Sunday morning I woke up after a night of fruitlessly struggling with the bug netting, to a dawn chorus provided by the Mexican version of a Grackle. They had a call that sounded remarkably like a car alarm. And regardless of where they were ACTUALLY roosting and calling, it sounded like they were doing it about 5 inches from my ear canal. Bastards.
Getting up, it was obvious I'd be spending the day attempting to avoid the sun. Parts of me looked like a broiled lobster. We went to breakfast, and about halfway through the meal it became obvious to me, at least, that I wouldn't be doing anything ELSE, either. My stomach started making noises like an industrial sink disposal and I squeaked out a very tense, "Please excuse me!" and bolted for our bedroom and a private toilet. Where I was quietly miserable for most of the rest of the day.
I would like to say, I'm pretty sure I didn't catch Montezuma's Revenge. But I do think that between air travel, pregnancy, and the fact that I hadn't really gotten a whole lot of fiber into myself the previous day, things had been a bit static in the old digestive system, and suddenly something had to give. I'm sure the sunburn contributed to my general feeling of not-rightness also. Chances are I was also a little dehydrated...I was cramping, in a cold sweat, couldn't stop visiting the toilet, and I felt weird and feverish. And I was in Mexico. 25 weeks pregnant.
In short, I scared the hell out of myself. I also knew that apart from Sandy, the rest of the folks we were traveling with weren't going to be able to commiserate, so I made no excuses but just put myself on bed rest. I requested that Sandy run interference if anyone asked where I was. I had the new Patrick Rothfuss novel with me, and I decided to read that and keep my feet up, and drink a LOT of water. I also spent a lot of time in our bathroom. At lunch time, I sent Sandy out to be sociable and eat with his family. Though I did ask him to bring me back some cereal products - preferably bread. Which I ate. And, happily, by dinner I felt a great deal more normal.
We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, and then we went to bed. Apart from me plowing through "The Wise Man's Fear" it was a very boring day.
Every night these guys with wheelbarrows full of unlit candles trot around the resort setting out candles in glass holders, lining all the pathways. Our room was located off the path with the two Jaguar stone heads there - there were always candles placed in their mouths as well. Very romantic.)
I know Monday happened, but I have no idea what I did that day. My journal entry just says Monday: and then a blank page. Sorry.
Tuesday though, we had scheduled ourselves to go see Chichen Itza. It was going to be a full day, we were to meet our guide at 7 a.m. but our breakfast tray was late arriving at the hotel room so we were a little late also. Chichen Itza was a bit of a drive away, and our guide wanted us to make an early start so we could get there are see the biggest tourist draws before the crowds arrived by the busload. Despite our late start, we made good time. Largely thanks to our driver speeding 25-30 kph faster than the speed limit.
The Temple of Kukulkan/El Castillo
This structure is famous primarily because on the two equinoxes the sun causes the edge of the temple to cast a shadow of the serpent Kukulkan against the staircase.
Look Rhys! Proof that you visited Mexico in utero!
BUT in addition, if you stood in front of the temple and clapped your hands hard, the temple echoed the clap in a really strange way - it made a sound almost like an old-school sci-fi lazer. "Peeeeeuuuuu!" Our guide told us folks compare it to a bird.
We visited the Temple of the Warriors,
where we saw a baby scorpion:
where we saw a baby scorpion:
Our guide said "awwwwwww!" and talked baby talk to it. Then he told us a charming story about how as kids he and the rest of his neighborhood cronies would play with scorpions by picking them up by the tail and then teasing one another with them by threatening to put them on each other's necks.
...
Aaaaaah?
Am very glad I grew up in the U.S. with a distinct lack of highly-venomous insects. Having a slug put on you was bad enough.
We visited the positively enormous ball court - our guide is of the opinion that it was used for purely ceremonial purposes because he said it would be pretty darned impossible to actually play a game in it...the sides are too steep, the hoops are too small, etc etc.
And we saw the Tzompantli, which Sandy really enjoyed because it's basically a low platform positively covered in carvings of skulls...
Chichen Itza was both over and underwhelming at the same time. The sheer scale of it was impressive, as were the heaps of ruins still under vegetation waiting to be rebuilt - it's amazing how much the archaeologists have been able to reconstruct. But the paths leading from one area of the city to another are all lined by folks selling trinkets, resin statues, truly ridiculous tapestries, glass pyramids, wood masks, and these musical instruments that made the sound of a jaguar call. You ran a gauntlet every time you walked down one of the paths. They weren't as pushy as vendors in Egypt, though!
On our way out, our guide ran us through one more money-making opportunity for the locals - a "Men" or Mayan shaman, who performed a blessing on all of us that involved a lot of stroking of body parts with wet bunches of leaves, a ritual incensing, the muttered incantations of mixed Mayan and Latin scripture...and then he offered to us a swig of his personal homemade balche.
Look Rhys! You've been blessed!
The balche was offered to us from a VERY grimy looking clear plastic bottle. It looked a whole lot like urine. I pled pregnancy and abstained. Everyone else pled chicken and abstained.
Sandy drank it.
My husband has gigantic cojones, my friends. They are huge.
We spent the next 48 hours expecting him to go blind or similar.
Once the blessing was over, (and we inquired of our guide if it would be permissible to give the shaman a gift of money, which the shaman very graciously accepted in a bowl made out of a gourd), we traveled a short distance by foot to the restaurant on the first floor of the Hacienda Chichen Itza.
I ordered the pasta primavera. It came with steamed vegetables which I could totally eat. I've never been so happy to see a carrot in my entire life.
To be con't.
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7 comments:
Ok you are wearing Flip Flops, FLIP FLOPS, with scorpions running around amok!!!!!!! Forget the pee in a bottle, your footwear is what is scary I think Sandy is not the only one with Cojones! Yours of course are ladylike cojones but still. I think I would have had hip waders on. lol
Oh, those birds. I cannot resist linking you to this
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Random tangent inspired by your reference to birds waking you up:
I went on a birding trip to southern Arizona last month. We stayed at a B&B in the town famous for having exotic birds. The B&B was clearly catering to birders, what with the hummingbird feeders and bird decorations located everywhere.
I was taking pictures of a bird in the B&B's courtyard when another guest tried to start up a conversation with me. "What are you talking pictures of?" he asked. I answered. He said, "Are those the obnoxious birds that wake me up every morning?" I was thinking, what in the world possessed you to come to this town when you don't like birds? And what compelled you to complain about birds to someone who clearly came here to enjoy them?
Wow, Chizen Itza must have changed a lot since the last time I was there...granted it WAS 20 some odd years ago! There where no venders past the gates when I was there, it's a shame that they have turned it into some kind of bizarre bizaar! We went every winter from the time I was about 7 until I was almost 20. My father was a history major and also had enlisted me with my "younger" eyes in helping him with his geneology. I was drug to a LOT of graveyards by the time I was an adult and volunteered willingly to go! So he shouldn't have been so surprised that on one trip when I was about 11 years old I made the observation that there weren't any cemetaries and wondered out loud where all the Incan and Myan bodies where...it startled our tour guide and made the other people in our group laugh nevously at me! Believe me, they watched me like a hawk at the sacrafical cenotes...I don't know if they were more afraid of me jumping in or pushing someone else in just to see what it was like! Even at a young age I always felt the sacred quiet, peace and beauty of that ageless place. It's a shame thats gone now. :(
So you had chicken itza at the Mayan restaurant. How was it? Also it seems you haven't seen 'The Road to El Dorado', which strikes me as odd because you've seen everything else that's ever been made.
Sorry4 - Hah!! I didn't know there were scorpions when I chose my footwear that morning! No one told me! It wasn't cojones, it was ignorance! I'd have been wearing Tiffany Aching boots if I'd known!
JV - Natch.
France - You are clearly a spammer.
Elizabeth - I love birds. I love birding. In point of fact, I devote a great deal of time during vacations in different parts of the world to photographing and identifying birds.
Grackles, however, deserve to be cooked and eaten.
ItBit - Yes. I was disappointed. I studied the Maya in college and was really thrilled to be going to Chichen Itza - and then when we got there it felt a bit like we were at Epcot in Disney. Boo.
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