We immediately got on a large boat that held tons of people and had a 45 minute ride to Playa de Carmen. There we boarded a bus and listened to our very proud Mayan descendant tour guide tell us about anything that popped into his head. He talked a lot. It was very clear that he was extremely proud of his heritage, (which is great) and that he had no love for the Spaniards.
Halfway to the ruins we stopped at a reststop/huge gift shop. We got some souveniers there.
Then we got to Tulum. We walked a ways, then we came to the outer wall of the ancient city. Actually, it's not nearly as ancient as I thought it would be. It was buit in the 15th century. I think. We entered the city in a small entrance in the stone wall. There only room for people to enter single file. The wall was pretty deep too.
In the city the tour guide took us off in the grass to talk some more. He got a little old. But then we were set free to explore the ruins at our leisure.
The main temple was built on a seaside cliff. Quite the view. We climbed down to enjoy the beach a little.
Here's one of the five tunnel entrances to the city.
I can never remember what this building is called, but it's the one where they had the art. Do you see the face sculpted in the corner?
See, here is an entrance. The Mayans were not large people.
Oh. There were iguanas ALL OVER the place. Seriously. They were everywhere. It was fun to see them all just lounging about.
The temple.
The art-type building again.
There is the profile of the face on the corner of that building.
There were a lot of these stony foundations. These were likely the houses that they lived in. They didn't have stone homes because it would be too hot, so they were likely made of wood or thatch or something.
This was really fun to see. Very hot, but neat nonetheless.Here is how we rate our excursions on the fun scale.
1. Stingray and snorkle
2. Cave and jeep
3. Tulum
4. Monkeys and parrots
Before hand I thought the rating would be much different. Like this:
1. Tulum
2. Stingray and snorkle
3. Monkeys and Parrots
4. Cave and jeep
Silly me. All were fun, but some were especially fun.
3 comments:
I am enjoying all these posts. And the pictures are amazing!
Oh and by the way, my brother's sister in law told me that she really liked your book! She had no idea it was your first book, it surprised her. Anyway,yeah. You rock.
When I went to Tulum our tour guide told us all sorts of interesting stuff. He told us that Tulum was considered a holy city and the holiest part was the temple (obviously). I don't know if your tour guide said anything about the 3 openings at the top of the temple and the engravings above the openings. The engraving above the first opening was a person, above the second opening was an upside-down person and there was just an empty space above the third opening. He said that they represented their Gods. The first was their God in Heaven, the second was their God that descended to the earth and their third God was a spirit. I thought that was pretty interesting.
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