Mayan Temple Tour

 Playa Del Carmen

Tulum * Chichen Itza * Cenote

Our day started early with an 8:00 a.m. pick up from an LDS tour company - Alma Tours. We met our guide Luis who would be our escort for the next 12 hours.

After a comparatively short 30-minute ride to Tulum we meet up with another 8 travelers for our morning tour of this seaside Mayan town. This seaside town must have been the Riveria of the Mayan civilization back in its day. It is beautiful and has great view of the ocean. The ocean provided a natural barrier from invaders. We learned that this civilization was still habituated by the Mayans when the Spaniards arrived and conquered the country.

It was a long 2 1/2-hour drive to Chichen Itza from Tulum, but before entering the site we stopped a local roadside restaurant to authentic food. Very yummy! The spices and flavors are familiar and yet still taste foreign. Maybe because Mexico is our closest neighbor, and we eat lots of Mexican food when at home.

The guide took a very clever rout through the Chichen Itza site. We came to the main temple through a side area which made of a nice grand entrance to the large temple site. The large temple site was flat with the huge temple in the middle surrounded by buildings on most sides. It was very impressive. A total of 91 stairs up each side of the temple and 1 final step on top symbolizing the 365 days of the year. It’s amazing to think of what this temple pyramid might have looked like at its peak and interesting to think of the people that might have lived in its shadows.

We toured the main sights and tried to comprehend why human sacrifice could be such an important part of their religious traditions. One particular building had the skulls of the killed as part of the decor on the walls. Because we visited both Tulum and Chichen Itza in one day, we only visited the main complex of the site and not the outer courtyards. We probably should have skipped the cenote and stayed at the site because at the cenote, Lara jumped in (like everyone else) and pulled her hamstring - so bad that getting out of the water, and then walking back up the stairs was extremely painful and difficult. It wasn’t a reckless move on Lara’s part, but maybe something that is beyond her age at this point. Either way, it was fun in the moment but was not worth the pain of landing wrong and the risk of ruining the rest of the summer sabbatical.