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Museo El Baúl

TIME : 2016/2/18 15:48:08

This museum, about 2.75km on foot or 5km by vehicle from the El Baúl hilltop site, comprises a very fine open-air assemblage of Pipil stone sculpture collected from around Finca El Baúl's sugarcane fields. A large stone jaguar faces you at the entrance.

Other figures include four humans or monkeys with arms folded across their chests; a grinning, blank-eyed head reminiscent of the one at the hilltop site; carvings of skulls; and, at the back, a stela showing a personage wearing an animal headdress, standing over a similarly attired figure on the ground: seemingly winner and loser of a ball game.

To get there, if driving, leave town northward on the road passing El Calvario church. From the intersection just past the church, go 2.7km to a fork in the road just beyond a bridge; take the left fork and follow the paved road 3km to the headquarters of the Finca El Baúl sugarcane plantation. Buses trundle along this road every few hours. (If you're on foot, you can walk from the hilltop site back to the crossroads with the paved road. Cross the road and continue along the dirt track. This will eventually bring you to the asphalt road that leads to the finca headquarters. When you reach the road, turn right.)

Approaching the finca headquarters (6km from Santa Lucía's main square), you cross a bridge at a curve. Continue uphill and you will see the entrance on the left, marked by a guard post and a sign 'Ingenio El Baúl Bienvenidos.' Tell the guards that you would like to visit the museo, and you should be admitted. Pass the sugar refinery buildings to arrive at the museum on the right.