What a Load of Bloggers: February 2017

We thoroughly enjoyed our two weeks in Mexico. The Mexican people were exceptionally friendly, polite and welcoming. Saw lots of wildlife, including iguana, pelicans, turtles, frigate birds and this coati mundi.

Tulum

Tulum is most famous for being the only ancient Mayan site on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. Tulum sits on a small cliff, with access to the beach below. Named Tulu’um by the Maya, translated to the ‘Walled City’, you can easily see the wall built around this ceremonial city, an architectural addition found in few Mayan sites.

Archaeologists refer to the Tulum Ruins as Zama, the original Mayan name which means ‘The City of Dawn’ due to its positioning towards the morning sunrise.

Tulum was a productive port for the Maya, built and occupied during 1200 A.D. to mid 1500 A.D. The site was abandoned in the late 1500s with documentation showing that residents were hit by disease, spread by Spanish conquerors.

Following the morning visit to Tulum we went snorkelling and swam with turtles. We had to wear buoyancy jackets and so could not dive down amongst the rays.

Coba

Archaeologists learned about Coba in the 1800s but dense jungle and lack of funds made the area hard to penetrate. It is still largely unexcavated. 120 steps lead up to the top of the Nohoch Mul pyramid, which is 137 feet tall. This is the tallest temple pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula. The entire site spreads over more than 30 square miles. At about 900 or 1000 AD, Coba began a lengthy power struggle with Chichén Itzá, with the latter winning and becoming the power of the Yucatan. It is believed that the Coba settlement was finally abandoned when the Spanish conquered the Peninsula around 1550.

Getting to the top is straightforward but you have to be very careful coming down. I imagine that in the not too distant future the Mexican authorities will stop people climbing on the pyramid, as they have done at Chichén Itzá.

The Yucatan peninsula is almost completely covered in jungle and about 2 million Mayans live there. Many speak only their particular Mayan language and live off the land. The Mexican government does much to support the lives of the Mayan people and to ensure that Mayan traditions and Mayan culture thrive. The hammock is nylon but still carefully made by hand.

The Mayans 'invented' chewing gum. As well as chewing the stuff, the ancient Mayans mixed it with other materials to bind their building blocks together. We had a mouthful of the gum - not particularly tasty because it is sugar free. The Mayan gum industry was ruined when some American chap called Wrigley saw what the Mayans were producing and went home to set up his own chewing gum company.

Cenote - a sinkhole

Cenote Cristalino is a natural sinkhole in limestone with clear, cool, fresh water. It is full of and surrounded by vegetation. A great place to swim amongst a few small fish.

Chichén Itzá

The city of Chichén Itzá was begun around 600 A.D. Mayan priests studied mathematics and the sun, moon, and stars. They had a very precise calendar and were skilled builders. Carvings of gods, rulers, animals, and battle scenes decorate the building fronts at Chichén Itzá. All the buildings were carefully aligned to the positions of the sun, moon, and stars.

Chichén Itzá is about four square miles in size. The Kulkulkan Pyramid is one of its most famous structures. It is a four-sided pyramid with a flat top. Each side has 91 steps. With the step on the top platform, the total is 365. That is the number of days in the solar calendar.

Pokapok court:

One of the ways that the Mayan peoples competed against each other was by playing Pokapok. They used a rubber ball, about 20 inches in diameter, to play the Game, which was played on a stone court whose measurements varied. Hanging high on the walls were stone rings. The aim of the game was to pass the ball around, without having it touch your hands, and then get the ball to pass through one of the rings. Since the rings were so high and players were not allowed to use their hands, it was extremely difficult to get the ball through a ring. In fact, when a player did manage to get a ball through a ring that usually ended the game.

The winners of the game were treated as heroes and given a great feast. The penalty for losing a game was sometimes unusually harsh: death. The leader of the team who lost the game was sometimes killed. This fit in with the Mayan belief that human sacrifice was necessary for the continued success of the peoples' agriculture, trade, and overall health.

The observatory where the Mayan scientists and mathematicians would study the heavens.