My purpose on this trip was to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum. It is my understanding that they are the only ruins adjacent to the sea. They have been a bucket list item of mine for years.
I once again, despite it's behavior the day before, put my trust in GPS. I had to access it from the plaza due to the internet woes at the hotel. I bicycled down wide, loud roads awash in traffic, then continued through parking lots and past innumerable souvenir shops till I reached the entrance to the national park and then the ruins themselves.
The sight as I stepped through the arched opening of the wall which surrounds the ruins left me breathless. On a summit overlooking the sea rises the most impressive of the ruins, the Castillo. Across a large plain are spread the remains of other structures, walls, columns, sometimes nothing more the a short line of rocks, the foundations of buildings long gone. The flowers were brilliant. A couple of iguanas scuttled about. I could feel the souls of the people that had once populated this place. Their lives, their work, their worship.
Worship is born of curiosity. It is a trait that humans have possessed since our history began. Curiosity is what advances us, it gives us the drive to look beyond what we know and discover what we do not. It can be used to produce empathy, to try to understand what others are feeling and how we can relate to them as part of the human family. The ruins were once brightly painted. Humans also seem to share a desire for beauty, for the visual stimulation which activates and excites the imagination.
The sun bleached gray and white of the ruins were juxtaposed against the blue of the sky and the ocean below. Waves crashed and eddied around a large rock which protruded from the sea just off shore. I gazed out over the water. I thought of the 16th century Spanish, sailors looking at the city on the cliff, as impressive as many in Europe at the time. I imagined the Mayans staring at the massive ships, their great sails filled with wind, moving towards the coast before retreating back to sea. I imagined the mix of curiosity and fear coming from both sides. The tangled thoughts and emotions emanating from contact with something previously unknown.
Man is a creative and resourceful creature. The ruins of Tulum were built to be easy to defend. Upon first contact the Europeans thought of the Mayans as primitive yet they built great monuments, possessed an advanced knowledge and understanding of astronomy, developed a remarkably accurate calendar and had a hieroglyphic form of writing, most examples, unfortunately, destroyed by the Spanish.
They had methods to clear the jungle and turn it into cropland. At other sites I have hiked back through thick foliage, once fields for food and flowers, to ruins now hidden deep within the jungle. I have scaled pyramids and looked out over the scene beneath me. I have visited a salt trading site constructed next to an area of briny water. The water was placed in large cisterns on the waters edge. Once evaporated the remaining salt was gathered to be used for the preservation of meat.
Some will remark about the rituals involving human sacrifice practiced by the Mayans, turning a blind eye to the hanging and burning alive those accused of witchcraft and heresy in Europe at the time. One of the reasons the Mayans were considered primitive was because they did not wear clothing. The area in which they lived can be incredibly hot and humid. I think of the Conquistadors, in their woolen clothes and metal armor and think "Who are the real fools in this game?"
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