Mayan Ruin New Year’s Day!

We have been planning our trip to Chichen Itza for about a month now, and our tour could not have been better!

At 7:30am, Alvaro pulled up to our hotel in a private car to take us to Cobá, an ancient Mayan settlement, a Cenote, and Chichen Itza. All of the sites are about 2 hours away from where we are staying in Cancun, so having comfortable transportation is important. We had heard about the nightmare four hour bus ride that stops every time someone raises their hand, and we did not want to travel like that. 

After taking two lane rodes through jungly small villages, we pulled right up to the front of the parking lot at Cobá. Cobá was the center of trade in the area for the Mayans. It has two near by lakes, and had an intrecate road system. Alvaro got us tickets, and in the gates we picked up bikes. I didn’t realize how spread out or big the complex was, so the bikes under the shady patches were great! I waved to the sad walking tourists. 

At the end of the bike trail, there was bike parking. At this point you still couldn’t see the pyramid because of all the trees, so Syd and I just followed Al. All of a sudden we came to a clearing and boom, a monument. 

No helmet selfies on a bike are not encouraged, but necessary when in the jungle!

Cobá has 120 steps. It is one of the few Mayan pyramids that you can still climb. It is steep and slippery limestone, but Al told us the trick. If you zig zag up, it is way easier than going straight up the rope. We passed tourists who were out of breath and scared of heights. It looked like a long trip down for them. 

The view from the top. 

At Cobá we also saw the stadium for the ancient ball game. This was central to Mayan culture and every village has one. They played the game with a rubber ball and tried to get it through the hoop by using their body, knees, or head. No hands or feet! It’s a basketball soccer cross. 

A carving of a player/warrior with a snake. The winner was scarified to the gods and reveered. A lot was at stake for those athletes!

Our next stop was one of the many cenotes in the Yucatan. Cenotes are limestone caves that were formed after a meteor hit the earth. After millions of years, water has flowed through and many of them are connected. This particular one has been commercialize for tourists to swim. 

I really liked the vines!

After a questionable buffet lunch at the cenote restaurant (it came with our tour, so we were as polite as we could), we got back in the car for the five minute drive to Chichen Itza. Cobá was a cool introduction to the big ruins, so we were even more excited to see Chichen Itza. 

Cars, vendors, tourguides lined the driveway up to the parking lot, but Al had serious connections so we passed all of that and parked in the front row again!

The entrance line was Disneyland like, super long! We were happy to skip it. 

We walked a little ways up a trail and came to a huge clearing. The Chichen Itza pyramid towers over all of the tourists and is even more impressive in person. Everything was intentionally engineered when build. There are exactly 365 steps that goes along with the calendar. On the solstices light shines through the windows and creates a snake pattern down the side. So cool and amazing they did this with their own technology and understanding of math. 

Al said about 7-10,000 people visit every day. More on the solstice. 

We saw another, even bigger, stadium. There were carvings in the side showing the team had 7 players and the 7th was beheaded so we knew who was the winning team. 

The only round structure we saw today was the observatory. The Mayans studied the sky and constellations. After seeing so many right angles, this building was really cool!

The trek to Chichen Itza is totally worth it. We were very grateful to Alvaro who took care of us and shared with us all kinds of information. Traveling and sight seeing gives perspective and gratitude and today was an amazing way to start the new year.