Cancun, Mexico February 2013

We went on a trip to Cancun, Mexico with Greg and Sue; Bert and Betty.   It was a fun trip though the weather was rainy part of the time which prevented us from snorkeling. 

The highlight of the trip was seeing amazing Indian ruins.  The first day we saw the ruins of “Tulum”.  Our guide told us interesting things about how the Mayans linked their architecture to Astronomy.  One very interesting astronomical fact was that they designed one of the walls with a unique cut in it so that on April 6 light from the rising sun hit a hole in one of their buildings and lit up the building.  Also, there are images of the “descending God” throughout the structure.  It appears to be a fairly well established fact that the Spaniards were initially thought to be the Descending God when they first came.  

The next day we went to “Chichen Itza”.  These ruins were astounding.  At the most prominent pyramid, the guide said that they ripped out the person’s heart, cut off their head and rolled them down the steps where the people ate their bodies.  In both the Tulum ruins and Chichen Itza, the people were divided into classes where the higher class and more educated priests lived inside the structures whereas the common people lived outside in huts.  In Chichen Itza we were told they also had a ball field where a ball game was played and the winner got to be sacrificed to the gods.  We also saw an interesting stone box where the guide said the priests kept sacred documents.

After the ruins we went to a museum and went to an island called “Isla de las  Muhares” (Island of the women where the women and children went when the men went off to fight).