Sleeping in on vacation is for the weak, I say! We woke up on day 3 at 5am to catch our tour bus to the Mayan Ruins of Tulum. I loved that we were first tour group through the gates and basically had the place to ourselves during our tour. By the time we left, it was super crowded and hot! Also, you may notice my lobster legs in the photos. Apparently I didn't put enough suncreen on them the day before!
Iguanas were everywhere!
Our guide telling us about the plants the Mayans used as sewing needles.
He also told us about how the Mayans broke up the rock to build with: the rocks are very porous so the Mayans stuffed the holes with corn, waited for it to rain and the corn to swell and the rocks would break apart.
the wooden beam in this doorway is over 800 years old.
There are two faced engraven on the corners of this building. This one has his eyes closed.
And this one has his eyes open.
Red hands as a way for the Mayan artist to sign his name...it's also speculated that red hands were a sign of Christianity. Red hands have been seen other places around the world and perhaps that was a sign to other Christians that there were believers around.
The Mayan temple of Tulum is called "The Temple of the Descending God" and engravings of an upside down man are found in several places.
In the main temple there are three niches above the doorway. One has a picture of a "white" man with long hair and a beard (something the Mayans didn't have). The middle niche has the upside down man, and the third niche is intentionally left blank. There are many theories of who or what these niches mean. The Christian view is that it's Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the blank one is for the Holy Ghost.
The backside of the temple is a cliff looking down on the coast.
Standing up on top, looking down at all the stone buildings, it felt just like we had stepped back several hundred years and could easily picture an ancient civilization living here.
Our tour guide was very knowlegeable without being over long-winded. One of the interesting things he said in the tour was that in other Mayan ruins around Cancun there are signs of human sacrifice, but at Tulum there are not signs of that, even though it was of the more recent sites. His theory is that the Mayans were becoming a wicked people...a several years drought forced them to move from their other sites to Tulum. Once they got there, they decided, when they built Tulum, to return to their roots and live more peacefully.
After the tour was over, our guide allowed us to wander freely to explore the site and visit the market nearby before loading back on the bus.
And this is why getting up early was worth it! We got back to our hotel around 2pm and changed right into our swimsuits and were ready to hit the beach again!
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