Yucatan Peninsula Adventure

Elizabeth was in school at the time, so we had to go on her spring break. This presented a problem - we were not alone. So we decided to stay away from the popular resorts as much as was reasonable to avoid the drunken spring break vacationing crowd.

Our plane set down in Cancun, where we rented a car and drove about an hour south to Playa del Carmen. Playa del Carmen was a great little town that is the departure point for the ferries to Cozumel, but we spent a couple of days relaxing there. It's quiet, cheap, and has a nice beach. Just the sort of thing one needs to unwind after a long plane trip or two. It is a bit on the hot and humid side year-round (for my Nordic tastes), but that is a general condition with the Yucatan Peninsula that one must simply cope with. A clean cool ocean at the steps of your hotel room and lack of true physical activity tend to help.

Playa del Carmen was also a good home base to visit various Mayan ruins, especially Tulum in the south and Coba inland. Tulum has really spectacular ocean views, a large wall, and lots of structures that are easily accessible. Coba is apparently enough out of the way that it does not get much traffic. However, it does host the tallest of the Maya pyramids, which was a bit scary to climb (very steep steps, and no guide ropes). Coba is also the most spread out of the ruins that we visited - with several kilometers separating the various sites. The ball courts are of impressive size, and much of the stone work is very intricate.

Apparently, the Maya are the best known of the older civilizations that lived in the area, but by no means the only one. The area was ruled under different times by various civilizations including the Aztecs and the Toltecs. A lot of the infrastructure reflects Toltec influences - such as the hard corners and the human sacrifices. More early pure-Maya ruins, such as those we would later see in Uxmal, exhibit a much more rounded look. Also, the Maya did not start engaging in human sacrifice until after integration with the Toltecs.

Also on the East Coast of the Yucatan and less than hour south of Playa del Carmen, we visited a resort that is very Disneyland-esque: Xcaret. Having lived in L.A. for a decade and gone to Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, and Raging Waters dozens of times, I hardly needed another park. However, the attraction offered here that was not available elsewhere was the chance to swim with dolphins, pictured at right. I felt a bit sorry for the dolphins, as they were in confined quarters and did not have much choice but to interact with us silly humans. Both Elizabeth and I would have preferred to swim with dolphins in the wild, but we were not successful in those attempts, and this was the closest substitute.

In our adventures through the various Mayan ruins, we were faced with their most important god - the god of rain, Chac. Chac was sometimes called the big-nosed god due to a rather phallic large hook that protruded from the region of the face where the nose was. Also, Chac was typically shown with his mouth wide open and used as an entrance. In the photo on the left, I am trying my best to be godlike in presentation at Uxmal.

The Maya obsession with the rain god can easily be understood. The Yucatan Peninsula is very flat, and rivers that run through it are few and far in-between. There are some standing pools of water (cenotes), and wells were dug in places, but still it was rain that provided most of the irrigation for the farmed soil. The dry season was long and hard, and the first rains were a welcome site indeed. When the dry spells lasted a long time, sacrifices were made to Chac (or excuses to why Chac was mad were discovered) in order to bring the rain. From studying the sites, it seemed that many were abandoned by one tribe and occupied many years later by another - which suggests that the pleas to Chac were not always successful.

After our stay on the East Coast, we drove inland, stopping by Chichen Itza; one of the best known of the Mayan ruins on the way to the capital of the region, Merida. It was fortunate that we stopped at Chichen Itza on the way, as everything was open for exploration, and there were not many people around.

Merida, unlike the touristy towns in the East, is a real city. It has quite a market, some excellent architecture (including the oldest church in the region) and is well-known for it's white buildings (thus the "white city"). We were fortunate enough to find a good deal staying at the Hotel del Balam in the center of the city, very up-scale as far as Mexican hotels go. It was a treat to have a large air-conditioned room, have all your needs taken care of, and live for a few days on something resembling a set on Casablanca. The people were friendly, and the food was pretty good. Strolling though the city was a lot of fun all in itself.

Merida was also the jumping-off point for a day trip to Uxmal, the most authentically Mayan ruin, sans Toltec influence. It had a touristy but good light and sound show, and offered a lot of worked stone for inspection. Combined with a lack of crowds, it was one of my favorite Mayan ruins.

What we missed in the way of crowds at Uxmal, we made up for on our way back east stopping again at Chichen Itza. This time, we stopped on a very special occasion. Once a year, on the Spring Equinox, the sun sets at the exact angle to cast a shadow along the steps of the main pyramid, the shadow of Kukulcan, the serpent, descending to the Earth in light on shadow. It is quite impressive that the architects could construct it so that it happens exactly on the equinox, and get it right over 500 years ago. You can see the serpent starting at the top of the pyramid, and winding down to the illuminated serpent head at the bottom. This is a great holiday in the region, as sun worshippers come out in force to bask in the glory of Kukulcan which is claimed rejuvenates ones sexual energies (ahem). We were among probably 20,000 people who congregated around the pyramid on that day - sunbathing, dancing, drinking, getting high, praying, and clicking away. It was actually a lot of fun!

Once we made it back to the coast, we spent the obligatory couple of days in Cancun. Hated it. Everyone speaks English by default, prices are on par with if not higher than in the States, and other than large hotels on a long but narrow strip of sand, there's not much there. It was a chance to see the party crowds though. We took a pleasant side-trip to Isla Mujeres, a small island off the coast of Cancun. What we did not know when signing up for it was that we landed on the party boat - all the tequila you could drink and then some. That probably did not help me not realize that my watch was slow, and so we missed our boat when it moved to the other side of the island (had to take a taxi), and almost missed it leaving the island altogether, which would have been bad.

After Cancun, we returned our car and set off for Cozumel - a large island known for its scuba diving a few miles off the coast. En route, we stopped in Playa del Carmen again, this time staying at the Delphin hotel - stay away if you can. Fortunately, it was only one night.

Cozumel did indeed offer the best diving since the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the water was much warmer here than there (given the season). We went snorkeling on the first day, which was not very impressive. Most of the fun stuff is at least 30 feet down, so it's much better to dive than to snorkel. Elizabeth had to take off for school on day 2 in Cozumel, and after she left I went diving for the next 3 days. I dove 8 times in that time, and they were all very fun dives. The night dives were a lot of fun due to the kind of critters that are about - you don't get to see them during the day. The down side of night dives is that it's freezing once you emerge from the water. Life's tough, eh? :) I also got to try my first wall dive. It's quite an experience diving over a void that goes down thousands of feet - you really have to watch your depth gauge. One good thing about Cozumel dives is that the currents are strong, so you're drift-diving, and the boat will pick you up where you emerge (it follows your bubbles on the surface), so that there is little swimming to the boat.

Cozumel rounded out the trip. From there, I took a small prop plane to Cancun, which offered some wonderful views (which did not photo very well). Then it was on home to San Francisco via Dallas. One final fact of note - the sunset I saw on the flight back was one of the most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen. The sun was setting as the plane descended through 4 layers of clouds. As the sun would set under the cloud bank, the plane would dive under it, and the sun would be up again. Thus I saw the sun set 5 times during that flight, each time in a glorious radiant orange-red. It was a wonderful conclusion to the trip.