We arose and grabbed a quick breakfast at the Festival buffet, the off to Office Depot via taxi to try and resolve the camera issue. Once again, the cabbie tagged us for $8.00 in for the additional 6 blocks to Office Depot from 5th.
The store carried the same brand of camera, and after some convincing, we were able to talk the sales staff into opening a box with a new camera in it and testing with the battery and charger cable, both of which proved dead. The staff was helpful and we ended up purchasing another version of the same camera with fewer mega pixels, but we were not in the mood to spend one of our valuable vacation days trucking around town looking for a deal on a new camera. I am disappointed in the Kamera Kompany (whose name I will not state here) that manufactured my Kamera in the first place as since it was new, I trusted it Kouldn’t Kollapse so Kuickly after being opened. Ultimately it Kost us as we had to buy another Kamera from the same Kamera Kompany as the original. Not Keul.
Decided to skip the taxi and walk back to the ADO station to catch the bus to Tulum. Did some window-shopping along the way. It’s impossible not to as the sidewalks are about 28 & ½ inches wide. In all it’s a great experience and there truly are some bargains to be had in these shops. Wish we’d have spent more time there for our gift shopping.
The ADO station is really easy – go up to the ticket counter, tell them your destination and number of tickets, hand over the cash and you’re set. Total cost one-way from PDC to Tulum: $8.40 ($4.20 per person).
Try and get on the “Go before you Go” plan. Or bring some extra pesos, because if you have to use the restroom at the ADO station, it’ll cost you 3 pesos (30 cents). You simply put in the slot (like a pinball/video arcade game) and pass through the turn styles. A nice little boy helped me and another elderly couple navigate this system as signs were scarce and in Spanish. If you don’t feel like using the semi-clean public restroom at the ADO, and if you have the time, venture across the street to McDonald’s, get a treat and use their restroom (they respectfully ask that their restrooms be used by their customers only). It is much cleaner than ADO.
At the ADO Station on 5th & Juarez:
The ADO bus is as comfortable as any other “coach” style bus anywhere. On this ride, we went west on Juarez through town and out towards 307 south.
The bus ride west along Juarez:
Soon a movie started on the in-bus TV monitors. Bruce Willis was cleaning up on some bad guys once again, this time in Spanish.
We stopped at Xcaret and Xel-Ha to let off passengers taking tours at these destinations.
About 75 minutes later, the bus pulled in to the Zona Archaeological (Archaeological Zone) on the north side of Tulum City to let us off. Immediately a man from the bus station here came out and showed us a card with the return bus times and suggested that we purchase our return tickets now – which I suggest you do to. We planned on taking the 5:10 back, and I think the latest left at 6:00 p.m.
There was about a ½ mile walk from the stop to the ruins, and along the way we say the pole dancers (can’t remember what they were really called but it looked skillful and painful at the same time):
And the walk to the ruins:
It’s really hot at Tulum! Tickets into the ruins are relatively inexpensive: $4.80 per person. If you want to videotape, you have to purchase a special video ticket for $3.50 per video camera.
We considered not getting a guide, which was $40.00 for the two of us. Our friend’s commentary on this topic the other day kept ringing in our ears: “If you don’t get a guide, you’re just looking at a bunch of rocks.”
We hired Ishmael, the guide.
On the way into the ruins, we saw one of the dozens (hundreds) of current inhabitants of Tulum:
He led us to a bench in the shade and began a brief history of western hemisphere civilization in general and the Mayan culture specifically. He had numerous maps, paintings, replicas and drawings he pulled out of his briefcase to illustrate the different ideas he was teaching us about the Mayans. They were great.
Mayans used hieroglyphics that stood for sounds and phrases which when combines created ideas, sentences and concepts. Tulum it seems was built around A.D. 1200 at a time when the Mayan civilization was past it’s classic phase and reduced to warring territorial cities. Mayans developed a social system with kings at the top, followed by priests, then noblemen, merchants, tradesmen, farmers and at the bottom were slaves. Their main calendar had 18 months of 20 days plus 5 extra days at the end of each year when the gods of the underworld and heaven all came to earth to fight for the souls of the humans. Mayans rested during this time and ate corn, refrained from working (to build strength) and made sacrifices of corn and other foods to feed the gods of heaven. Human sacrifices were reserved for extraordinary circumstances in Mayan culture, and it was not until the Toltecs came into the Mayan world that human sacrifice began to be practiced on a wide scale.
Tulum had a wall and 6 gates, all of which were defended by watchtowers. The wall went ¾ of the way around the city, and the seaside cliffs provided protection on the east side. The gates were short, built for the height of the Mayans in the 1200’s.
When Tulum was first seen by the Spanish in the early 1500’s, it was still an active city. Ishmael explained that when the Conquistadores asked the Mayans living in Tulum what the name of this place was, the Mayans responded “TcLul –Lhum” (spelling phonetic) which Ishmael explained meant “My Land, My Country” in Mayan. The Spaniards twisted it’s pronunciation into “Tulum”.
Tulum was a trading port – with a whopping 10,000 inhabitants at the time the Spaniards showed up. Ishmael explained that if you look out to sea, you can see the surf breaking everywhere north and south except for one slot where there are no breakers – a natural gap in the coral, where ships could enter, then beach on the sand to unload their goods.
I shifted the camera before the picture was done exposing, so this is all I have of the gap:
And here is the beach:
One building, a sort of observatory, was built so precisely that during the Summer Solstice, the Sun’s rays at sunrise shone directly through the small hole on the east side of the building across the city. This was a seasonal indication of when to plant crops for the inhabitants.
An illustration of the rays of the Sun:
Ishmael telling us about this particular building:
Across the main central area:
Homes had front steps and the deceased were often buried in carved out basements in their own homes. Ishmael explains that this was because there was only 2-3 cm of soil in the Yucatan, hardly an ideal place to create a cemetery. The walls also had steps for warriors to climb atop (look in the extreme back):
One particular temple had ornate carvings on the corners and above the entrances. The corners featured tri-level carvings of heads – the ones to the east represented the rising sun-god, and were younger and more vibrant looking than the ones to the west, which represented the setting of the sun-god, aging and dying:
Above the door was a carving of their god of the underworld, feet up and head down, to represent it’s sinking. According to the Mayans, there were 9 levels of the underworld and 13 of heaven.
El Castillo, as the Spaniards named it, is the high temple at the seaside center of Tulum. Here only the highest class of priests and kings could ascend, and on occasion human sacrifices were made here:
Finally Ishmael left us, and we wandered about a bit before heading out and south along the access road to the beach.
Parting images:
Short doorways:
A Watchtower:
El Castillo:
...and out over the Yucatan channel:
Looking southwest:
Parting shot:
Tomorrow: Tulum Beach & Dive adventure!