The Young Life: Day 4--The End of the World

Our final full day was spent in two places--both of which deserve a full day, for those of you who might follow in our footsteps.

Our first tour was in Coba, where we had a killer tour guide who was just a walking encyclopedia on Mayan culture and history. Much of the sight had trees and forests and it seemed much less well preserved or well restored than Chichen Itza.

This calendar originally started the 2012 doomsday hypothesis. According to our walking encyclopedia, a talented Mayan sculpture carved out the symbols for the years leading up to 2012 (it being the final one). Somewhere along the line, an archeaologist came along, looked at the calendar, and assumed it meant the end of the world.

The highlight of the sight was climbing the largest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan. For those of you who are familiar with Kenny's love of heights, being at the top and climbing down was a little interesting. He also enjoyed being the "border police", ensuring that I didn't get too close while at the top.

The climb was a bit daunting...

...but the view from the top was spectacular.

This is what we saw on the way down (on our bums, sliding, no less). The stairs were quite steep and had no railings or safety nets on the sides, and the only support was an old, frayed rope trailing down the middle. In the US it would have been a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The really beautiful pictures came from Tulum, the only Mayan town to have been built on the shore. Unfortunately, walking into Tulum, I managed to stub my big toe and rip off a significant portion of the skin (being in flip-flops--probably not the wisest decision, as Kenny swiftly pointed out). A kind life guard patched me up with some frightening looking iodine and gauze that he rested on the floor before applying it to my open wound. But my toe is still intact and infection-free, so no harm done.

A little model of the entire site--note the wall surrounding the entire thing, another unique thing about Tulum.

Here's a little house at Tulum--the "town" itself was a merchant town, being on the sea. So there weren't as many inhabitants as some of the other ruin-sites.

The Mayans had some other equinox tricks up their sleeves--a small hole in the building allows the light to shine through when positioned correctly. So surprising, in fact, that most archaeologists didn't know it was there until it was happened upon accidentally. This particular building is also a typhoon warning, whistling if the wind picks up fast enough to bring on a storm. Still works, too.

We only had about an hour to explore Tulum, which is not nearly enough to really enjoy everything, but we did get to see the highlights.