TimesToCome

On our cruise we stopped at Progresso, Mexico and traveled to see the Chichen Itza Mayan Temple. It took on an even more surreal feel since I had just recently read ‘The 43 Antarean Dynasties’ by Resnick.

Standing close to the base of the large temples and watching a religious sacrifice at the top must have been inspiring, it was amazing just standing at the base and imagining it all.

The ball court hoops are quite high up, at least 20′. We don’t know how the game was played, we do know the losing team was sacrificed to the gods at the end of the game.

Iguanas skitter all over the site occasionally stopping to sun themselves.

The local Mayan population spends its time now entertaining and selling crafts to tourists. Mayan is still a required subject in school so the language lives on.

We stopped at Cozumel, Mexico on our cruise this week. The island is tiny and most of it is geared to tourist entertainment: shopping, drinking, snorkeling, swimming. But I love to wander around cities and explore so that’s what we did.

We made a break from the tourist area down an alley and headed north. The first 3 or so miles we walked we had a line of taxis parked along the street. There were hundreds of them all lined up to pick up tourists from the cruise ship ports.

Eventually we found a road leading inland away from the tourist area. The housing is a mix of old, new, wealthy and poor as you can see in the photos. Everywhere there were dogs, more than a few came out to chase us off. Nowhere did I see a cat.

The locals all get around on foot, bike and scooter. You’ll see young children, mom and dad all piled up on a single scooter.

Cozumel was originally a Mayan settlement and the island was a religious site. Women who were pregnant or hoping to become pregnant traveled to the island to pray to Ix Chel the goddess of the moon, pregnancy and childbirth.