Thursday, June 27, 2013

Next STOP.......Chichen Itza

Our last day in Cancun we drove out to Chichen Itza.  A large Mayan city that is filled with a lot of symbolism.  We asked for an LDS tour guide as we would have been able to hear about the buildings and symbols from an LDS perspective, but instead we got a guy that had family ancestry.  He was good, but I had to bail about 3/4th of the way through cause the heat was getting to be too much.  Kinda reminded me of being on my mission in Takasaki, where you stepped out of the apartment and just started dripping.


In the center of the city was the big Castillo Pyramid, which has a lot of symbolism.  It has four sides that has 365 steps (which is a 365 days a year/solar year) 52 panels (each year in the Mayan century as well as each week in a year). Inside there is a temple, but you have to get special permissions to enter, had we been able to stay longer the tour guide said he could get us in since he has family ties....next time maybe.  At the base of the pyramid there is a snake head and during the fall and spring equinoxes, the sun's shadow forms a shadow of the snake's body. When we got back to the condo we googled it so we could see how the shadow starts at the top and slowly makes it's way down the base to the head of the snake.  



 Next we headed over to a large court where they played some game that seemed to be a mix of a variety of sports.  There was a ring that that was fairly high on the side of the wall, one on each side of the court.  I guess the game was played in teams and the object was to get the ball through the ring?  The winning captain of the team would offer himself up as a sacrifice and he would be beheaded.  It was an honor in there culture, but not sure if I would be volunteering to lead any team.






They had a lot of little booths of locals trying to sell there trinkets and stuff to all the tourists.  My favorite saying from the vendors, "Almost free!"  When did $25 seem almost free?  I did take advise from a friend of mine before I left to bargain with the locals, which I did try it with one of them.  Although cause I was from the US they all thought that I had a lot of money so he kept trying to tell me it was a deal.  I told him I might be rich in Mexico standards, but I am a poor American.  In the end, not sure who got the better deal of the two of us, but I didn't spend more than I wanted.  Just need a place now to use my little toy. I'm pretty sure that my sister, just like my mom did when we were little, "lost" the toys we brought back for the niece and nephews.  It was a whistle that makes a jaguar sound when you blow through the handmade whistle.   

There was a cenote that was pretty close our guide told us that the kids wanted to go and swim in.  So he said he would take us there.....we thought we were walking, but no he followed us to the van and got in and took us there and then waited while we swam.  It was a very crowded place, maybe cause it was so hot, but it was a very cool place.  My mom kept saying this looks like a place out of the movies. When we got there it was so crowded it was hard to find a place to enter in the water.  We found a place off to the side where they had a ladder, but when I looked into the water, there were all these fish swimming in there....yuck.  I told myself once in a lifetime so I took the plunge, but only stayed about five minutes and had to get out couldn't stand that fish all around me, brushing my feet and hands. Once my mom saw the fish she was not going to get in.  


After the cenote, our tour guides wife owns a restaurant and suggested if we were hungry that we could go there.  We decided since he as so nice and took us around that we would give it a try.  Not too bad.......I sat right by the window so I could watch since they were making everything from scratch right there.  They totally cleaned off the counter space there and threw on white and soap and cleaned it up really good, so that was a bright spot for me....at least I knew they cleaned things.

I got the chicken fajitas which were super delicious....now off to go sit on the beach and watch turtles!

No comments: