The day before docking at Cozumel the crew explained that five other (much larger) cruise ships are also visiting at the same time, adding over TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND tourists. However, my journey was far inland, so I hoped the crowds would not extend so far.
But that doesn’t mean today wasn’t a long day. This excursion took 13 hours, over 9 of which was travel. I don’t normally sign up for tours where the actual visit is such a small percentage of the total time. However, this is Chichen Itza, a world heritage site. I was not able to visit during my 2023 Grand Voyage due to a local political dispute, so this has remained on my “must see” list for some time. The day began:
- Walk from ship to taxi (15 min)
- Taxi to ferry (15 min)
- Ferry to mainland (45 min)
- Walk thru town to where buses are allowed to park (15 min)
- Bus to the site (3 1/2+ hours)
Reverse all that for returning to the ship. Yesh.
While there were always people around, the site was not too crowded. There were just enough people to give you the scale of the buildings.
Our guide explained that the Maya moved into this region from the South. However, there was a reason it was not populated – while covered with jungle, the land was not fit for food cultivation. It’s all limestone. While that was great for quarrying stone blocks to craft impressive temples, not so much for crop growth. On top of that, there are no surface rivers, it’s all underground streams. Scattered thru out the region are holes with access to the water, called “cenote“. Some of the temples are built over such cenote – escape routes? Doors to the “underworld”? Fresh water access? Who knows.
I initially thought the pyramids were compacted soil with a limestone facade, but our guide says it’s all stone. There is a section where the foundation of Kukulcan is exposed. I appreciate the engineering.
Below you can see how many of the steps were bordered by symbolic snakes, which represented the major gods. The head of the rattlesnake is on the ground, with it’s rattle sticking out at the top of the steps.
However, snakes weren’t the only animals in the limelight. Here is a platform with jaguars.
You may notice some wall carvings here. Seems these platforms were made while the Aztecs started entering into Maya territory. This series of carvings show the Mayan ground-crawling snake with the Aztec flying snake (Quetzalcoatl).
The Mayans were adamant sky watchers and crafted very accurate calendars. Here is an observatory, with it’s unusual round superstructure standing out from the surrounding buildings.
We spent about 90-minutes at the site, walking at a fair pace to stay on schedule. On the annoying side, there were local souvenir sellers all along the paths. No, that’s not accurate. There were souvenir sellers all along the path so long as there was shade. At least they didn’t jump out and accost us.
Lunch was at a near-by hotel. They still had their holiday decorations out, along with a 10-foot tall Christmas tree make of palm leaf fronds.
As I said, a long day. However, I’m glad to have taken the time. If I was visiting longer than a cruise day trip I’d return to spend some real time learning about the history. If you look at the Chichen Itza wiki entry you can see how one of the temples looked before they cleared the jungle growth off of it. I understand why European explorers of the 16th century never found them.