Advertisement
Published: March 4th 2009
Edit Blog Post
THURSDAY 26TH FEBRUARY
Here I am sitting in another airport terminal, reflecting on another adventure over. Mexico was fantastic! We met so many fantastic people and did some really cool stuff. This trip was supposed to be just one big layover, but ended up being a bit of a blowout! The cheap food and beer was too much of a temptation so indulging was very easy. The $2 beers were cold and were sold wherever you went, so they were in my hand more than I would have liked, but whatever…..
I almost feel like I’m going back to work for some reason. Back to the big smoke now and back to Bruce and some hard core road tripping!
Well, let’s reflect on the last few days in the old, dusty Mexico. On Friday we were in a really different little town, called Valladolid. A 3 hr bus trip inland and up from Tulum. What a find! We were so lucky as to arrive in the time of CARNAVAL! COOL! Just near our little, dirt cheap hotel was the town square. Complete with a lovely park, big old beautiful cathedral, town hall and numerous little shops and restaurants. Now
in this park during carnival there were big fancy parades during the night! Typical mardi gras/ Rio carnival style. Albeit much more amateurish. All the men, women, teenagers and children took part in what imagine is one of the biggest parties of the year for Valladolid. They partied until the wee hours of the morning. (We could hear it from our hotel)
Saturday morning was the big trip to Chichen Itza! A $20 peso trip and half hour later we arrive at one of “the new 7 wonders of the world”! After reading a lot of TINTIN book when I was a kid, I always thought the ancient Mayan pyramid would be surrounded by thick, lush rainforest. This is not the case. Mexico is pretty much a big, flat, dry place with few big trees and mostly tall shrubbery and thick smaller trees and such. Also the soils consists of about a foot or two of soil and then pretty much all limestone from then on, not the best to grow crops, but great to build pyramids and walls and temples and so on… Now or the next part of the story. Coming out of the bush and seeing the
massive pyramid in the flesh was simply amazing! Even after all the hype. When I go to these places it’s hard for me not to in vision the place as it was over 1000 years ago. Small Mayan people (and I mean small! Tamara TOWERED over pretty much everyone in the area in Valladolid which is full of Mayan people) scurrying about, fetching water or whatever. Also trying to in vision all the streets intact, all the buildings in their normal bright blue, yellow and red paint. But yes it was amazing. And it just got better; we split the bill for a guide for a couple hours to learn the history of the joint. Money well spent. We learned that the Mayan people were all about the gods. And lots of them. They had gods for water, sun, fertility (crops) and many more. The most important one of them all the god of fertility, the serpent. This was most important because the soil was so shit that they needed him to summon the other gods to bring rain and sun to grow the crops. Carvings of serpents were everywhere throughout the ruins. Where there were carvings of men being
Photo 2
The world famous Chichen Itza sacrificed the blood id symbolized by snakes coming out and turning into trees going into the ground again. Saying that the personal sacrifice to the gods will in turn promote good crops and hi soul returning to the earth and keeping the gods happy. I won’t go on and on about it but let’s just say they had some different ideas. The place was huge, there were crematoriums (they never buried their dead) other large temples (one with the famed CHAAC-MOOL statue were they performed the sacrifices) and a conservatorium! There were once people that thought that the Mayans were from outer space because they knew so much about the stars, sun and moon cycles. They also created their own calendar. Consisting of 18 months, 20days in each and 5 lucky days. Apparently more accurate than the one we use now! Crazy.
We managed to spend about 4 hrs there, my legs and feet had enough. I think I’m getting old. Back to the hotel for a nap.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0417s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tim
non-member comment
good work!
Hey guys - I was waiting on that last entry! Great stuff, nice pics!! Minus 26'c with the wind chill today... enjoy the heat my friends. Seems like Mexico was yet another blast - what kind of beer was going down? I sent an email to you guys + the Dunsmores! We might be gigging with Wide Mouth Mason's bassist and his new band! ( Excited ) Anyways, take good care, say hi to Bruce for us - T, T n' G xxoo