Fun-filled weekend

This past weekend was quite an adventure for Emily and me. We had been planning on visiting Chichén Itzá, and when we spoke to a couple of our friends from school about the idea. They told us that they were planning on renting a car this weekend to go exploring, and they suggested that we all share. We agreed, and Saturday we met our friends--Maria Paola and her mother, Silvia, both from Brazil--at 9am to set off.

First off, a general note on Mexican roads: they're a bit unpredictable. The highways here are like ours in that they reach speed limits of about 65mph (100km/h), but they differ from ours in that more frequently than anyone should expect, they are interrupted by topes, the Mexican word for speed bumps. And we're not just talking about any speed bumps here. The more tame are thick cords of rope lain across the road. They range up to tremendous logs of concrete the crossing of which requires you to stop the car, get out, and carry your vehicle over to the other side.

Mexican roads are also lined with some amusing road signs. They have all of the ones you would expect: wear your seatbelt; the left lane is for passing only; etc. They also have some more colorful ones, such as the sign that reminds drivers that their families are at home waiting for them to arrive. There are also some odd ones, like the one that tells drivers not to leave rocks on the pavement. Huh? Or the one that tells drivers to conserve and obey the signs. Obey, I understand. But conserve? Does that mean we shouldn't knock the signs over with our cars? Or that we should use them sparingly so that other drivers may also enjoy them?

Finally, to complete the picture of our driving experience, picture a road bordered primarily by endless forest (Emily noted sagely at one point that in the US, we would expect the many trees lining the road to be a front for some large development or shopping center--here, the trees are just a front for many more trees). The road also has scattered potholes, which our Brazilian drivers weaved wildly around while also trying to avoid the large buses (we were in a compact VW) coming the other direction. The ride itself was a large part of the adventure.

So, now that you understand what we drove through, let me tell you where we went. Saturday we started by driving to a relatively small town called Valladolid. The town is old and dilapidated. The main square has a lovely church and a nice park, but the town doesn't have a whole lot else on offer. We saw the center of town and then walked up to a cenote (a natural well sacred to ancient Mayans) a few blocks away. The cenote was lovely, carved deep into the earth and the home of hundreds of birds who built their nests in the tops of the cave covering half of the well. From there, we headed off in the direction of a monastery, under which there is supposedly another cenote. I say supposedly because we never got to see it. We walked along a pretty street in what seemed to be the nice part of town, only to get to the monastery just in time to be told that it was being closed until much later in the afternoon. Disappointed and by this point in the afternoon very hungry, we headed back to the center of town for lunch, and then we headed out of town towards Chichén Itzá.

We got to the area around Chichén in the afternoon and sought out a place to spend the night. We headed first to a hotel that had gotten good reviews, and which was cute enough, but the price didn't match what we expected from our guide books, so we decided to look a little more. We ended up stopping at a nearby luxury lodge and asking them, just for the fun of it, if we could get rooms at a discount. As it turned out, and with the persistence of our Brazilian carmates, the lodge was affiliated with a slightly less luxurious joint a little ways down the road that could give us a good rate. That, and we could use the lodge for its parking and separate access to the ruins. We accepted and went to check in at our hotel, which was quite comfortable and had a pool that we almost immediately jumped into.

Saturday night, we headed back over to the lodge, parked, and went into the ruins to watch Chichén's spectacular light show. We got there early and got good seats for what is essentially this: every night, the main part of the ruins--where lie El Castillo (the well known pyramid), the Grand Ball Court, and a number of other semi-restored buildings--illuminates the main buildings in varicolored lights with a loud voiceover (one man and one woman) telling the history of Chichén, often quite colorfully. We listened to the show in Spanish, passing up the option of putting on headphones to hear an English translation, so we may have missed some things. We were also distracted by the many people taking thousands of totally unnecessary and unhelpful flashes from people's cameras. But we understood well enough, especially when the man and the woman each had separate, apparently orgasmic experiences offering themselves for sacrifice to the gods. The show is 45 minutes long, and is as remarkable for the simple opportunity to see the ruins lit up at night as for anything else.

On our way out of the show, we came across some people peering close to the ground at something in the dark. Thinking they were looking at a frog or something, I got close, only to be pushed by Emily when she realized I was standing partially on a tremendous line of ants crossing the road. The ants were all carrying little leaves from one side to another, and there turned out to be another line down the road a few more steps. We came across the vestiges of the ant line the next morning, when we saw the indelible path they had created through the jungle, as well as the many bits of leaves abandoned along the road, apparently when the whistle sounded to signal the end of the work night.

Chichén Itzá is even more impressive during the day than it is at night. We got there before the biggest crowds, so we had the opportunity to see the impressive pyramid unencumbered by hundreds of people gathering at the base. Unfortunately, you're no longer allowed to climb to the top, or to enter a chamber that sits on one side of the pyramid that contains an ancient stone in the shape of a jaguar painted deep red and encrusted with jade. We did got to look at the surrounding structures, obviously, which were all impressive. The stone carvings are in, in many cases, excellent shape, and in a few places some vestiges of the original paint can still be seen where the years and sun have not wiped it away. We spent the whole morning wandering the site, mostly staying one step ahead of the crowds, before leaving very early in the afternoon.

On our way back, we stopped again in Valladolid for lunch before heading north to another ancient Mayan site called Ek-Balam. Ek-Balam is much less known and a bit less developed, but it has been undergoing a lot of work in recent years and is a great opportunity to see a well preserved site without the annoyance of vast crowds. When we arrived, the first thing that greeted us was an odd little boy who hung out quietly near our car watching us. The next thing to greet us (or me, at least) were a number of bees. I hate bees, for no reason in particular except that they can sting you. I haven't even been stung that much in my life. It didn't help my nerves when I heard the odd boy tell one of our Brazilian friends in Spanish (he must have assumed I didn't speak Spanish), that she should warn me that the bees were going to sting me. Super. I hustled everyone out of the car and into the site, where there were fewer bees to put me on edge.

Walking into Ek-Balam is a bit like walking into a small village, until you realize that the little thatched roofs you're seeing are actually covering parts of a tremendous ancient pyramid. The pyramid at Ek-Balam is about a story taller than that of Chichén, and the thatched roofs cover sections of the pyramid where they're restoring the ancient stonework. Also, unlike El Castillo, you can still climb the pyramid at Ek-Balam. As we neared the pyramid, we started to hear quite a bit of thunder nearby, and the sky had been threatening rain for a while. We figured, what better place to be in a thunderstorm than at the very top of the tallest structure around? How's that for good reasoning? We got up the pyramid as quick as we could and, not wanting to wait around for the lightning to strike us, got our beautiful view, took our pictures, and headed back down. We did make one brief stop on the way down to see a section of the pyramid where they have restored a tremendous door leading into a throne room: you can't go in, but the door itself--carved to look like the head of a giant jaguar with some other stonework done on the perifery--is impressive. Duly satisfied by our speed sightseeing, we came down the pyramid, took in the sights of a few more buildings, and made our way quickly out of the ran and back to our car for the trip home.

All in all, it was a very fun weekend. I wish I could do better justice to our experiences of the majestic ruins, or even to the sometimes heart-stopping car ride we took there and back, but I'm afraid as it is this post is already long enough. Maybe Emily will add a post to delve into some more detail. We'll also add pictures soon to try to show with images what we can't convey in words.