“Today, I can assure you from my own experience that we are not what we eat, nor what we think: we are what we dream.”
― Sergio Magana "Ocelocoyotl, The Toltec Secret
January 29, 2025
Seven has always been a cosmic number. There are many lists of “seven” throughout history. Most of us have heard of the Seven Wonders of the World. In truth their have been over the ages many lists of seven world wonders with subcategories ranging from nature, antiquity, to architecture. It all starts to feel like marketing after awhile.
So it is with the current list of Seven World Wonders.
The current list, compiled in 2000 by a Swiss Foundation, was the result of opinions by historians, archeologists, politicians, and the public. Countries competed for entriesand their were many snubs. Votes were held and ratified by the United Nations and the list was created rather like a giant episode of American Idol.
None the less many countries claim with pride that they host one of the wonders and so it is with Mexico. Here in the Yucatan lies the ruins of the great Mayan city of Chichen Itza. We set off today to see for ourselves if the world wonder lives up to the hype.
It does. No question.
We are currently in Valladolid, the oldest town in the Yucatan. It is smaller than Merida but very charming around the city center with pastel colored buildings, a pleasant city square adjacent to an old church, and swarming with scooters. During the 45 minute drive to Chichen Itza we began to run into the expected onslaught of roadside touts and diversions to lure us away from the monument.
Despite our travel experience, we fell for one of the ploys - but that is another story. We arrived at the site a little poorer than planned but chalked it up to travel life. (In short, no matter how sincere someone approaches you with an official t shirt and vest, the site is not closed and you do not need to pay extra to get in — Ever)
Chichen Itza is one of the most popular sites to visit in all of Mexico. Thousands attend daily to view the great city. We were there fairly early in the morning, and their were already many full sized tour buses in the parking lot.
We entered into the gate after negotiating dozens of stalls, hoping once inside we would be free of the constant sale pitches yelled at us from all sides. It was not to be. The park allows hundreds of vendors inside the park as well and all the trails and shady spots were lined with tables of vendors touting remarkably similar trinkets. More on this in a moment.
But then, you see it. The entrance trail breaks free into a large open field and there it sits - The Temple of Kukulkan in all it’s glory. It is a stunning building that was completed 800-1000 CE. The front facade is the most complete. The side staircase, at the equinox, shows what appears to be a moving serpent shadow crawling down it consistent with the legend of Kukulkan, a feathered serpent god of the Maya.
As you walk around the stunning pyramid, you can see more of the facade given way. Around the year of 1100, the city was abandoned for unknown reasons. The surrounding jungle encroachment tore at the structures as nature does. The workmanship of the restoration teams is stunning.
If you count all the steps on each side and the platform, it equals 365 - the days of the year. This achievement was no accident. The Mayans made precise measurements of the sun, moon, and stars, far beyond what western Europe or Rome was capable of achieving.
The city was named after a nearby cenote that would serve as a sacred site for religious activities. It was founded in 400-500 CE and when it reached it’s full glory in 800-1000 CE some 20,000 or more people lived here. The history is palpable and adds an air of mystery to the whole visit. These people were thriving when Europeans were struggling in the dark ages, mostly illiterate and would not arrive here in any numbers for another 500 years.
If you are ignorant, like me, you could be forgiven for thinking that Mesoamerica mainly had Aztecs or Mayans. In fact there were hundreds of other people groups here. One of them was the Toltecs.
The Toltecs were a warrior, militaristic group and they hailed from Tula, a city near present day Mexican City. They took over Chechen Itza between 750 and 1000 CE. The two cultures merged and the city today reflects this blend.
It is true that the Mayans used human sacrifice in there religious practice, but the Toltecs raised the ritual to an art form. The Toltec soldiers would roam surrounding villages with the express purpose of gathering sacrificial offerings to the ravenous gods.
This is the Temple of the Warriors, each pillar has a carving of a soldier on the side.
The temple of the worship and study of Venus is below. The Mayan Venus had nothing to do with the Greek/Roman concept. It was the astronomical body and its movements that were followed and interpreted.
Below is the Temple of the Jaguar. What is unique about it is the carvings on the sides depicting jaguars and eagles eating human hearts.
If that is not enough, below is the Platform of the Skulls. Once a victim is made an offering, he or she was decapitated and placed on spikes here, Kind of makes Game of Thrones seem tame.
This is the great ball court, the largest in Mesoamerica where Pok-Ta-Pok was played. The inscriptions on the walls show there were different rules depending on where you were from in the empire. Some of the games were for enjoyment, others were a part of rituals where the losing team would pay a dear price for failing to score.
These two wonderful structures below show the Observatory and the Nunnery/Church. It was not a real nunnery/church. The Spanish simply called the building that because they thought that is what it looked like. Again, by the time the Spanish had arrived, the city had long since been abandoned. The Toltecs had vanished and the Mayans were scattered in the jungle in smaller communities. The Spanish were hoping to find gold. They didn’t find any.
This wide trail, lined by vendors is actually the remains of the Mayan paved highway that connected Chechen Itza with other communities. here you also see the cenote that served the city. It has been dredged and explored by divers, it is about 100 feet deep. Trinkets, gold, Jade, artifacts from all over Mesoamerica were found. Also, quite a number of skeletal remains.
As we walked back across the main lawn, the vendors became a curiosity to us. Almost every table was selling slight variations of the exact same thing. Magnets, t shirts, jaguar statues, tiny pyramid models, animal calls, very cheap jewelry, and the like. It was all the same. How an individual seller could differentiate themselves from others was a real mystery. And there were hundreds of tables.
Still, despite the tourism trinkets, the glory of this place was undiminished. It was clear, at least to me, Chichen Itza rightly deserves to be on the list of the seven wonders of the world.
The touring was hot and we felt a need to cool off. Cenote Xkeken was on the way home. There are over 3,000 cenotes in the Yucatan. Yucatan has strange geology . Unlike the rest of Mexico, which can be very mountainous, the peninsula is actually one enormous limestone karst. This porous rock is covered with a thin layer of top soil. As such, sink holes , or “Cenotes”, are very common.
They are also popular tourists sites and can be crowded. Xkeken is a cave cenote that is mostly underground.
We paid our fee and made our way down the steps into the cavern.
And we had the whole place to ourselves!
The water was cool, fresh, and incredibly clear. You could see the bottom over 50 feet down. Curious Cichlids and Guppies swam around us. Overhead was an array of stalactites that hung like melted candle wax from the ceilings. Vines from overhead reached to drink from the cool water.
And at the pinnacle of this cathedral was a whole to the sky allowing sunlight to pour in a turn a portion of the pool to turquoise..
It was quiet, surreal, cool, and beautiful beyond words.
In other words, a wonder.
PostScript - Tomorrow we begin leaving the Yucatan and make our way to the second peninsula for this episode of The Road to Bali - Baja California