Today the Ashby-Ferriz subunit decided to make an excursion
to Chichén Itzá. We got up reasonably early, had breakfast, and by 9:30 am were
on our way. It took us about two and a half hours to get there, but still
managed to get in about half hour ahead of the crowds. The place is overrun
with handcrafts sellers, but at least they are polite and not overly pushy. I
must say they add a little of a marketplace color to the site.
During the Classic period (about 200 BC to 750 AD),
Mesoamerica was dominated by the Teotihuacán empire in Central Mexico, and by
the Mayan empire in the highlands of Guatemala (Tikal) and Honduras (Copán). At
the end of the Classic, the commercial empires of Teotihuacán and the highland
Maya collapsed (no one really knows why). Many of the Teotihuacán artisans
built the city state of Tula (the Toltecs) a hundred kilometers from their
previous empire, and innumerable small cities throughout central Mexico. Around
1200 AD these small cities were conquered by the invading Aztecs (then a small,
but extremely fierce tribe from the north), who ruled Central Mexico until the
arrival of the Spaniards in 1519.
At the start of the Post-Classic (750 AD to 1519 AD), the highland
Mayas completely relocated to the flatlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, where
they built city states like those of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá, where they thrived
until the arrival of the Spaniards.
Chichén Itzá was probably the largest of the city states,
and proclaimed its importance by the size of its public buildings. The central
pyramid was built ever larger as the city became more important, and is now one
of the biggest in southern Mexico. Like in many Mesoamerican sites, the
pyramids and stone buildings were the seat of power and religion, with the
population scattered over a very wide area, living in wood and palm structures
that have not survived to our days. Besides the pyramid, the city boasted many
public buildings with dozens of rooms, any number of small platforms for
various temples, a wall decorated with stone skulls (which Ronnie liked very
much because after Coco he is fascinated with skulls and skeletons), a cenote where offers of gold and the odd
Mayan princess were sent to the gods (a cenote
is a circular sinkhole formed by the collapse of the roof of a cave, where the
water table forms a lake ideal for tossing trash and gold offerings).
We hit the best last, and were wrapping our visit to the
site when we walked into the largest ball court I have ever seen. Apparently
there were no set rules for the size of a ball court, but most of the ones I
have seen have the shape of an upper case “I”, where the long dimension is
maybe the size of a basketball court, the width is maybe a third of the length,
and the two bars at the end are the size of half a tennis court. The two stone
hoops are set opposite to each other, at a height of 3 to 4 m, down the middle
of the I, just like this *I* Now readjust your
imagination, and think that in Chichén Itzá the body of the I is the size of a
soccer field, the bars at each end are the size of basketball courts, and the
hoops were a good 8 m from the ground! It was as if it had been designed for
giants to play in. Finally we concluded that this was where the World Cup of
the ball game was regularly played every four years, so there!
We had a delicious Yucatán late lunch with sopa de lima
(citrus soup that Ronnie liked very well), panuchos de pavo, and fajitas de res
y de pollo, irrigated with local La Ceiba beer. Of course we overate and that
ruined our dinner plans.
On the way back we stopped at Playa del Carmen to buy
guayaberas for DJ (proudly made in Yucatán and not in China), and by 6 pm were
back in Xcaret, ready for a swim and a late live performance of Disney songs.
Ronnie almost missed the start of the latter because he became ravenous and had
to have a taco or die of hunger.
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