thursday.  jan. 14.  2016

jarom couldn’t wait to get to chichen itza before he left-and today was the day.  it’s been stormy lately, but today, the rains held off, and it was nice and cloudy.  it ended up being a perfect day for walking around.

we drove the 2 1/2 hours from where we are staying, and arrived in chichen itza.  right after you go through a highway toll, you can pull over, they let you buy tickets and parking pass right there at a little booth, and they also offered for $5 each, the buffet to eat at afterwords.  i’m not a big buffet person, but the kids were ecstatic.  “remember the one time we got to eat at a buffet?”  i think they were more excited about that than the actual ruins:)

we pull in, walk down the beautiful cobblestone pathways through the jungle, and enter the area with all the beautiful historical ruins.  this city was huge, there are so many things to see and imagine that went on here.  as you walk the dirt paths down to see the ruins, there are many vendors trying to sell you stuff.  the best line was, “almost free…one dollar today-no?  ok, than two dollars.”   it got to be a little annoying.  but you just don’t make eye contact, or you do to scare them off.  we made it to the big temple of chichen itza-just beautiful!  even though it is dwarfed by pyramids in egypt, and those are tombs, as chichen itza is a temple, it is still pretty magnificent.

we made our way around looking at other ruins of the city, including the great ball court where they had to get the ball in using their hips…the winning captain would present his own head to the losing captain, who then decapitates him.  this was an honor, as they believed they would go directly to heaven instead of having to go through the 13 high steps to get to heaven.  i personally would have preferred going the 13 high steps.

the observatory was amazing, it even had a cylindrical structure.  it was beautiful-and massive.

the sacred cenote’ was pretty cool too-if you jumped in and survived, you were considered a god.  everyone died but one man, emerging from the water claiming his role as deity.  not sure how shallow it is or what made it so dangerous, but i believe he probably studied the other men and where they jumped, and figured out a better place to jump into.  however he did it, pretty smart.