#2280 Chichen Itza, Suytun and Valladoilid

While we were in Mexico, I only went on one excursion, and it was a doozy. I have wanted to see Chichen Itza, and the tour operator at the resort had a pretty good deal on this trip. It was a small group: there were just seven of us and we were all staying at the same resort, so it was fairly private. The two couples were from Canada. We had a semi-nice van and an English speaking guide named Alfredo. I thought the price was pretty good too, $125/person.

We loaded into the van around 8AM and made our first stop at a gas station/convenience store in Playa del Carmen. Alfredo bought snacks and drinks for us there. Back in the van, Alfredo gave us a lot of information about the Riviera Maya and what we would be seeing that day. I was interested in what he had to say and when he was done talking, I fell asleep. He told us we were about two hours away from the site and he talked for about half an hour, so I must have slept for 90 minutes.

There was a lot of people going into the site that day, but something tells me that it wasn't close to what they get in the high season. Of course, the site is large with many open spaces so it didn't seem very crowded.

My least favorite thing about the place, and I'll just get this out of the way right off the bat, is that vendors are allowed to sell their wares on-site and there are over 1,500 vendors set up in there, all selling pretty much exactly the same crap. Many of the vendors offered a ceramic jaguar's head and when you blow into it, it makes a jaguar sound. There are also bird and monkey ceramics that make noise. Super irritating. Here is a photo of one part of one trail and all the vendors set up on the side of the trail:

In my humble opinion, it detracts from the site. In no other place I have been were vendors allowed to sell within the site. Sure, there are plenty of vendors outside the parks, but not inside. At Angkor Wat there was one vendor who sold drinks and souvenirs, but they were outside the main temple complex when you were passing from one temple, Angkor Wat, to another, Bayon.

On with the story. Chichen Itza was a Maya city between 600 AD and 1200 AD. Thousands of people were said to have lived in and around the city. The biggest structure is El Castillo, the Temple of Kukulcan. It might be the largest structure I have seen at Maya ruins. The temples at Tikal are big, but this thing is huge.

What I found most fascinating about it and about the Maya in general is their math skills. The whole temple is based on the calendar. There are nine levels and those represent the pregnancy cycle. The Maya were all about fertility. There are 91 steps on each of the four sides of the temple. 91 four times is 364, representing the days of the year. There's also something about the number 260 which has to do with religious ceremonies. Pretty much everything they built had to do with the numbers I just talked about. That is true in all the Maya ruins I have visited.

One new thing I learned was that all the structures were painted at the time of their occupation. All of the paints were organic, and said to have been the pastels favored in the Caribbean nations now. I had never heard that before and I had a hard time wrapping my brain around El Castillo being a shade of light pink, maybe.

Once a year, two teams of seven players each would come to Chichen Itza to participate in a ball game. I don't know if the ball game had a name; it was played in what is always referred to as the ball court. I've seen ball courts in Coba and I think in Tikal as well, but they were small compared to the ball court at Chichen Itza. This ball court must have been the Super Bowl of Ball Game.

That's our guide, Alfredo, in the white shirt. The two walls are the barriers of the ball court. The object was for the players to bounce a rubber ball off their hip, elbow or shoulder through the circle you can see up high on either side. Click on the photo to enlarge so you can see the circles. Use of hands or feet were prohibited. The circle is seven meters high. I can't even imagine how a goal was accomplished. It only took one goal to win. The reward for winning was being sacrificed.

Yep, the winning team, all seven of them, were sacrificed. It was a great honor, we were told. They were ceremoniously escorted by the losing team to the sacrifice temple.

This is the sacrifice temple. Do you see at the top of the stairs there is a little statue? That's Chacmool, where the sacrifices were done. He looks like this:

photo from the internet

The winning player would lay on his back so that his chest would be open. His arms and legs and head would be held. The priest would then cut out the player's beating heart, then the player's head would be chopped off. Their bodies, heads and hearts would then be thrown into the Sacred Cenote. It was sort of a "back to the womb" thing.

Here's a photo of the Sacred Cenote:

The water is all green and kind of stagnant. We were high above it. You can't go down in there, thank goodness. Pretty gnarly story, huh?

The ancient Maya were hardcore.

Family photo!

There are a few other structures, like a Venus temple and the cemetery structure and a few other things. There are some carvings still showing on some of the structures. I liked all these skull carvings on the cemetery structure.

Usually before I go somewhere cool like Chichen Itza, I do a bunch of research about the place so I know what to look for and a bit of history on the place. Since I wasn't expecting to go to this site, I was unprepared and I feel sad about that. I feel like I want to know more and see it again someday. The stuff I wrote about here was what I heard from Alfredo. He talked a lot but didn't tell us about all the structures. I need more. Maybe someday.

From Chichen Itza we went about half an hour down the road to the Suytun cenote. Apparently this was another sacred cenote to the Maya and I think sacrifices may have occurred in the cavern. Again, I did not research this site since I didn't know I'd go there and I'd never heard of it! There was a big gift shop and we bought some stuff (of course). There is also a restaurant onsite where we had lunch. I thought it was good. It was a buffet featuring salad, noodles, cochinita pibil (my favorite!), chicken, and rice and beans. There was also a "lime soup" that was delicious. It was chicken broth with some tomato and subtle lime flavor. I liked it a lot.

After lunch we were able to go into the cenote cavern. It was far underground. I wish I had taken a photo of the stairs going down to the cenote, but I didn't because frankly, I am a bit claustrophobic and it took every bit of courage and fortitude I had to do down into the cave. I was hanging on for dear life to the little rope handrail. The stairs were steep and narrow and there were a lot of them. I did not swim. There are fish in that water. I saw them.

Maybe you are asking what a cenote is. The Riviera Maya has the longest system of underground rivers in the world (Alfredo said). Cenotes are sinkholes. There are many cenotes in the Yucatan and several are open for swimming. MT has now been to at least three different cenotes.

I just read on the internet that Suytun is the most Instagrammable cenote. There were a bunch of people taking photos down there. It's pretty dark though.

She's hitting her angles

There is a concrete platform out into the water that has the widest part right under the opening at the top. In this photo, it kind of looks like the opening is on the side, but that is where the light is reflecting. It is interesting. Here's another view of the platform from above, (but at the bottom of the stairs to get in and out of the cavern).

The final stop on the tour was the Colonial city of Valladolid. A Colonial city is one that the conquering nation took over; in this case Spain was the conqueror. The native Maya still lived in the city but were not allowed in some parts of the town. We just went to the main square and looked at the church and strolled a little. We also ate coconut ice cream that wasn't actually very coconut tasting at all. It was refreshing though, and I don't even like ice cream.

Here are a couple of photos:

the church

The square...and there's T!

Again, I felt at a disadvantage because I knew nothing of the history of this town. I felt like I was walking around ignorant, because I didn't know what I was looking at, and mute because I couldn't speak the language. Frustrating. I think that was just me though. Everyone else seemed content to wander and just look at stuff. Everyone there speaks English anyway. It seems like everyone I met in Mexico is at least bi-lingual and many know more than two languages.

I don't know how long exactly it took to get back to the resort. I wasn't really paying attention, but I'd guess about 90 minutes. I mostly read during the ride back. It was a long day, but it was interesting and fun to spend time with MT and T.