The Maya

When I first decided to go back to Mexico last month, my idea for an itinerary was fly to Cancun, stay at an all inclusive resort property on the east edge of the Yucatan Peninsula for a few nights, take a day trip to the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá and then kick back and chill for the rest of the time. Sounds fun, right? Especially when it gets me out of cold Washington, D.C. in late January.

But the more we started looking into the value of visiting the Yucatan, the more we became convinced that the right thing to do would be to immerse ourselves in the old land of the Maya and take in as much as we could in our three full days there. That meant swimming in some cenotes which first allowed the Maya to settle in the area; chasing some pink birds before visiting the ruins at Ek Balam north of Valladolid; and spending three nights right outside what we hoped would become the crown jewel of our trip: the old city of Chichén Itzá. 

This was not my first visit to this part of Mexico. I was down there about eight years ago doing exactly what I originally planned to do on this journey, namely spend time at the beach drinking all included beer and margaritas and taking a quick car ride down to some old ruins (Tulum, on that trip). But after that first trip, I regretted not going to Chichén Itzá, thinking at the time it was too far to go for the day. I think my regret was understandable. After all, it's supposed to be one of the new seven wonders of the world; it had to be pretty good, I assumed. 

This year, I found out. 

Looking west toward the Platform of the Tombs. The platform of Venus is beyond that.

The earliest origins of the Mayan civilization can be traced back to about the third millennium B.C. At its height, there were Mayan villages and cities all over the Yucatan in present day Mexico; throughout Belize and Guatemala; and into parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The glory days of the civilization started around 250 A.D. and continued for about 675 years when they were discovered (and conquered) by the Toltecs from present day central Mexico and absorbed into the Toltec culture. 

The Mayans were incredible people (notwithstanding the whole human sacrifice thing). They emerged from a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture and spread across the jungles and plains of central America. They studied the stars extensively and understood the relationships between our planet and the cosmos, particularly the planet Venus, which they knew synched with the Earth's orbit every eight years. They used their knowledge gained from the study of the skies to tell them when to plant crops and when to harvest.

They also were skilled mathematicians and keepers of time. They were the first known peoples to conceive of the concept of zero and they kept a remarkably accurate calendar, consisting of 18 twenty day months with a remaining five days each year reserved for celebrations and rituals. And for sure they could build. The pyramids and other structures they left are scattered all over central America and are still standing today.

I'm writing here about the Maya as if they no longer exist. Indeed, they are still around today and enriched our own journey this year. I expect that most of the employees of our hotel and the many many taxi drivers that carted us around the region identify themselves as Mayan.

Mayan peoples started living around the site of Chichén Itzá as early as 150 B.C. In the formative centuries of the Mayan culture, the groups living in the southern area of their territory developed faster, having plentiful building materials in the jungles of what is now Guatemala to create shelter. But as technology and building techniques advanced, the proximity to large amounts of available limestone (the Yucatan Peninsula is essentially an enormous limestone shelf) allowed the people located in the north to build the Maya's greatest cities.

Chichén Itzá started to be developed in a serious way in the middle of the sixth century A.D. and about 150 years later it had become established as an important political and economic city. But its real heyday started with its absorption into the Toltec culture by the Itzae peoples who arrived in the year 918 (before their arrival the place was named something different; Chichén Itzá means "at the mouth of the well of the Itzae"). Later that same century the Itzae consolidated Chichén Itzá as the capital of their empire, which I suppose accounts for its impressive size. 

The city's importance outlasted the independence of the Mayan empire but at around the year 1200 the site was abandoned for good. Nobody understands exactly what happened but it is most often thought that the Itzae were defeated in battle as the result of some dispute with one of their neighbors. Regardless of what exactly occurred it seems pretty certain that around the turn of the 13th century the old city of Chichén Itzá started to be absorbed back into the jungle. 

Serpents' heads at the base of the north stair of the Ossuary, or Tomb of the Great Priest.

As the base for our Mayan pilgrimage, we elected to stay at the Lodge at Chichén Itzá, which is located directly adjacent to the property. So close, in fact, that they have their own private entrance to the ruins. For a full Mayan experience, this place was about as perfect as we could have wished for. Sure the backdoor to Chichén Itzá was fantastic but beyond that the property was lush, the staff were great and we could see the old Mayan observatory from the hotel bar where we ate a couple of meals and kicked back with a Sol beer or two (or three). Definitely worth the price of admission.

We elected to get right to it the day after we arrived, entering the Chichén Itzá property just 30 minutes after opening time at 8 a.m. Our walk that morning took us along a path through the jungle and into the main space of the city dominated by the massive pyramid called El Castillo. Our first impression was that the place was huge. Way bigger than similar ancient places we had been like the Roman Forum, Stonehenge or Herculaneum. After a couple of hours walking around about half of the property, we were wrong. It's not huge; it's whatever bigger than huge is. We wouldn't leave the place for five hours.

As a generalization, Chichén Itzá is pretty much a ring of temples arrayed around an extremely impressive and remarkably still together central pyramid. But spend some time exploring and you'll find more than that, including warehouses, an observatory, markets and steam baths. These folks that built this place were pretty sophisticated. We often praise the Romans for their advanced technology when it came to construction; the Maya were pretty close to that standard.

One of the difficulties of visiting cities like this one is that the only buildings remaining are civic in nature, presumably because private homes or shelters were constructed from less permanent materials. That's exactly what you will find at Chichén Itzá. Usually the buildings at these sites have been looted at some point and everything of value or aesthetic interest has been stripped away for repurposing or sale to some antiquities collector or museum. But here Chichén Itzá is different; there are an extraordinary amount of still in place carved panels throughout the property that give us glimpses into Mayan life. It's actually really impressive the amount of intact carvings. I guess that's what happens when you build a city in the middle of the jungle and then abandon it there for centuries.

So what did we do in almost five hours at Chichén Itzá? Well for one thing, we saw everything they would let us and maybe one building beyond that. We started at El Castillo and walked west to the Temple of the Warriors and beyond before circling back counterclockwise to the sacred cenote where human sacrifices by drowning were offered to the gods. After managing to avoid buying anything (well almost anything; couldn't resist the necklace with my Mayan zodiac symbol on it) from the gauntlet of vendors on the way to and from the cenote, we hit the Temple of the Jaguars and its adjacent ball court before heading south to the observatory and the buildings around that structure.

In between all of that, we visited every building between those monuments; hydrated; watched iguanas scamper over the ground and sun themselves on the ruins; and managed to wander down a closed to the public path and found the Akab Dzib, one of the oldest buildings on the site.

One of the things I found most confusing about visiting the old Roman Forum when we visited there in 2015 was the overlapping and overwhelming nature of the narrative around the site. There was everything from foundations to partially intact buildings of every century that the Romans had built and rebuilt near the Palatine Hill. It was very difficult to get a complete picture of what the site was like at any one time because they have tried to represent every building ever standing in that spot, even if some buildings were demolished and replaced by others in the exact same locations.

Not so at Chichén Itzá. What you find here is a snapshot in time of what the place was like at the end of the 13th century. The relationship between buildings and spaces is so clear because most of what was built there was done in a really permanent way and is still there for you and me to see today. As an architect and someone interested in history, I was impressed by a number of things about the old city.

First, I find it impossible not to be awed by the sheer size of the place. All told, there are about 30 large to very large structures on the site in various degrees of ruin from a few columns on a foundation to the three pyramids on the property which looked to me to be either completely intact or maybe just a little bit less than that. There is a lot to see here.

Secondly, the quantity of carvings at the site are incredible, most notably the skulls at the Tzompantli shown at the top of this post, the jaguars and eagles on the nearby Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars and the warrior carvings which ring the immense ball court. The jungle must have kept people who would have been inclined to steal these things from taking them, either by just hiding them completely or by making it so difficult to transport really heavy stone panels over a hundred miles through dense brush that they just didn't even try. There's a lot of carvings to see, including at the more recent, Toltec-built Group of the Thousand Columns near the Temple of the Warriors.

But as awesome as the size of the property and the intact carvings are, the star of the show is clearly El Castillo, the massive pyramid around which everything else revolves and the single building most associated with the name Chichén Itzá. Rarely do I fall for the most popularized building on a site like this but here I can't help it.

El Castillo translates into English as "the castle" but the real name of the pyramid is the Temple of Kukulkán, the winged serpent which served as one of the primary deities in Mayan mythology. It stands 24 meters (or just shy of 80 feet) high which is clearly the highest building on the campus. Each side of the pyramid has 91 steps; multiply 91 by four sides and add a common top step and you get 365, which is the number of days in the Mayan calendar. 

The north side of El Castillo is the most intact today which is fortunate because it is the most important of the four sides. At either side of the stair on this facade is a stringer with a carved serpent's head at the bottom. This is an important design feature. The structure is aligned with the sun such that the stepped sides of the pyramid cast a shadow on the stringers during the spring and autumnal equinoxes that make it look like there is a serpent on the sides of the stairs on this side of the building.

The Temple of Kukulkán can be seen throughout the ruins of Chichén Itzá. It was clearly the singular focus of life one millennium ago. There are a couple of smaller pyramids on site that have a similar form as El Castillo but nowhere near as impressive, although the serpent's heads on the Ossuary just to the south are probably better preserved. I was shocked by the impression the Temple made on me. This alone was worth a trip.

The observatory with the Temple of the Carved Panels, and a Mayan arch, in the foreground.

As impressed as I was with El Castillo, I think it's worth spending a paragraph or two on the observatory at the south end of the site. This was the first part of Chichén Itzá we saw on our arrival at our hotel stunningly framed by the front door opening. My first thought here was "Why does it look like a modern observatory? It's not like they had telescopes way back then, right?"

My first thought was correct; the Maya did not have telescopes. And I had that thought all the way through our day on the property. But one of the advantages of traveling rather than reading a book or watching TV is how you gain information from the place which reinforces what you see. In the case of the observatory, our learning came from an unlikely source: a planetarium style presentation about Mayan mythology located on our hotel's property. It cost $9 U.S. per person and took just 30 minutes but it was enormously valuable. It described both the Mayan creation myth and the importance of the stars and planets in their annual cycle of life.

But most importantly, it told us that the observatory was built to observe the planet Venus. It is aligned 27.5 degrees north of west which corresponds to the direction where Venus is at its highest point in the night sky. Marks related to the movement of Venus have been found in Mayan buildings in a number of locations and the cycle of Venus corresponds to the death and resurrection cycle of Kukulkán. 

The Mayans were almost obsessed with the planet Venus and built an entire observatory just to track it and its relationship to the seasons and their own myths. If I wasn't impressed with the Mayan calendar and the equinox serpent on El Castillo (I was), I sure was impressed with this dedication to study of the night sky. It all hit home that night towards the end of dusk when we walked to the hotel bar and saw the observatory outlined against fading light and Venus shining bright up in the sky. Never would have understood all this without being there.

The observatory at dusk-ish; Venus is the bright dot in the upper left.

When I think back to that first trip I took to the Yucatan back in 2009, I no longer regret not visiting Chichén Itzá. In fact, I'm glad I didn't. After the full day on site and the couple of extra days staying nearby rather than at some all inclusive resort on a beach somewhere, I'm glad I decided all those years ago it wasn't worth a day trip. Because ultimately, it isn't worth a day trip; it's worth a whole day and more. Being able to come back to the hotel each night and see the observatory with Venus high overhead is worth way more than a few hours sandwiched between a two hour plus each way bus trip. Chichén Itzá is best when explored for more than a rushed guided tour.

Before I end this post, I thought it worth sharing a few final thoughts on Chichén Itzá.

First, the ride from the Cancun airport to Piste (which is right near the ruins) was a long one. It's about 200 kilometers from the airport to the site which takes about two and a half hours in a Mexican cab. On the surface of things, that's not an overly long period of time and it's also not that expensive (about $120-165 U.S.). It's the road you have to travel that makes it long. The highway is the same all the way from the airport until about 5 kilometers from the hotel: straight, flat, empty and bordered by about 25-30 foot high trees on each side. No breaks, nothing different, nothing to see. Just monotony all the way. I think if I were doing it over again, I'd try to fly to Mérida on the western side of the Peninsula rather than Cancun on the eastern. It's a little closer and maybe there's more to see?

Take a cab from the Cancun Airport to Chichén Itzá and you are in for 2-1/2 hours of this view.

Secondly, when we checked into our hotel, we were offered the opportunity to hire a guide for two hours to show us around Chichén Itzá for a $45 U.S. fee. After a few minutes thought, we decided to pass on this offer. As luck would have it, we picked up a guide book called "Chichen Itza History, Art and Monuments" at the hotel gift store for M$136 (that's about $7 U.S.) which served us just as well as a guide if not better. Also, I don't know how fast we would have had to walk or how much we would have had to skip to get through the whole property in two hours because it took us between four and five to do it with our guidebook we picked up for seven bucks. I think declining the guide was completely the right call for us.

Closing point three: Mexico is hot. So get an early start. I imagine this comes as no surprise to those of you who have been to Mexico before. I remember it being hot in Tulum when I visited there in 2009 but that was in May. We went this year in January! By the time it got to 10:30 in the morning, it was hot. By the time noon rolled around, it was pretty unbearable. I was moving from the shade of one tree to another very quickly and then resting while in the cool spots. I wouldn't start my visit Chichén Itzá at any time other than early in the morning.

El Castillo at night.

Finally, there's a nighttime light show at the property which is interesting. The gates open at 7 p.m. and it's about $20 U.S. per person. Your $20 gets you into the property after dark to view the place on a controlled route lit up with L.E.D. lights which change colors. That self guided walk is followed by a video projection directly onto El Castillo which details the history of Chichén Itzá while also relating it to the Mayan creation myths.

Two things here. First, the audio of the projection portion is all in Spanish. We'd already studied up on Mayan mythology in our hotel so we could follow along pretty well. Secondly, the actual presentation starts at 8. We didn't understand this so we rushed through the self-guided walk and ended up sitting in our seats for about 30-40 minutes waiting for everyone else to finish. If we'd have known the show was starting an hour after the gates opened we would have taken our time in the first part of the activity or showed up a little later.

I'm not sure the light show was worth the full $20 but what else are you going to do at night when you are in the center of the Yucatan Peninsula? I think it's worth it to do once. If nothing else it shows the friezes around the property in dramatic lighting which improves their readability and there's a part of the projection which shows El Castillo overgrown with virtual jungle which makes you think about the condition it must have once been in. It was definitely cool enough to do once. And again, what else do you have to do at night in Pisté?

Frieze at the ball court lit up at night. Improves the carved detail in my opinion.