Day 9: Chichen Itza, a Cenote and Villadolid

Today we took a tour to some more Mayan wonders in the Yucaton Peninsula. It was totally worth it, even if it lasted 12 hours and we returned quite exhausted to our humble abode. We did our best to highlight some of the history we remembered from the long day, check out these pictures!

This Mayan picture is ridiculously crazy. It depicts the athletic side of the Mayans. They played something called the "ball game" -which included a 10 pound ball and a hoop made of stone 15 feet in the air. The craziest part about this 1-score-win game is that the loser chopped the head off of the winning team's captain. They believed this would be a good fertilizer for the ground and saw the self-sacrifice as something noble. If you look closely at this stone picture, you can see the winning captain on his knees and in place of his head there is blood spouting out of his neck. Wow.

The Mayans were very mathematical. This pyramid represents the 365 days of the year and is perfectly placed N-E-S-W. The Mayans had 18 months with 20 days each and the 19th month had only 5 days to avoid the leap year issue that the Gregorian calendar makes for us.

This was the science laboratory and astronomy center.....it was once a dome on the top with 5 windows aligned with certain stars at certain dates of the year. They sure knew their stuff.

This building is believed to be the birthing center....hence the "W-O-W" I made for my sister-in-law Michelle who is a midwife and could've been working in this building once upon a time had she been born Mayan. Yup, that's a stretch, but wow.

This is another part of the birthing center...with the very Mayan architecture being displayed.

It really did take your breath away.

This is the Salon of Warriors, or something like that. Apparently the Mayan warriors would capture enemies and rip out their hearts from live victims.

This "cenote" (well or water pool) was the burial place for hundreds of innocent children as the Mayans drowned them in hopes of bringing more water to their very dry and hot land.

Chichen Itza.

We got to see an under ground swimming hole with fresh water on the surface and salt water towards the bottom.

It was bizarre swimming under the hanging tree roots in the cold and dark water!

But swim in it, we did.

Our last stop of the tour took us to Villadolid, one of the larger cities in the area. This is also where the Mexican revolution first started in 1910 (or around that time).