Friday, July 25, 2014

Merida y Izamal, Yucatan Peninsula: MEXICO

Headed up to the good ol' Yucatan. There we saw a very detailed and informative Mayan museum in Merida then continued on to visit more ruins. We opted to base ourselves on the pueblito of Izamal instead of the city of Merida. Izamal was beautiful, a small town with buildings all in yellow. We ended up staying for a couple of extra days because the place was just that nice.
Mayan dresses of today worn by the women in the Yucatan region.
Izamal.
Ruins in the town. We saw a few ruins in Izamal and they were all for free!
The name of the site.
Izamal, very famous for the horse drawn carriage rides, although it was just too hot for the poor horses.
Izamal.
The convent where Pope John Paul came to visit.
Their Virgin, who resembles a couple of women in my fam, it's strange.
Pyramids.
Chichen Itza: we visited this Disney Land of ancient Mayan sites. It was beautiful, but the amount of people and vendors have it a stressful Disney World type theme. Que lastima!
But the ruins were beautiful and very detailed.
Observatory.
Many iguanas, probably because it was soo hot!
Gringa by the pyramid.
Skulls, this temple was used to display skulls to scare off enemies.
The "hoop" for the ball game. This game was played to make important decisions over wars perhaps, the losers would be sacrificed.
Huge court, they most likely used some sort of bat as well.
Cenote or sink hole, the Maya from Chichen Itza threw sacrifices into the sink hole, it was looked at like an opening to the world below.
El Balam: Ruins near Izamal that weren't as infested with tourists.
Climbing up was no problem, coming down though.., i just ley picturing my body rolling down to the bottom, very steep, so i used my Granny Greene skills to slowly get myself down.
View from top.
This is a Shaman. One arm is longer than the other. This is because they wanted to keep the genetics soo puré in the noble class that they promoted and incest. So when deformities like this ocurred they looked at is a gift from the gods.
Ek Balam.
Little sneak shot of how they dressed.
Another cenote or sink hole. I swam in this one, it was so refreshing after walking around in the sun all day. There were birds flying above as well, very peaceful.
A bird, there are soo many birds. I now can see why people are into bird watching.









































1 comment:

  1. Wish I could have seen those Granny Greene skills in action!

    ReplyDelete