PYRAMID POWERBy Joyce Gregory Wyels"Aren't we even going to stop in Cancún?" asked my college-age daughter Marcy as I signed the papers on a rental car at the Cancún airport. "Trust me," I said. "There's a lot more to Yucatán than Cancún."
Ever since, I'd been looking for an excuse to get back, and an opportunity to introduce this addictive place to my Spanish-speaking daughter. On one of those rare occasions when Marcy's and my vacation time coincided, I seized the opportunity for a spur-of-the-moment trip to Yucatan. Despite the last-minute nature of our planning, we succeeded in reserving a rental car. The catch: we would have to return it in Villahermosa, on the far side of the Yucatán Peninsula, one week later. With so little time and so many pyramids to explore, I certainly didn't want to waste time lolling on a beach. I handed Marcy the car keys as I studied our two crisp new maps--one dotted with little pyramids and the other showing a few scattered gas pumps. Then we tossed bags and bottled water in the car and headed south on the two-lane highway that parallels Mexico's Caribbean coast.
We planned to spend the first two nights in Akumal, two hours south of Cancún. As the sun sank below the horizon, Marcy turned off the road toward slivers of light shining out between the poles of a thatched-roof palapa. "We can ask how much farther we have to go," she said. When we discovered that the rustic building was actually a little roadside café, we ordered a bottle of "Coca" each and asked our location. "Xpu-Ha," responded the proprietor, a small man with a soft-spoken, friendly manner, one of many contemporary Maya in the area. We dined under the thatched roof in Xpu-Ha, feasting on typical Yucatecan dishes: pargo, a local fish, and pollo pibil, chicken wrapped in banana leaves. A basket of small, freshly patted-out tortillas accompanied the meal. Before our trip was over we would dine in fancier restaurants, but we would hardly find tastier food. Akumal, a tranquil alternative to Cancún, lay just down the road. We fell asleep listening to the waves of the Caribbean slapping rhythmically against the rocks a few feet below our window. The next morning, lulled by the laid-back atmosphere of Akumal, we snorkeled in a pretty turquoise lagoon, then stretched out on an uncrowded beach. Later, exploring along the coast, we noticed a sign: "Cenote Azul." A young woman in an embroidered white dress led us to the cenote, a natural well formed by an opening in the earth's limestone crust. Her nearby home had thatch to protect against sun and rain, openings to encourage a breeze, and hammocks slung from the rafters for a cool place to sleep. By the end of the day Marcy was busy circling place-names on the maps. "I'm not sure we can get to all those," I ventured. "Maybe we should step up the pace," she replied. Early the next morning, with packed bags in the car, we arrived at Xel-Ha, where the mingling of fresh and salt water forms a natural aquarium. We crouched on a wooden platform over the lagoon, watching brightly colored fish dart through the protected waters below us. A short drive beyond Xel-Ha brought us to what has become the most visited of all Maya sites. Tulum rises dramatically above the cliffs overlooking the Caribbean, a former trading center and fortress city occupied long after the classic Maya sites had been abandoned. A beach at the base of the cliffs, framed by palm trees, looked inviting, but we arrived at mid-day when tour buses clog the parking lot and tour guides shepherd their straggling flocks through the ruins. "I just wish," said Marcy, "there weren't so many people." No problem. We drove along a paved road leading into the Yucatecan jungle to the next little pyramid on our map. Cobá is just far enough off the main track to discourage tour buses. At one time all roads led to Cobá, the ceremonial center for a vast complex of Maya villages. Only a small fraction of the structures have been excavated. Marcy and I set out toward the first cluster of pyramids with only brilliant blue butterflies for company. Rounding a bend, we suddenly came upon a huge gray pyramid dug out from the jungle, tree roots entangled in its sides. We climbed Las Pinturas to examine the stucco paintings that give the pyramid its name. Marcy nudged me and pointed to an old man with a machete hanging from his belt sitting motionless at the base of the steps. We descended the steps and acknowledged his presence: "Buenas tardes." The old man returned our greeting. Then he showed us the stones of the cemetery, where his own ancestors had probably worshipped, and pointed out a shortcut to the next group of ruins. The narrow path led to a clearing surrounding the towering pyramid Nohoch Mul, at over one hundred feet the highest on the entire peninsula. Contrasts abound in the Yucatán peninsula--Cancún high-rises and thatched-roof Maya huts, jet-set tourists and Indians in native dress. Still, the sight of a Club Med-operated hotel next to the stark pyramids of Cobá struck me as surreal. But Villas Arqueológicas was nothing like other Club Meds--just rooms at a reasonable rate, a nice restaurant and a swimming pool. After the damp and mosquitoes, the best part was the air conditioning. With Chichén Itzá as our next stop, we departed Cobá at daybreak. We knew we'd find tour buses there, but you don't pass up Chichén Itzá on a trip to Yucatán. The largest excavated site on the peninsula, it's big enough to handle everyone. From the top of El Castillo we looked out over dozens of Maya and Toltec structures. We peered into the sacred well, the cenote, whose depths have yielded the bones of sacrificial victims. We tried to imagine knocking a ball through the vertical stone hoop high on the side of the great ball court, and we gaped at rows of human skulls carved in a stone wall. In the café at the visitors' center, a woman on a day trip from Cancún struck up a conversation. "Where are you staying?" she asked us. "Well, we stayed in Cobá last night, but we don't know where we're staying tonight," Marcy told her. She looked at us in disbelief. "You mean you just came down here without reservations?" In her best world-adventurer voice Marcy answered, "Oh, we'll find a place. We haven't had any trouble so far." She gave me a sidelong glance. The truth was, we'd had reservations in Akumal and Cobá, and we were planning to continue to Mérida before nightfall, where the guidebook listed dozens of hotels. In the old colonial city of Mérida, we headed straight for the Zócalo. There we claimed a park bench to watch families dressed in their Sunday best stroll through the plaza, or pedal surreys with bright striped awnings around the square, or promenade in a horse-drawn carriage. Balloon vendors circulated among the crowds, and book sellers set up little stalls. Local youths politely struck up conversations with Marcy as I played the part of chaperone. We watched the action into the twilight, then feasted on a sumptuous dinner in one of the old mansions that line Mérida's boulevards. It hardly mattered that our budget hotel didn't live up to the guide-book description. From Mérida a short drive brought us to Uxmal (oosh-mal), a classic Maya city built about 600 A.D. Viewing the imposing temples, it was easy to see how the Maya earned their title, "the Greeks of the New World." Once again Marcy and I luxuriated in the now-familiar surroundings of Club Med's Villas Arqueológicas. Then I pointed my camera skyward while she scaled the heights of the Pyramid of the Magician, probably the most harrowing climb in all Yucatan. Touring Uxmal's one-time suburbs, we found that each smaller site offered its own gem of Maya creativity, like Labna's ornate arch or the wall covered with masks of the rain god Chac at Kabah. The manager at Villas Arqueológicas Uxmal had estimated it would take us six hours to drive to Palenque. In reality, it took about seven and a half hours, with one stop for gas at the crossroads town of Escárcega and a pause for refrescos at some anonymous roadside stand. We were slowed by topes (speed bumps) in little villages, and by all manner of obstacles on the open road: four little piglets, a work crew, a dead cow, a snake, potholes the size of cenotes. Was the long drive through Campeche's shimmering heat worth it? You bet. Palenque, the most beautiful of all Maya cities, lay hidden for centuries in the lush rain forest of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. At the entrance a group of Lacandón Maya Indians peddled tourist versions of the bows and arrows their elders had once used for hunting. The men's long flowing hair and loose white tunics, different from all the other Maya people we had seen, intrigued me. To our right as we entered, the majestic Temple of the Inscriptions soared upward from the jungle clearing, backed by luxuriant green foliage. In 1952 this temple was the site of one of the greatest archeological discoveries ever, when Alberto Ruz Lhuillier dug through centuries of rubble to uncover the magnificent sarcophagus of Lord Pacal, Maya ruler of the seventh century A.D. But our time was running out. "Would you go to Paris and miss the Eiffel Tower?" asked Marcy. So we climbed the outside stairs to the top, then let ourselves through a trapdoor-like entrance. Marcy and I followed the same path that Ruz had taken, sharply downward to a landing, then a 180-degree turn and the rest of the way down to just below ground level. An eerie red light now illumines the crypt where Ruz found Lord Pacal, more than twelve hundred years after he had passed to the Maya Netherworld. The twelve-foot sarcophagus cover shows Pacal in a reclining position, poised between this world and the next. Above ground, we made a quick circuit of the graceful building with a pagoda-like tower known as the Palace. Then we raced to return the car in Villahermosa, where giant Olmec heads pre-date even the Maya. While I collected the rental papers, Marcy studied our maps, now dog-eared and torn. "We missed the pyramid at Edzná," she remarked. I smiled. "When's our next trip?" For more information see: http://www.go2mexico.com/ by Dave Shultz |
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I had traveled to Yucatán once before. It was a short trip, only eight days, which I divided equally between a Cancún beach resort and the Maya archeological sites within easy reach of Cancún. I don't remember much about the beach, but I'll never forget the sense of wonder when I stared into the jade eyes of El Tigre at Chichén Itzá, or the feeling of elation when I finally scaled the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal.
It was the start of a driving adventure that would take us one thousand miles across the Yucatán Peninsula, through five Mexican states, to an astonishing variety of ancient stone cities built more than a thousand years ago by the master architects of the Maya civilization. We would climb temples overgrown with vegetation and pyramids overrun with tourists. We would gaze into sacred wells and wander through ceremonial centers filled with plazas, ball courts, palaces and shrines.