Savage Quest

Today was a good day!!

Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve

Ahhh....back to the Caribbean! About 10 miles south of Tulum, there is a huge (1.3 million acres) biosphere reserve....dedicated in 1988 to preserve and protect its natural resources.....unique for its geography and wetlands....good place to go if you want to be remote. Nesting sites for wading birds, turtles, archeological sites and lots more. That's a little close there girls..HA! This arch at the entrance is home to thousands of bats (los murcielagos) that we saw pour out of a crevice right at dusk, just in time for them to eat the mosquitoes!

Going below the surface

There are 2 lovely underground cenotes close to Cobá. It's nice to be so high above the jungle and then check out the cool underworld!
They have built very sturdy stairs to go down to these, unlike the rickety ladders in some. The fresh, clear water is rejuvenating to the body and mind! Here is the view from the bottom of the spiral stairs looking up. This one has artificial lighting as it is so far down. I suppose the Mayans used torches to see down here?

Tallest Pyramid in the Yucatan

Working our way home....here at Cobá...where you can still climb the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula...it is quite a climb and today it was very very windy.
The view is spectacular and we were trying to figure out how far away was the horizon?.....as geographers we thought we should know that...so googled it when we got home and the answer is not so simple....complex formulas take into account the curvature of the earth and refraction of light and so on..but for all practical purposes the formula is this.... SquareRoot(height of eye above surface in feet / 0.5736) = distance to horizon in miles.....so we will use the height of the pyramid as we were on the top....SquareRoot(137 feet/ 0.5736) = 15.45 miles to the horizon. Or for yall in the metric world it is
SquareRoot(height above surface in centimeters / 6.752) = distance to horizon in kilometers....SquareRoot (4200 cm/6.752) = 24.94 kilometers!Of course I was not thinking of that on my descent...more concerned about keeping my skirt down.

Riding through the Jungle

Once we left the hills of the Puuc region we got back into cenote country (the water table is too far below the surface in the hills for there to be cenotes). Now this is a fun way to see some cenotes deep in the jungle. One can take a ride on a "truk" following a small rail that was used for transporting the henequin crop out of the jungles long ago.
Now the truks are used for transporting tourists to 3 cenotes. The small horses pulled us along by the local men holding on to the ropes.

When we met another truk coming the opposite way, we all got out of the truk and they would just move it off the track to allow the other one to pass. The cold underground cenotes were well worth the long bumpy ride to get there. Somehow our timing was impecible to stay ahead of the crowd of tourists that have discovered this place. Most of the time we had them to ourselves!

Finding the Beekeeper

As honey is one of the main export crops of the Yucatan, we were always looking for local honey (miel)and so upon asking a women cooking chicken on the side of the road where was the mielero, she pointed to a man walking down the road in a white hat. We turned the car around and followed him to his house where he very graciously served up the honey in any empty water bottle we could find in our car(makes for excellent souvenirs to take home). It was delicious! He was very proud to show us his cyntrifigal force extractor that he made himself. As fellow beekeepers we were somewhat familiar with the
frame of comb that he had just spun the honey from. He seemed to be happy that we were so interested in his operation.

Caves of Lol Tun

This cave system is amazing! There are some indications of very early human occupation! Along with 10,000 year old Mammoth bones, human made tools were discovered.The cave has been left almost intact, with no pedestrian walkways just the natural bumpy floor of the cave. There were wall carvings, paintings and other artifacts besides the immense natural beauty of the cave. Some of the columns of joining stalactites and stalagmites would produce sounds with different tones when knocked.

Labna

This is the infamous Arch of Labna. Notice the straw thatched hut carved in stone one each side and the trapezoidal doors. Very nice geometric designs here!

Also here at this site we saw these heads with round faces and puffy cheeks resembling people from other continents. They continue to disconcert and confuse the researchers as they try to find out the real origin of the incredible and magnificent Mayas!

Sayil

Sayil another site further down the road, means place of the leaf cutter ants and there is still evidence of those mounds. The main palace has many chambers which could have been administration offices, residences or classrooms?? Who knows?!
Between the eyes of this mask one can see a human figure upside down with legs spread wide open. as a "Descending God".There is some restoration work going on here and it appears that the blocks are organized into layers on the ground and then reconstructed.

Rain Collection

The climate here is tropical, dry from Novermber to April and rainy in the summer, during which rainfall averages 44 inches. There are no lakes, rivers or cenotes in this particular region, creating a total dependence on rainfall. Therefore, they met the challenge of water storage by constructing underground reservoirs called chultunes. Runoff was generally directed to a round area slightly slanted toward the intake. The intake here has been recently covered but is still functional. Hundreds of these cisterns have been discovered at some of these sites....knowing the number of the cisterns and their water storage capacity it is possible to calculate the number of people that lived here during its time of glory.

Kabah

This site is only about 15 miles from Uxmal and built earlier. The most spectacular building to me is the Palace of Masks. All four sides of this building were totally covered with the rain god masks but only the front was restored...the rest is in ruins and many have been smashed or have been taken. We hung here for a while just marveling at ALL the phenomenal work.

Corn - essence of life

On our way through the small village of Cuzama we spotted this Maya woman sitting on the corner selling corn that she baked in the earth for 4 DAYS!! called "elote enterno"...Yummy!....bought 3 ears and then returned to buy more...3 pesos each (30 cents).

Uxmal

Wow! What an amazing place this is! Uxmal was the ultimate destination on this trip. Founded in about 500 AD, Uxmal (pronounced "oosh-mahl") was the most powerful site in western Yucatan. The Pyramid of the Magician, at 100 feet tall was probably my favorite as it was so unusual with the curved lines and eliptical shape. Another really interesting thing about that pyramid is that you could stand in front of it on the back side and clap your hand loudly and it would echo back a bird type chirp from that little door. Very cool. The architecture style known as Puuc is prevalant where the relief decorations start at the level of the doors and flow upwards. until they cover the entire upper sections of buildings. There were lots of masks some say to represent the rain god, Chaac. Some of the buildings line up pointing to the southernmost rise location of Venus, which occurs once every eight years. Also according to some sacred geometry knowledge, beginning at Uxmal there are seven temples laid out in a spiral (Labna, Kabah, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Kohunlich, and Palenque) and we are going to 3 of those. We took a gazillion photos so I have posted them separately at http://picasaweb.google.com/divadelmundo/Uxmal
should you wish to see more. There was so much to see as we stayed here a full day and 2 nights. The light and sound show in the evening was very worthwhile (in Spanish)...we went twice it was so good! I have to come back to this place!