Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza is one of Mexicos most popular tourist destination, and rightfully so. The
Yucatans grandest archaeological site is Chichen-Itza, a UNESCO World Heritage area
of immense cultural significance.

Chichen Itza is perhaps the largest, most famous and most accessible Mayan site,
about 125 kilometres west of Cancun and Cozumel. This ancient Mayan ruin, a major
tourist stop in Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula, is a rugged place of soaring pyramids,
massive temples, startling carved columns and do-or-die sports fields.

Chichen Itza, El Castillo

The focal point of the region, an amalgam of an older Mayan city and newer Toltec
settlement, is the towering Castillo pyramid, which is fraught with cosmological
symbolism. Its four sides contain 365 steps (depicting the solar year), 52 panels (for
each year in the Mayan century as well as each week in the solar year) and 18 terraces
(for the 18 months in the religious year). Inside, the Castillo is an interesting temple
accessible up a narrow stairway.

Chichen Itza courtyard

Mayan sports included a game with a soccer-sized ball that had its own intricate rules
and provided exciting competition for huge crowds of spectators.
The enormous Chichen-Itza court where this game was played is the largest ever found
and is lined with fascinating carvings that display the rules and details of the sacred
game.

One carving even shows the captain of the losing game being beheaded.

Temple of Warriors, columns

The site also contains a sacred well, the astronomical Observatory, the imposing
Temple of Warriors, the reclining Chac Mool figure, a form of classic Maya sculpture
believed to have served as an altar for sacrifices, and the Nunnery.

During the fall and spring equinoxes, the suns shadow forms an enormous snakes
body, which lines up with the carved stone snake head at the bottom of the Castillo
pyramid.

At Chichen Itza, the Sacred Cenote is a natural well 60 metres in diameter with sheer,
escape-proof walls plunging 22 metres. Winsome maidens aside, excavations in 1882
and 1968 discovered that strapping six-foot warriors old scores settled? and infants
were also tossed into the pit.

Temple of the Warriors or Temple of the Thousand Columns

Across from El Castillo, the Temple of the Warriors is also known as the Temple of the
Thousand Columns. On top of it there is a stone on which steaming human hearts were
offered to the gods.

Paintings on the outdoor pillars have all but disappeared, but inside an older temple
beneath this one, colors are as bright as when they were freshly mixed from vegetable
juice and mashed insects.

Several smaller buildings hold interest mostly for their relief sculptures depicting dire
events of the time. But one that really makes you sit up and pay attention is a huge ball
park.

Each of two 27-foot-high walls running its 480-foot length has a small stone ring near
the top, through which a hard rubber ball had to be shot.

When you cross the highway bisecting the archeological zone, you leave behind
unpleasant murals and evidence of human sacrifice, for these are buildings from pre-
Toltec times. Unfortunately the Spaniards destroyed all religious records.

In consequence, nobody knows for certain that the ornate structure, 70 yards long and
18 yards high, was actually a nunnery.

Caracol staircase
However, built in 600 A.d. beside a church, it has many little rooms reminiscent of the
convents in Spain so they named it the Nunnery.

In Chichen Itza you can also find the Caracol (Spanish for snail), so called for its spiral
staircase. The substructure is believed to have been completed around 700 A.D., and
the 48-foot circular tower added later. This is the all-important observatory.