.

A bunch of classmates and I in Merida, Yucatan made a half-day trip to the Maya site of Mayapan. On the way back the bus stopped at Acanceh - looking out the bus window we saw the central plaza of the town had an old a Spanish church one side and and at a right angle a well preserved Maya pyramid. Well, that's something one doesn't see often, even in Yucatan. My friend Ms B and I decided to get off the bus there and check things out, to meet the group back in the city later.

My short account from a letter I wrote to a friend (I kept a carbon copy - another era indeed):
There is modern wall around the pyramid with a locked iron gate. On the other side of the church there is a metal & cement market built by the Mexican Gov’t. We asked some men lying on its steps about getting in the pyramid gate. They pointed us to a pair of blue doors in the long white building on the southern side of the field. B knocked and were greeted by a woman who loaned us two keys on a ring and gave us two little pieces of paper printed by the Federal Treasury for the sum of 3 pesos each. As we didn’t have proper change and neither did she, we took our change in Coca-Cola.
The pyramid on the north side of the field which we first observed is about 6m tall tiered with a stairway down the southern face. To the right of the stairs on the 2nd terrace from the top are some sculpted ornaments. From the well preserved condition I would imagine that it as covered with a superstructure which had recently been removed by archaeologists, but this is just a guess. Some restoration or consolidation work has been done on it, and there is a single spotlight at the foot, which locals told us was only lit on special occasions. From the pyramid’s summit are visible several unexcavated mounds to the north-east.

There is another major pre-Hispanic structure in Acanceh, to reach it we went west one block past the key holder’s house, then turned right down a road with narrow gage rail tracks used for transporting henequen carts. A large mound rises to the right, also surrounded by a wall and locked gate. Upon entrance we climbed to the top along a stepping stone path leading to the stuccoed wall of Acanceh. This was unearthed about 1910, in near-mint condition, considered the finest example of stucco work in Yucatan. Above the cornice of this building are about life size figures of squirrels, serpents, etc. The only protection from the elements is a piece of corrugated metal place over them as a roof; they have decayed considerably since first photographed but are still interesting.

I drew this map after I got back to Merida.