Chichen Itza (Chicken Pizza)

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We arrive at The Mayan ruin (this is the one you see in all the advertisements, postcards, history books, etc.) promptly at 8:05 AM. And good thing too, the humidity is ramping up. The site is not directly adjacent to any village anymore but the place is already moving with vendors, ticket-sellers, guides, and a handful of tourists. We are immediately approached by an older, squat guide who calls himself Willy and speaks English with a discernible but indistinct accent. Though it is a solid chunk of change (about $40US) to hire a guide, we go for it since this is our first ruins site and it is the biggest. And we are uncertain how good the interpretative signage will be (we gambled correctly, the signs were almost humorously uninformative).
Willy talks almost constantly but in a an easy conversational manner, throwing jokes about hot cross-eyed chicks (ancient Mayans thought crossed eyes were beautiful for aristocratic ladies) and his wooing of his princess-wife (her last name means “star” in Mayan and it’s likely she’s descended from royalty). He’s been leading for 39 years and he knows this place forward and backward. And he knows how to keep the facts and humor rolling.
Past the monumental visitor center, there’s a short corridor of trees through which we can see wide open spaces and the shapes of large buildings. Birds with high-pitched, monkeyish calls and whoops are flitting in the trees, tantalizing me and distracting me from Willy’s words. It’s there that I realize I forgot my camera. Damnation.
But there’s something about not having a camera, isn’t there? I’m able to concentrate fully on what Willy is relaying and what I’m seeing. So I shrug it off pretty easily and we move on.
We emerge from the tree-corridor and into a wide open space with THE enormous pyramid directly in front and THE ball-court off to our left (these are some of the most famous buildings, worldwide). It feels oddly open and museum-like at first. The grass is closely trimmed and bright green, there are walking paths and because most of the guides follow the same route, there is a clear order and pace to the tourist perambulations. Everything now has been shut off from visitors who like to scramble so we never even touch any of the buildings. But we do get up close enough to see how amazingly expressive the carvings are. Priests from different cities with regionally-identifiable animal and feather headdresses parade across a wall to offer sacrifices and tolls. The wind god’s head provides a seat for a priest. Jaguar and eagles, stylistically similar, clutch human hearts in their claws and talons. Stacked heads of the rain god adorn dozens of building corners, the elephant-like noses punching into the air.
Willy tells us about the sweat lodges, the massive open-air market with its intricately carved square (Aztec-style) and round (Mayan-style) columns, and of course, the human sacrifices. He emphasizes that the bloody period of human sacrifice only lasted a brief while since that was only when the Aztecs conquered briefly and then their unsustainable bloody-minded ways were inexorably altered by the Mayans (probably was the cross-eyed chicks). This place was built to impress all the visiting dignitaries and it still does. It’s a lot of stone, a lot of stairs, a lot of detail, and a lot of monumental-ness. There is one round structure, an observatory called El Caracol (the Snail), which relieves my eyes after all that heavy stone with the strictly angular edges. And there is one beautiful façade, on the building called La Iglesia (the church) with geometric patterns and chock-full of carved figures which Willy tells us is the Puuc style. Intertwined serpents, male and female, wind around each other on both of the balustrades flanking the stairs to the governor’s tombs. Turns out serpents were a symbol of fertility to the Mayans. Willy tells us that Itza is the name that the ancient royals had and Chichen means “mouth of the well” (more or less). Meaning that Chichen Itza was a site where there was ample fresh water and lots of royals.
Vendors give out jaguar calls from ceramic figurines and Willy pauses to introduce us to some of the vendors he knows. They comment on my blue eyes and Kurt’s American size. By the time our tour winds down, the place is hoppin’ with tourists and guides, speaking French, Italian, Castilian Spanish, and English. Vendors clump at designated locations scattered throughout the large ruins extent, selling traditional dresses, ceramic plates and bowls, wooden masks, and many smaller trinkets. Our shirts are sticking to our backs and I have my wooden fan out constantly, flipping my wrist back and forth for a breeze. We say good-bye to Willy and thank him profusely for an excellent tour. After a brief drink stop (gotta get some more tamarind juice!), we hop back into a colectivo (shared van ride) to Valladolid. Major Mayan ruin visit done and done. Now it’s time to jump into some Yucatan cenotes and cool down…

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