Gettin’ tan in the Yucatán

There are not many places that can boast of global relevance on 3 drastically different timescales. Today the Yucatán Peninsula is known for world-class snorkeling and indulgent beach vacations, but it’s also the site of a pivotal ancient civilization and carries the mark of one of the most interesting geological events in Earth’s history. I like to think of our tour around the peninsula as a tour through these 3 ages.

Today

What most precipitated our visit to the area is that I had some old friends getting together at a resort in Cancún. Cancún isn’t really our style and there was no way we could afford staying at a resort on a backpacker budget, but I hadn’t seen many of them in almost a decade so we made an effort and got a dodgy place nearby. Reconnecting with them was both fun and poignant and made the trip worth it alone. It’s also possible they snuck us into their resort for a night, where we may or may not have luxuriated under beach cabanas with endless free food and better hospitality than grimy backpackers like us have any business deserving. I’m not saying it did happen, I’m just not saying it didn’t.

Outside of the resorts, though, Cancún is kind of a dump. The town is rough without charm, the food is expensive without flavor, and the lodging… well, on our last day, Jack awoke to the real-life nightmare of a large cockroach crawling on his arm. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the hollow look of trauma in his eyes took 3 days to clear.

Yesterday

Long before the spa packages and suntanning influencers, this area was the heart of the Maya civilization. Maya was less an empire and more a group of people in the region who developed more and more advanced societies between ~2000 B.C. and the 1500’s A.D.

One of the great Mayan cities, Chichen Itza, has especially well-preserved ruins, so we made the trip to north-central Yucatán to check them out. I loved learning about the Maya in particular because, unlike many groups who rose to dominance because of their military prowess (I’m looking at you, Aztecs), they thrived on their intellectual achievements. They are known for developing the most sophisticated writing system in the pre-colonial Americas, for being one of the earliest groups in human history to employ the mathematical concept of an explicit zero, and for astronomical knowledge more accurate than their European contemporaries.

My favorite part of the visit, though, was touring the ball court, which they used not for entertainment but a religious game. In Pok Ta Pak, opposing teams helped their captain get a ball through a small hoop without touching the ball with their hands or feet. (Sometimes they’d light the ball on fire… I didn’t really get that part.) What made it most fascinating were the stakes: the captain of the winning team earned the great honor of having his head chopped off by the loser. You read that right, they played for the reward of being sacrificed.

Before visiting Mexico, I thought of the Maya as an ancient group of people who were either killed off by or assimilated with Spanish conquerors. But I learned that in fact Mayan people live on today, tracing their ancestry and customs all the way back to the pre-Columbian civilization. After Chichen Itza we continued to the Yucatán capital of Mérida, where we noticed the strong sense of identity among modern-day indigenous Mayans and their influence on local culture and cuisine. On our last day we were treated to an example of this that was a highlight of the trip: a public (and completely free!) reenactment of Pok Ta Pak, the game we’d learned about just a few days ago at the ruins. They roped off a part of the main square and a group of men with Mayan heritage actually played the game. They even played a few rounds with the balls on fire! It was riveting, and although no heads rolled in this version, I think I got a sense of the real excitement and nature of the ancient event. I love this feeling of being transported to an inaccessible past, it’s hard to find and I cherish it.

You can see regular and flaming Pok Ta Pak played below (or here, if you’re on email)

Millions of years ago

Between Cancún and Chichen Itza, we took a detour to check out some cenotes, large holes where the ground collapsed to reveal big pools of freshwater. Many are connected by a series of underground rivers and caves. One reason there are so many in the Yucatán in particular is because of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. When the Chicxulub asteroid hit the earth ~66 million years ago, it landed right here in the Yucatán and created conditions perfect for cenotes to form. So perfect, in fact, that the crater (which is now buried deep under the peninsula) was only discovered with the help of the cenotes above.

Visiting the sinkholes was both breathtaking and eerie. Some are deep into the woods while others are out in the wide open and outfitted with a diving board. One was mostly still covered, surrounded by a large cave full of bats. There’s something mysterious about them; you can snorkel below the surface to find all sorts of black, boundless tunnels that simultaneously provoke you to follow them and warn of what will happen if you do.

As usual, you can find more photos from our time in Mexico in the Photos tab.