Altar boy and altar girl
Took a day or so to acclimatize to Mexico particularly the abundance of food and provisions. Yesterday we went to Chichen Itza which was very spectacular. It was great having a guide who explained a lot of the ancient traditions. Historians do not know what happened to the Mayan people and their culture - my theory is that they basically sacrificed themselves out of existence with blood sacrifices being a huge part of the culture as it was thought to bring "new blood and life" to the gods. Many of these involved cutting the victim's heart out with a sacrificial knife (see picture below). Then there were the beheadings, of particular fascination were those of the captain of the winning side in the local ball game played to honour the gods. The main temple (the site of most sacrifices) is an architectural marvel and was designed to act as a calendar with astonishing accuracy. The other ruins around the temple supplied a great insight into life and culture at the time. A handy hint in Cancun is that you can do a lot of trips for free (or very cheaply) as all of the hotels have time-share type presentations. We quickly discovered that sitting through an hour of these enabled you to get free meals and excursions saving hund
reds and hundreds of of dollars. (There are many Aussies doing this - surprise, surprise). Tomorrow, we are going on a free submarine ride to explore the reefs after we get our free breakfast and then we come back for our free lunch.
Took a day or so to acclimatize to Mexico particularly the abundance of food and provisions. Yesterday we went to Chichen Itza which was very spectacular. It was great having a guide who explained a lot of the ancient traditions. Historians do not know what happened to the Mayan people and their culture - my theory is that they basically sacrificed themselves out of existence with blood sacrifices being a huge part of the culture as it was thought to bring "new blood and life" to the gods. Many of these involved cutting the victim's heart out with a sacrificial knife (see picture below). Then there were the beheadings, of particular fascination were those of the captain of the winning side in the local ball game played to honour the gods. The main temple (the site of most sacrifices) is an architectural marvel and was designed to act as a calendar with astonishing accuracy. The other ruins around the temple supplied a great insight into life and culture at the time. A handy hint in Cancun is that you can do a lot of trips for free (or very cheaply) as all of the hotels have time-share type presentations. We quickly discovered that sitting through an hour of these enabled you to get free meals and excursions saving hund
reds and hundreds of of dollars. (There are many Aussies doing this - surprise, surprise). Tomorrow, we are going on a free submarine ride to explore the reefs after we get our free breakfast and then we come back for our free lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment