CHI CHI

Chichen Itza is a wonder of the world and so like it or not, since we were this close we had to visit. Friends of ours who had been there a few weeks earlier gave us the best advice we recieved, and that was to get there really early before the tours from Cancun descend. We left Merida on the 6.30 am bus, and go to Chichen around 8.15. We were amongst the first visitors, probably the most important factor in making the experience enjoyable.

The park is very well thought out, from a traveler point of view. They have free baggage storage for our back packs and a bus ticket vendor on site, so we did not need a hostel and could leave for our next destination as soon as we were done visiting the ruins.

The ruins are impressive. The main pyramid, El Castillo,  is first on view. It is huge (25m tall) suberbly restored on two sides while left unrestored on the other two giving us an understanding of what it might have looked like when they found it. A total of 365 steps run up the pyramid, each step for one day in the year. On the solstice, twice a year the sun makes its way up one set of steps. Impressive, given a lot of the ruins are over 2000 years old. The sculptures on the panels are quite beautiful and descriptive. Jaguars, and Eagles with human hearts in their claws, stories of how the beating human heart was removed and then sacrified to Chac Mool etc are etched on these panels. The Mayan relationship with the underworld is fascinating. Everywhere you see images of skulls and skeltons, supposedly the guardians of the underworld. The ball court here is the biggest we've seen, just as everything else is. The Iglesia, and the palace are almost Indian temple in design. The market place, and the the hall of pillars, grupo de mil columnas, that were probably areas where the public got together is impressive. Carving out cylindrical pillars with no machinasation and that too by the 100's is quite amazing. El carasol is the observatory. It has a cylindrical top with windows that are laid out to see particular stars on particular days.

All this would have been more interesting were we allowed to actually interact with some of the ruins like in Palenque. I understand why we are not, but I think this is primarily why I prefer palneque to the rest of the ruins we visited.

The cenote called the Cenote Sacrada is a huge hole in the earth about 25 m across where tons of Mayan artefacts were found including 29 skeletons of children who were sacrificed. It is after this find that they realised that the Mayans did not descriminate between girls and boys when it came to the sacrifices.

Chichen Itza and Palanque show how develped the Mayan civilization was when compared to the Incas, who seemed far less evolved at least architecturally.

The setting is once again a forest and so naturally there is an abundance of wildlife in huge Igaunas who stand around like guards, and a snake that glided past Yannick once again. This is his 3rd snake in close proximity experience ... Yannick thinks the Iguanas believe that their King is buried somewhere here in the ruins which is why they are guarding it against us.

By 11 am the tours descended!! In a few minutes there were a few thousands of loud tourist everwhere we turned. Thankfully we were done and headed out.We took 2nd classe buses to Valladolid and another bus from there to Tulum.