Sacrifice a virgin, anyone?
This entry was posted on 12/14/2006 8:30 PM and is filed under Mexico.
CHICHEN ITZA - Today we spent two bucks to take a bus to see the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza, inhabited the once great Mayan civilization. This place is crazy... it's hard to appreciate the scale of these ruins from the photos you see in the books. We were disappointed that we couldn't climb the largest ruin, El Castillo - but apparently some stupid 25 year old decided to try and climb down the SIDE of the thing (without using those giant stairs), and not suprisingly slipped and fell to his death. Getting blood on the building wasn't a problem - they probably used to sacrifice people there all the time - but it ruined it for the rest of us. No pun intended. Here's a shot of it...
We also went down to the sacred cenote where they used to sacrifice the virgins. Legend has it that young virginal women (probably gathered from families of defeated soldiers or other random sacrificed folks) were collected and housed in the 'nunnery'. Then they'd be dosed with a bit of Mayan booze (Jimmy, how come we never had any of this stuff??), dressed up in heavy jade ornaments, and 'accompanied' by a high priest to a platform at the edge of the cenote where they would then 'on their own volition' jump into the deep cenote which by the way had no means of escape. These virgins would sink to the bottom and of course drown. The legend was turned to fact when some diver went down there and found a bunch of skeletons and valuable jade ornaments.
Our favorite spot by far was the ball court which is the largest court of its kind in mesocentralamerica. This is the spot where teams would 'play' (or knowing the Mayans, fight to the death using all manner of advantage while disregarding any rules or sportsmanship whatsoever). They had to get a ball into one of two rings that were 20 or so feet up on the wall in the center of the court. Oh, and whoever remained of the losing team was sacrificed. No big suprise there. Cool thing about this place is that two people could stand on either end (150 yards apart maybe?) and the acoustics were so good that you could hear each other talking. Well, now of course. Back in the day you'd just hear a lot of grunting and bleeding. Check it out...
After getting our fill of the ruins we caught a 'Collectivo' back to Valladolid and had dinner at our new favorite restaurant. Last night I got a half a chicken cooked in orange sauce and Anna had roasted pork. The food was amazing... and not the typical stuff you´d get at the average Mexican joint in the States. And there was a LOT of food... too much in fact. Tonight we split an entree and got some amazing corn soup... and it was still too much. The restaurant isn´t in the Lonely Planet guide, but it´s in the lobby of 'Hotel Maria de la Luz' in the center of Valladolid.
