Chichen Itza - One of the Modern wonders of the world
Earliest Start and Longest ride to the attraction…
After the
long stifle with hotel authorities the previous night and a tiring day, had a
tear down sleep and had to be ready early on, the earliest start time of all
the days, since the destination we were going up to was a 3 hour ride away from
the Cancun city. Since there was no
option for us for our breakfast at the hotel and being early start, we had to
skip the breakfast of any form or the bare minimum of having coffee and worry
about it on the way. Right at 7:15 AM we were ready at the lobby awaiting for
the bus to arrive to pick it up, after await for over 20 minutes did our bus
arrive to pick us up, we had our hand bands put on and off we go starting our
long ride to the historical place of Mayans. During our 20 minute wait time at
the lobby did it make me wonder on how many variety of historical/tourist spots
did the Cancun city have and how many means of commute being available and how
many folks of different nationalities arrive here. Just like running is to Kenyans, looks like
tourism is to Cancun.
Long ride …
It was a
3 hour long bus ride from Cancun to the Chichen Itza in Valladolid city. We
were advised of the being offered continental breakfast and lunch, we were
started to explain about the Mayan history, Mayan calendar, various symbols and
rituals and practices of Mayan people. As we were explained about the culture
and what not, which pretty much to me felt like a history classes restored, yet
it was interesting to listen about a unknown culture.
After about half hour, we were served the so
called continental breakfast, again we weren't surprised, but had to pity
ourselves, since we were served a tuna sandwich, a cake overloaded with egg and
a carton of orange juice. I just said to myself, stating it's going to be my
day of starving, really absolutely no options for vegetarians to feel better
about any meal here in Cancun be in any place, having years of tourism
expertise and having multitude of nationalities arriving, it's so pathetic for
people to not realize the fact that vegetarian folks suffer so much to the fact
they start cursing and feeling bad about the overall experience. If only I
could complain or offer feedback, the availability of vegetarian food would be
my highest order or priority. Much more than the non-availability of vegetarian
food, the fear of mixing up any food with beef/meat/pork was the real concern,
oh my goodness, the hospitality industry having decided the mankind to be real
carnivores….. :(
Information on Mayan History
The ride
to chic hen itza was all covering about long lectures about who Mayans are and
what is their lineage and some real commercialization of products and services
they offer, under the surreal face of lineage of history and culture. To being
with I started to feel that these folks were really explaining the culture in
the intentions of making is more public and earn respect, but it looked like
sheer commercialization of their culture, with due respects to those folks who
make their living with the commercialization of their culture and selling
artefacts and services. One of the service they were explaining about was that
given your personal details of date of birth and time of birth, there is a
Mayan prediction based on their protocols charging an amount of $25. Your
future is predicted by that $25 :) , the only thing that I could think of and
mock it was about the Raasi palan that comes up in our local television
channels. I just giggled to myself while the tour guide was explaining it to
us. Another offering was getting Silver pendants made based on your gender,
your initials, your spouse's initials and what not. Again I got reminded about
the small dog like pendant that we used to wear as a kid stating that it would
guard the kids from the feel of fear at night :) every culture had its own
version of some belief and value system. I truly respect, but I could not stop
from ridiculing about it, with very commercialization of the same.
Beaming heat and walk around to the Wonders of the
world
We were
handed over a radio for the guide to speak to all of us, a small radio device
tuned to a particular frequency so that the guide could communicate to all of
his group. We reach the destination after a 3 hour long drive, with few of us
taking small nap along the way. It was a day of no action only reaction to
loading lessons of history and details. We all disembark the bus, were handed
over a bottle of cold water along with a hanging loop for us to easily to carry
and to avoid dumping it along the way. We were assigned a local guide, part of
the tour operator, to explain to the set of people who want it to be explained
in English. We got a 60+ guy who seems to have done his master degree in
history of Mexico and more importantly the in and around of Chichen itza. He
started off stating about the obvious things a guide would do and how he is
different and wants to keep it simple, taking it to shaded parts of the area
and explaining the specifics, to me he sounded like a well-informed guy and was
open enough explaining stuffs
Facts of the location and history
Just as a
disclaimer, you may find better and precise facts about Mayan history, but I am
brain dumping some interesting stuffs that I heard from the guide and key
takeaways according to me. Hence here we go. Mayans are a set of folks who
originated around the vicinity of Chichen itza and the current descendants of
that group of people are the ones who are short people who work pre-dominantly
work in the hotel and tourism industry in and around the city of Cancun. As simple put forth by the guide as much as
we come from various religious cultural backgrounds assigned some duty or
profession by means of our culture, yet we immigrate and transform to get to a
job which earns our living and matches our interest.
Mayans believed in few stuffs
- As much as many of us believe in we get energy from god, they believed god needs energy from humans
- They believed in nature as god rather than any people worship or any other factious figure
- They believed in astronomy and had many architectural raises based on which their whole life revolved, there still exists around 29 different buildings each marking about when to plant, when to wage war, when to worship the sun god etc…
- The main building is the Temple of Sun, which is the place the mayans used to worship the sun god 8 times a day, referring to various stages of sun throughout the day, offering different stuff to the god, with the belief that they provide energy to god
- They believed in the fact that blood is an offering made to god so that he could continue on with the cycle of life
- To decide on whom to sacrifice, they had a game primarily like any other culture, as a fight with good with bad and decide on the team to sacrifice.
Facts
about Chichen Itza- This is a land which has abundant resource of lime stone and rocks and that’s the reason all the architectural buildings are built only with rocks and lime stone.
- The name Itza got added later when some invaders to the place, figured out some source of water and started to invite people and made it a place of worship, thus started to import various other items that they needed for their survival, essentially turning out into a super power in the locality to have control over all surrounding areas and become a bigger commerce place.
- The sun temple which is the primary figure, has four 91 steps leading to the top location which has 1 huge step uniting the steps from all the four directions, denoting 365 days of the year.
- On december 21st of every year on some particular time of the day, the sun rays fall on the serpent figure which forms the hand rails of steps of the sun temple in all directions and gives it a feel as it the serpent is live in action with shadows of the edges giving that feel
- There are 29th other buildings which are still existent which used to denote the mayans the various timings of the year like time to start plantation, when to wage war, when to harvest etc…
Our guide
did explain the various scientific facts and various bogus theory that exists
around the history of chichen itza, for over a period of one hour, we started
with a huge group of around 25 people at the end there were only 7 people,
probably many were super bored with the history of the place been explained by
the guide. We had about 50 minutes for people from our group to pose and get
our photographs done and some wooden carvings purchased and headed to the bus
right in time for it to depart by around 1:20 PM
Lunch and the Sea hole and drive back
We
boarded the bus and in another 40 minutes we were headed to lunch in some city
on the way, all buildings and shops had the local architecture to speak off
from its look, layout and color and what not. Purely looking like they are real
old buildings built years ago. We were headed off to a local hotel, which was
claimed to be offering international food, but buggers did not have anything
other than bread which can be consumed. All full of beef, pork, sausages, and
what not, nothing edible, after having skipped the breakfast and first glimpse
of food offering for lunch all us were devastated, it was nearing 100 degree F,
with beaming heat, we were even more tired. I could only find some mexican rice
and salsa which I tried to have with tortilos and the saviour was the Friend
banana, munched them as much as I could to fill in. Tamil managed to convince
the cook inside the hotel to prepare some vegetarian fried rice and some raw
banana, who came in as a saviour to the whole group, all of us loading up with
what she got and got over with our lunch
We had to
walk 4 blocks away to get to the bus, tried to find some curd along the way,
but to avail no way to make the locals understand what it means by curd, nor
did anyone have.
Within 5
mins of boarding the bus, we got down to have a look at the sea hole, which
seems to be a phenomenon, primarily caused by the excessive lime stone
availability in the region the sea water seems to have dissolved with limestone
and causing acid reaction happening, which results in the below ground level
caving in to form stalagmites and finally resulting in a sea hole. It was
literally like a cave to start with, but many places were open up to the sky.
Looks like there are multiple other such sea holes in the area.
We
boarded back on the bus, with sweaty feel, with beaming sun at around 3:15 pm.
We all were really beaten up by the heat and the deprivation of food in both
breakfast and lunch, we all dozed off and at around 6:15 we were woken up to
have reached the cancun city and we got dropped off at the hotel.
Some relief to our taste buds and photo consolidation
We were
already on look out for dinner options, and we figured out a pitza place just
opposite to our hotel, got in the hotel, freshned up and headed to the pitza
place and got couple of to go orders for all of us to feast on, after a food
deprived day with swiltering heat. Did not realized the pace at which we got
the order to the hotel and the rate at which got over. Clearly all were super
hungry. On the contrary, I felt that after overloading ourselves from varied
buffet options in the previous hotel for 3 days, this looked to be a controlled
diet. Had some coffee made in the room, had brief chat with all in the room and
headed out to the wifi zone in the hotel to download photos for which we had
paid for in couple of locations. We managed to download all of those and
consolidate one huge album for the trip and had backup copies created. It was
already 11 PM by then and headed to the room for the much awaited no early
morning raise 8 hour sleep that night
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