I face the harsh reality that no one who reads this blog will ever understand want I have seen in the last 5 days unless they too have been. I have now visited about a dozen ancient Mayan cities, some of them dating back to 1800 BC and each one amazes me a little more than the previous. Part of it may be that I am also taking classes about the Mayan culture that help me understand how truly advanced this civilization was, but my pictures just never do any justice to the remarkable architecture of the buildings and the beautiful art that decorates them. I left last Wednesday for a 4 day trip through part of the Mayan world in the Southeast of the Yucatan Peninsula. I saw the ancient cities of Cobá, Muyil, Xelha, Tulum, and Ek Balam. I also swam in the sacred cenotes that were the source of water or these cities as well as a common place of sacrifice. My favorite by far was the city of Ek Balam. The way that most of these cities are arranged is very symbolic of where the power in the city would lie. For example there is often a giant pyramid (usually decorated with the heads of a certain god), and then an alter close by to show that the gods had a very large role. Then there are government buildings and official's palaces facing the courtyard in front of the pyramid. And as the buildings get further away from the center of the city their importances lessens. This is why common people usually lived a pretty good distance away from the center of the city. But the part that strikes me the most is the preservation of decorations and hieroglyphics that are still readable today. In Ek Balam there is part of the facade of the King's Palace (the most beautiful building I've ever seen by the way) that was perfectly retained because a giant tree formed an air bubble around it. This air bubble kept the original stucco in place. You will be able to see it in the pictures below, but just try and imagine that every building that you see in the pictures used to have stucco on it like the first picture with engravings and statues, and the entire building would have been painted with very bright colors. This is how the entire empire would have appeared. Unbelievable! Here are a few pictures that can try and portray what I just experienced.

Can you imagine from these first two pictures what it would have been like to see all of the buildings with their original stucco and bright colors? This is amazing!


This is the ball court at Cobá

cool skeleton carving in the ball court

Coba pyramid

Temple of the goddess of fertility. It has an astronomical observatory on top (the round thing)

This is an artificial canal the Mayans made through the laguna to the ocean for a trade route. To this day they have no idea how they were capable of it.

Can you see the soldier hidden in the stone on the corner?

Oh yeah, and we slept in cabins on this beach...