STEVE SWENSON: Head out on Cancun adventure
| Saturday, Jan 21 2012 06:30 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Jan 21 2012 06:30 PM
When you come to Cancun for a good time, forget the beautiful babe on the beach. Or better yet, take her with you. To Chichen Itza.
That's what I did. I took my wife to this fascinating Mayan ruins site, whose centerpiece pyramid, El Castillo -- or the Temple of Kukulkan -- was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World after a global vote in 2007.
The wonder is the history of this place, the design of structures to highlight the sun and the heavens, and the huge human endeavor using only hammers and chisels to build limestone monuments that have lasted for centuries. That plus an organized system of human sacrifice, ranging from the poor to nobility, leaves a visitor scratching his head and wondering just how sharp those sacrificial implements could be.
We were among a typical 2,000 to 3,000 people a day who visit the site, although those numbers jump to more than 10,000 on the equinoxes, said Noe Trejo, a guide with the Cancun Passion tour bus.
Our tour, which began at the hotel and resort beach and bayside strip east of downtown Cancun, began at 7 a.m. and returned at 6:30 p.m. or so. It cost $109 for an adult and included a continental breakfast aboard the bus, an impressive buffet lunch at the Hacienda Xaybe'h, complete with dancing performances, a brief tour of the nearby Valladolid community, a restroom stop at a Mayan commercial area and a walking tour of the grounds with water bottles.
Guide Antonio Cantu gave a talk on Mayan history on the bus and noted that Mayan homes were oval-shaped one-room affairs with two doors and hammocks to sleep on. Despite the heat of the peninsula, they remained cool, he said.
The full bus of tourists was put in a good mood by food server and comedian Carlos Romero, who explained the day's events. With a gleaming smile, Romero assured us, "We are not a time share -- you can trust us."
Ancient ruins
Mayan civilization dates back more than 3,000 years and centers in the rain forests and mountains of what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize -- the land between North and South America. Chichen Itza is in the mid-Yucatan Peninsula, which features tourist mecca Cancun on its northeast side and several other Mayan sites.
Mayans are believed to have migrated across a land bridge between Asia and North America during the last great ice age, about 2,600 years ago.
The glory years of the Mayan people were from about 250 to 900 A.D., with Chichen Itza rising out of the thick but relatively low-level jungles in about 600 A.D. Small homes were built in the area around 325. The bigger structures were made after 600 and it is believed El Castillo was built around 800, according to historical accounts.
By 1000, wars led to the abandonment of the site, though some people continued to live in the area only to be greeted by Spanish conquistadors in about 1250.
Various projects have restored some of the major buildings at the site and workers were busy during our visit a few months ago working on the Great Ball Court, where members of the nobility divided up into two teams, ending in the decapitation of the losing captain by a machete-wielding winning captain.
It was a high honor to be one of the seven players on each team, which included the captain, explained Trejo.
The spilling of blood was to feed the gods, he said. The game, called pokpapok, involved a heavy rubber ball, which team members bounced around with their hips, knees and elbows (no hands or feet), trying to get it into a stone ring about 29 feet off the ground, he said. The teams had no contact with each other and each team played on one side of an I-shaped field. The 4-pound ball was a little larger than a softball and the ring hole was about 1 foot in diameter.
Spectators would sit above on the stadium perimeters.
There were two other kinds of human sacrifices. Priests chose men, women or children to be sacrificed at the top of the pyramid. Some went willingly and others did not, Trejo said. The sacrifices included giving the subjects a painkiller before the priest would slash open their chests and rip their heart out. Gods were said to be pleased with the blood.
The third form of sacrifice was jumping into Cenote Sagrado (sacred cenote, a water-filled sinkhole). People would be laden with jewelry and drown as a way to ask the rain god, Chaac, for a downpour, Trejo said. Some 25,000 pieces of gold, jade, obsidian and other jewelry as well as 200 skeletons were recovered from the cenote bottom hundreds of years later, he said.
The sinkhole is part of a system of underground rivers on the peninsula, he explained. On the tour we took, the bus stopped at a cenote in a cave with refreshingly cool water where a fair number took a dip. No one sank to the bottom.
Modern Mayans have long since stopped the human sacrifices, but they enjoy a swim in the cenotes, Trejo said.
With the ball court bordering one side of the Chichen Itza site, the opposite side is the misnamed 1000 Columns and a building known as the Temple of the Warriors. Trejo said there are only about 240 columns and back in the day they supported roofs that formed around a marketplace that served up to 60,000 people.
Clearly the heart of the area is the El Castillo or Temple of Kukulkan. Rock snake heads on the north side are a reminder the 79-foot-high temple was built to honor the serpent god, Kukulcan. It took about 12,000 workers about five years to build the structure using only rudimentary tools.
During the spring and fall equinoxes (March 21 and Sept. 22 when day and night are equal), a series of triangular shadows on the western edge of the northside steps appear to be a feathered-serpent wriggling down the staircase ending at the snake head. It appears in the afternoon and was believed to be the ultimate fertility symbol.
If you clap your hands in front of the same steps, you hear an odd echo. It is a quick, descending tone that some believe is the cry of the quetzal bird.
El Castillo represents the Mayan calendar, which dates back to the 5th century B.C., more than 300 years before the Julian (Julius Caesar) calendar in 45 B.C. and the Gregorian (Pope Gregory XIII) calendar in 1582. The Mayan calendar is more accurate (365.242036 days) than the Julian (365.25 days) or the Gregorian (365.2425) in setting leap years of 366 days every four years and the equinoxes.
El Castillo has four sets of 91 steps (364) plus a grand step at the top for 365 days. It also has 52 rectangular panels on each side, which doesn't equate to 52 weeks a year, but rather a 52-year cycle in which the civilization's two calendars -- one a 365-day year and the other a 220-day year -- match up.
Of particular note is Dec. 21, 2012, which many Mayan people believe will usher in the end of the world. Others, such as Trejo, believe it will signify the dawning of a new era. Stay tuned.
The north side of the pyramid is the best reconstructed side. The other sides are in disrepair, due in part to people taking rocks from it to use in constructing a nearby hotel and a church, Trejo said. Those buildings aren't likely to return the treasures, he said.
As recently as 2005, people could walk in and upon some of the ruins, including El Castillo, Trejo said. But vandalism in the form of carving initials and dates led to a ban of such activities in 2006, the same year that vendors were allowed to begin selling their wares at the site.
Six years ago there were no vendors; now there are about 800, including those who interrupt tours with sales pitches of "only one dollar" or "almost free." Trejo said many of the vendors are his friends, but he believes they should all be required to stay outside of the ruins site.
Inside El Castillo is another temple that includes a coveted throne in the shape of a jaguar painted red with spots of inlaid jade. Jaguars roamed the area but are extinct there now, Trejo said. A white jaguar is visible on the west side of the grounds in a building near the Great Ball Court.
Temples were built to show the strength of the rulers of the communities, Trejo said.
A building visible from the tour site but not near where guides take people is an ancient observatory (similar in shape to the Lick and Palomar observatories in California) that has six rectangular windows used by priests to chart the rising and setting positions of the sun, moon and planet Venus.
If there was any complaint about the tour we went on at Chichen Itza, it was that there was so much to see and learn about the site that the tour didn't offer enough time. The hunger for knowledge outweighed the time for giving it.
Steve Swenson is a retired Californian reporter who contributes occasional travel pieces.
