Two full days in Cancun were spent touring some of the local Ancient Mayan ruins. Brett's Aunt scheduled them through Helaman Tours and they were a definite highlight of the trip. Our tour guide, Helaman, specializes in LDS tours which connect the Mayan history to the history told in the Book of Mormon. He was very knowledgeable but what I appreciate most was he didn't try to speculate about what we were seeing. He told us lots about the Mayan ruins, Mayan culture and then let us make the connections. We learned so much that it was hard to capture everything in pictures and now looking back its hard to remember everything but I'll give you a little taste of what we experienced, hopefully I don't say anything incorrect.
Our first stop was Coba.
Coba is an ancient Mayan city nestled in the Jungle. It was a great first stop because we learned many of the basics to look for and recognize in the other locations.
The picture below is the ball court where they played this crazy game. Basically they had a 7-9 pound medicine ball and the goal was the get it through the sideways "hoop" only using their hips.
We also learned about a species of Bee found in the jungle that has no stinger! That sure would make it easier to travel across the ocean with, if ya know what I mean.
There were lots of stone tablet thingies. This picture shows the original stone with a picture version showing what it represents. I believe this one told the story of the High Priest who lived nearby.
There was one large temple (?) that we got to climb up. It was a steep climb up the stairs but the view was worth it. We could see forever in each direction and we could even see other "bumps" that were other ruins.
After a hot humid hike/bike ride in the Jungle we went to a local Cenote where we cooled off by swimming in the fresh water. The cenote was amazing; you climbed down into it and then it was like swimming in an underground pool.
After we cooled off Helaman took us to delicious buffet lunch. Nothing beats good authentic Mexican food in Mexico. Then we drove to the next stop: Tulum.
Tulum is another city, this time by the coast. You can see in the map below that it was complete with an inner wall and outer wall and everything in the city focused around the Temple. There were approximately 50 homes within the outer wall and there were approximately 50 priests at the time. All of the houses also faced east towards the temple. Lots of cool parallels.
The temple itself was quite the structure and had some really interesting details. Above the temple there were 3 spots. One held a carving of the "God of Gods", the next was the "Descending God" and the last one was blank representing the Holy Ghost.
On the back half of the temple there was a lighthouse type deal with two windows. The water surrounding Tulum is full of reefs that made it difficult to navigate. There was only one spot that was passable and a secret trick make it through. If you didn't know the trick, you couldn't get in. Looking toward the temple would guide them through the reef. Pretty good self defense huh!
In addition to being full of history and meaning, the whole place was absolutely beautiful!
It helped that it was right on the ocean.
Tulum was amazing and a great way to end the day.
Up next: Part 2 of the ruins, Ek Balam and Chichen Itza
2 comments:
Great look into your trip! You make me miss the Yucatan! I can't wait to go back someday.
Your trip looks amazing!!! I do have envy. Plus you need to call me and we have to hang out.
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