22/09/09-26/09/09Having taken our first overnight bus of the trip from Palenque, we arrived in Tulum at 7am on the 22/09 and decided to walk to the nearest hostel, which also happened to be the cheapest according to our guide book :) Tulum is a beach town on the Carribean coast of Mexico, with the beach itself lying about 10 minutes away from town, leaving you with the option of paying lots of money for a cabin on the beach (which would be lovely but not really within our backpacker´s budget) or choosing from a selection of cheap hostels along the main road. The one we chose had a great information centre attached and a free shuttle service to the beach so we were sold immediately! They had private rooms on offer but they were across the road, away from the main hostel so we decided to go for a dorm room. They had a really modern checking-in system where everyone registers for a room via a touch-screen computer and is given a card with which to make bar purchases etc. Vic went first, choosing a room at random, and then I got another bed in the same room. Christoph and Sophie had arrived in Tulum the day before us and at this point we didn´t have any idea how we would meet up with them, as I only had their German mobile numbers and I hadn´t received any replies to the messages I had sent them. Our only way of communicating with them was probably going to be through Dani who had a Mexican mobile, and could put himself in contact with Sophie, but he would not be arriving until that evening. You can imagine our surprise and joy then, when we walked into our dorm room and found that we were sharing with none other than Christoph and Sophie. We did a double take at first and noticed that they looked a bit annoyed to have been woken up so early, but when everyone realised who each other was, we all found it rather funny. What a small world!!!
We spent the rest of that day together at the beach and decided to do a snorkel trip, with an absolutely crazy guide, who apparently is just like a guy from Along Came Polly (I´ve seen the film but can´t remember the guy at all, so I hope you know who I mean). For proof of his madness, in Vic´s second photo below, our guide is half way up the palm tree trying to collect coconuts :) The snorkel trip lasted about an hour and a half and we went into the water twice...apart from seeing quite a lot of fish and some coral we also got to hold a few starfish, which was really cool. After that we just relaxed in the sand for the rest of the afternoon. The beach here is absolutely beautiful, probably the best I have ever seen with soft, white sand and the clear, turquoize water. It took my breath away the first time I saw it! I don´t know if any of my photos do it justice but I´m unable to upload any at the moment :(
That evening we went to the bus station to meet Dani, but being a bit early we decided to go and have a quick drink first in a nearby bar. We had just got our drinks when we noticed him walking up the street. He sat down with us and the five of us were reunited once more :) We didn´t stay at the bar for long as the prices were extortionate (well probably not compared to back home, but compared to the bar prices at our hostel, it was expensive) so we went back to the hostel, where Dani also checked into our room! Armed with bottles of rum, coke and lots of ice, we enjoyed another fun night of uno and other card games, including ring of fire, which proved to be a very effective drinking game (i.e. you get very drunk). It was another great night!
The next morning, we were surprised when it suddenly started raining as we were planning to go to the beach and didn´t stop for about 2 hours! Once it had stopped we took the later bus to the beach, with the intention of having another relaxing day! Unfortunately the rain didn´t stay away for long and although we stayed in the sea for a little while during the rain, it started raining so hard that it actually hot so we took shelter in a nearby restaurant and had some lunch. It did eventually brighten up again and towards the late afternoon we moved over to the bar and started on the beer :) After only a few, the bar was shut, but luckily we found another bar that was only just opening, with a happy hour on cocktails. Needless to say, we stayed there drinking cocktails until that one closed as well and got a cab back to our hostel. The night was still young and we still had some rum left over from the previous night so we played ring of fire again and ordered a couple of pizzas from the place next door, as we were all starving! This was our final night together as Christoph and Sophie had to leave the next day, so we had to give them a proper send off :)
For our final day in Tulum, we finally went to visit the Maya ruins, which are set alongside the beach. The ruins themselves weren´t as impressive as the others that we have seen so far, but it was a novelty to see them set against a backdrop of the turquoize ocean, and the grounds around the ruins were really green, making the site as a whole appear really beautiful, so I really enjoyed the visit (although it was way too hot, and we got a bit lost trying to find the exit....getting lost seems to be a regular occurrence with us) :) Afterwards, we decided to check out another beach about half an hour away called Akumal, which was meant to be even more beautiful than 'our' beach....I wouldn´t agree. It was still very pretty, but there was a lot of rocks and algae in the sea so the water wasn´t as clear, and I didn´t enjoy being there as much, but it was nice to have a change of scenery. That evening, we had our final dinner with Dani before saying goodbye to him the next morning and taking a bus to Chichén Itzá, a very famous Maya ruin site. Dani, Christoph and Sophie, we are so glad we got to meet you on that tour from Palenque and it was so much fun spending those few days with you in Tulum. We hope you are all well and that we will see each other again one day!
The most impressive sight at Chichén Itzá is a huge pyramid in the centre of the main square. It is one of the first things you see upon entering and it is amazing to behold. You can see photos of the pyramid in Vic´s entry below. Historians are unsure as to who we should attribute the building of this structure to. The Mayas lived at this site up until around 9ooAD, and the pyramid that they built still remains inside the giant one that can be seen today, but the giant one was added a couple of centuries later when the site was reinhabited. It is believed that the new civilisation might have been the Toltecs, as the newer buildings around the site show heavy Toltec influence, but it is not certain. There are several surprising and interesting facts about this pyramid: firstly, it has nine levels and it is believed that the these nine levels represent the nine planets of the solar system, which the creators of the pyramid are thought to have been aware of. Secondly, the pyramid has the same number of steps as the number of days which Venus takes to revolve around the sun, and so the pyramid is thought to have been built as a monument to Venus. Thirdly, from the pyramid, there is a sacred road that leads to the sacred well, where several sacrifices were made (including personal objects, animals and even humans), but the road doesn´t lead exactly to the pyramid. The pyramid is slightly to the left of the road. For years, scientists could not work out why there was such an obvious shift in direction from the sacred road to the pyramid, but eventually, with the use of satellites, they realised that they have been orientated using different north poles, i.e. geographical north and magnetic north. I don´t know how it works myself and I´m probably getting this all wrong, but it´s more or less what our guide told us. To this day, scientists cannot figure out how they achieved this without satellites, but somehow they managed it. (For those interested, geographical north, also known as true north, is a constant and refers to the geographic north pole. Magnetic north tends to shift and refers to the pole of the Earth´s magnetic field.....I got this from the internet) :) The final interesting fact is that if you stand at the bottom of the pyramid and clap, the echo that comes back sounds like the sound of a bird, and in particular, the quetzal, which was the sacred bird of the Maya (this confuses me a bit, as this pyramid is not supposed to have been built by the Maya people, but maybe the original, smaller pyramid had this feature as well and was incorporated into the larger version somehow??) But anyway, it´s quite amazing to hear, and it´s incredible to think that they were able to build the pyramid in such a way as to make this phenomenon possible.
We also saw the biggest juego de pelota that we have seen so far, and also in the best condition, with the hoops still in tact. This was a religious game, the aim of which was to shoot a ball through the hoops (like in basketball but the hoops are vertical rather than horizontal). All players were killed at the end, but the team that won died in honour and was offered to the gods in sacrifice. Our guide told us that the governors invented this game to control the population. If the population were to keep increasing, there was a risk that the entire population would suffer due to the scarcity of food and water, and so this game was a convenient way to keep the population at a supportable level. And these people were happy to play in the hope of winning and dying in honour of their gods. Sounds crazy to me :) Our guide also told us how the community was split socially: at the very top were the governors, equivalent to a royalty, who were also religious leaders, next came the philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians and architects, who, unlike in medieval Europe, belonged to the nobility and were exempt from paying taxes. After this class came the warriors (the army), followed by trades people and at the bottom, the peasants and slaves. Education was considered very highly within the community, hence the educated people were bestowed with a very high status. The astromoners were even able to construct a calendar more accurate than our own, that did not require leap years every four years. Again I´m not really sure how it worked, but every 32 years the calendar somehow evened itself out, with each year having 365 days. Incredible or what???
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