BEYOND RYE: Love Among the Ruins

 My wife is a firm believer in the French Foreign Legion School of Travel motto: March or Die. And so we marched up and down many pyramids across the Yucatan Peninsula last month.

 

By Chris Cohan

 

My wife is a firm believer in the French Foreign Legion School of Travel motto: March or Die. And so we marched up and down many pyramids across the Yucatan Peninsula last month. 

 

Our sunrise flight landed in Cancun well before noon. With only carryon luggage, we were in the rental car and on the road minutes later. We drove off to Valladolid, a quant city two hours inland. Their annual Carnivale celebration was planned for that evening. Slow on the uptake, it never occurred to me where our room would be.

 

It turned out to be a romantic room overlooking the central plaza, and, that evening, the entire community showed up to celebrate. Wild and clever costumes, a collective smile wrapped around the plaza, and music filled the air. It was wonderful, but by 3 a.m. had lost its charm. We woke up groggy, had a delicious breakfast and lots of coffee.

 

We hit the road and were at Ek Balam, our first Mayan ruin before 9. The key to visiting ruins is to get there early — to beat the heat and the crowds. Ek Balam’s extensive excavation only began in the 1990s. Many archeologists believe this site may turn out to be more important than Chichen-Itza. It is special and still relatively unknown. Now is the time to visit.

 

We climbed hundreds of hand-cut stone steps to reach the top of the temple. The view across the flat Yucatan extends to the horizon. It was silent and still, but for a cool breeze, which blew away all that seemed so important back home which became irrelevant.

 

After that very long hike, we descended hungry. My wife accepted my penchant for street food. If it wasn’t moving, I was game. I stopped for Coco Frio regularly — a cold coconut with the top macheted off, served with a straw to drink the milk. Afterwards, they chop it up so you can eat the pulp with pimiento sprinkled on top.

 

Grilled chicken along the side of the road was my favorite. The smell alone made my mouth water. We ate in palm-frond shaded shacks where Mayan women grill chickens split and flattened on a charcoal grill. Rice, beans, shredded lettuce, tomato, and lime accompanied a moist, grilled chicken. Each town had its own seasoning style.

 

The view from a wobbly wooden table was great — three on a motorcycle, small carts filled high with all sorts of boxes, and cars that would be outlawed in all 50 United States, but somehow still run. While we savored our chicken the ‘floorshow’ continued with horses, barefooted children laughing and skipping by, along with bicycles powered by Mayans with noble profiles.  

 

Next on the list was Uxmal, a Mayan masterpiece filled with intricate facades of carved stone. Unlike other ruins, it incorporates the varied elevations of the hilly landscape — an anomaly of the flat northern Yucatan. Pyramid of the Magician, with its oval base and rounded sides, stood out in sharp contrast to the angular architecture of the Mayans.

 

We stayed in Merida, a large city with lots of art, architecture, and real markets filled with everything from live chickens to Panama hats. We saw everything and then some. That was the plan at each stop we made.

 

The fabled ruins of Chichen Itza were to be the high point of our ruins vacation. The sheer size of the site is impressive. The combination of stone temples, pyramids, the largest ball court, observatory, and cenote (water hole) provides you with an overwhelming sense of what that civilization accomplished.

 

El Castillo is the iconic pyramid. It was built with the Mayan calendar as its guide: 365 steps that equal the days of the lunar year, and 18 terraces, the number of months of the Mayan calendar. The 52-year cycle when the solar and religious calendars converge is reflected in the same number of detailed panels on the terraces. The pyramid at equinox displays an optical illusion while the sun set. The shadow appears to slither down the steps to the serpent’s head carved at the base. A complex calendar that predicted the end of the world?  Maybe a Mayan mason mis-chiseled?

 

Designated a “New World Wonder,” El Castillo is a major tourist attraction. By 10 a.m., the tour buses filled the parking lots. We found ourselves sharing the site with fair-skinned hordes and loads of local merchants hawking every conceivable trinket. 

 

We took a local road to the coast, driving through pueblos, getting stuck behind a horse-drawn cart for what seemed like eternity waiting for a herder to move his cows across the road. 

 

Finally, we arrived at Tulum, a smaller ruin but exotically sited atop a bluff overlooking the Caribbean. It is the Pompeii to Chichen Itza’s Rome. A modest compilation of structures with views across white sand beaches, sparkling water, puffy clouds scattered across a blue sky. 

 

This was a great way to wrap up our ruined vacation by coming full circle back to the coast. Mexico also has wonderful beaches, clear water, great sunsets, and margaritas. Swimming is allowed at the beach below the pyramid. The water was a series of blues with gentle foamy surf. I swam out and looked back at the tropical flora framing the ruins on the bluff. While my wife set a quick pace on our vacation, I finally grabbed a little R and R below the ruins.