Cenote of SACRIFICE!!

We´re still in Merida and took a trip yesterday to the nearby Chichen Itza! The most visited Mayan ruins in Central America. And yes, there were thousands of people there - blah. Lots of hippies too because this is the Equinox time which is when the shadow on the main temple creates the body portion of the snake which connects to the head at the foot of the stairs. Very interesting. Actually it was neat looking but not worth all the clapping and rushing forward the New Age people kept doing - it´s just a nifty shadow.

But the site itself was amazing. It´s a younger site than the others we´ve visited like Tikal and Copan so the carvings are still preserved and we could actually make out a lot of them. They are big on skulls here - walls upon walls of them. They also have the Cenote of Sacrifice! AH!!! It´s a cenote (not one I would swim in like the last time) where they dredged it and found a bunch of sacrificial remains. Gross.

They also had a really nice ball court where the Maya used to play whatever that ball game is (this one is different from the other sites as the hoops are too small to fit a ball through just using your hips). But they did show a carving of a ball with a skull in it and archaeologists believe they may have actually used rubber balls with skulls in them. COOL. Just like that one movie Mystery Men. Except way cooler. Of course, like Anna said, archaeologists just make stuff up so who knows. Hahahaha, I keeed. Kind of.

Tomorrow we´re really hitting up Uxmal (ooosh mall). Unlike last time we were in Merida when we got lazy and decided not to - we´re really going there this time. You´ll see!