One of the main reasons we took the trip to Cancun was so Mary and Mom could have a chance to compare Mayan ruins with Egyptian ruins. We visited, in chronological order, Ek Balam, Chichen Itza (or what Mary and i like to call, chicken pizza), Coba, and Tulum.The picture above is the famous El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza. None of us were impressed. I've never seen Egyptian pyramids in person, but Mary and Mom both say the there's no comparison.
For the most part, the ruins fall into the following two categories: tourist trap or complete disrepair. My favorite site is Ek Balam because it isn't very popular (yet...even though the main structure there is taller than the most popular chicken pizza). We were the first to arrive in the morning and by the time we left after climbing all over the place (not possible at tourist traps) we had only seen two other small groups of tourists. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.The Mexican government is attempting to restore all of their locations, but the projects all have a long way to go. And things didn't exactly start off well. Here are a couple stories we learned to illustrate what i mean.
This picture (you can see Mary & Mom in the upper-left corner) is of the Sacred Cenote that probably gave Chichen Itza its name (the Well of the Itzaes). Sacrificial victims were thrown in. All the ruins of Chichen were purchased in the early 20th century by Edward Thompson, American consul in Merida and Harvard professor. He dredged this cenote and discovered a fortune of gold and jade, which he sent back to the United States and is now displayed at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology. Stories like this are the reason why there aren't any museums at any of the archeological sites. So all you see when you go visit these ruins are, well, ruins.
And here's my favorite story. This building is the Edifice of the Nuns at Chichen Itza (yes, get thee to a nunnery). The structure has a new building constructed over an older one. Le Plongeon, another early 20th century archaeologist, was the first to suspect there was older building inside---so what did he do to uncover it? He used dynamite. KABOOM!Check out more pictures on my flickr. And for my next (and last) most about the Mayan Riviera, i'll show you the fun stuff we did.
3 comments:
Too bad you guys can't climb the Chicken Pizza's temple anymore. MM & I thought it was pretty cool
Wow man - that's really cool stuff. It's sad to hear that things which look so cool in picture are actually tourist traps.
Can I go next time?
We were thinking about going here next year sometime... could you possibly give us a comprehensive list of good places to visit? :)
Merry Christmas!!
Post a Comment