Great day today. Booked a tour to the Coba Mayan ruins, but it was a full day tour so included a lot more too. Started off towards the ruins – about 45 minutes away, just four of us on the tour, which was nice.
Now I don’t know much about the Mayans – just that they were around a very long time ago, and as we don’t have a Rough Guide or Lonely Planet for Mexico as we hadn’t planned to stop here, we’re fishing around in the dark a bit. So had a very interesting talk from our guide, Enrico, about how the Mexicans started restoring the Mayan tombs and ruins in the 1970s and how Chichen Itza (the biggest site) has been almost totally rebuilt. This struck a cord with what Lynne had said to me, that she hadn’t thought it worth a visit as she ‘didn’t believe it,’ it was in such good nick. Not so Coba.
Although some restoration has been done, it was mostly to remove the jungle that was growing over it. So first came a very long and detailed description of the Calendar (not the Julius calendar, the other one) which was very important to the Mayans, and a description of how they built chambers for tombs, and then built chambers upon chambers. They also built very large, pyramid type structures which was their way of reaching the ‘Gods’. So, a nice walk through the jungle (very different to the Rainforest, I now know) for a few kilometres exploring various ruins before the chance to walk to the top of the highest ‘pyramid’. A tough climb, with an even tougher descent, 
clinging to a rope, but good fun, interesting and great views from the top. This took most of the morning so then on to a lunch stop in a real Mexican restaurant (as opposed to a hotel restaurant). Then on for a walk through the jungle, monkey spotting, and another first for us, Monkeys in the Wild. We’ve seen them semi-tame in Udaipur in India, where they were playing for the tourists, but here they just got on with eating their fruit high up in the trees and ignored us, making it very hard to get good pictures. But it was great. But the adventure had only just begun. We then went on to a Cenote. Cenotes are a series of underwater rivers, fresh water rivers that run for more than 100 kms through caves underground. What we hadn’t realised was that to get to the Cenote we would have to be strapped 
to a rappeler (I think that’s the right word, it’s a zip line down to the cave, like rock climbers use) and descend about 60 feet, just through a small hole at the top. And we did it, but with much trepidation. We then swam around the Cenote, only four of us and our guide there. The water was refreshingly cold, so we decided it was time to go up again. That’s when we realised the only way up was on the rope ladder. Sid went first and I could tell it was going to be hard work, from his puffing and panting. Then, me and I did it – I did yell out that given the alternative, I’d manage it!
But yes, it was very hard work. Finally, after drying out, we went to visit a family in the village, a Mayan family – most village communities in this part of Mexico are Mayans – and went into their home where they were weaving, sewing and making tortillas 
on an open fire in the corner of the room. The single roomed house next to this thatched hut, was where they all slept (in hammocks) and they had wild pigs and a strange looking monkey-like (but not monkey) in the garden. The rest of the village was the same, single room thatched huts with the odd breeze-block hut. It was all a bit stone age, but very real and an interesting and enjoyable day.
No comments:
Post a Comment