Mayapan

/ Bulldog Travels

My mind has been drifting to Mexico lately…probably because I don’t have any big trips planned at the moment.  On a whim, a while back, well as much of a whim as I am capable of, we headed down to Cancun and promptly left it for a road trip around the Yucatan Peninsula.

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One of the stops we made along the way was in Mayapan.  We, and some gardeners had the entire place to ourselves.  (Mental note: When you see all the gardeners making tracks for their cars from atop a temple pyramid and some pretty ominous looking black clouds headed your way you should do what the locals do and leave.  But, that will be later in the story.)

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Mayapan is a lovely smallish and charming Pre-Columbian archaeological site with what Google tells me has 4,000 structures.  (Maybe its not so small after all.)  Having said that thought the main Temple, the Temple of Kukulcan or El Castillo, is the main event.

The construction is not as grand, large, or sophisticated as Chichen Itza or Uxmal.  However, in many ways, I enjoyed this site better because it was less preserved and was more peaceful without crowds and commercialism surrounding its every thought.

So, that gets me back to the clouds and the fleeing locals.  Visitors were allowed, when we were there, to climb the structures.  While atop the pyramid we noticed some pretty significant weather coming in fast.  As we descended the pyramid the local gardeners were literally running away.  Rather than follow them, like we should have, we walked over to a stella that was protected under a small rickety structure.  While we waited for the rain to start Eric raised his camera to take my photo hamming it up next to this depiction of a Mayan God.  As he was about to snap the photo the largest lightning bolt I have ever seen descended down behind him and the floodgates opened.  The rain didn’t stop and we, and our wet clothes, laughed all the way back to the car promising to take queues from the locals and to not anger the Gods during the rest of the trip.

For more Mexican archaeological sites check this out…  

  

23 thoughts on “Mayapan”

  2. Looks amazing! Must have been incredible to have the place to yourselves.

    Coming from a place where the weather is so consistent, I forget that you have to pay attention to the skies, and the tides. Type A travel has got me into trouble more than once.

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    • The wild weather makes it exciting for sure. Reminded me a little bit like how quickly the weather can change in Hawaii too. It was a lot of fun to have the place to ourselves. In fact most of the Yucatan was empty due to the Swine flu. We were the only guests at several of the hotels we stayed at. It was really hard economically for them at the time. But, I am super glad we went so we could at least make our small contribution.

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