Yatra Geetham – Cancun – Tulum – Coba – Cenote – Maya Village – 3

Yatra Geetham

Cancun – Tulum – Coba – Cenote – Maya Village – 3

Telugu Original : Dr K.Geeta 

English Translation: V.Vijaya Kumar

In the Tulum – Coba – Cenote – Maya Village day tour, the second place visited after the Tulum ruins city is the Coba ruined city. This is completely different from the city of Tulum.

It was a great city belonging to the Maya culture, located amidst dense trees about 30 miles away from the city of Tulum, flourishing between 600 AD and 900 AD.

It is said that nearly 50,000 people once lived in this city, which spread across a hundred miles. Even today, only 1,300 people live in the nearby town of the same name.

The remaining ruins stand as silent witnesses to a culture that disappeared due to the Spanish invasions. The city of Coba was built on fertile land located between Lake Coba and Lake Macanxoc.

Just like everywhere else on this Yucatan Peninsula, everything from houses to the largest temples was constructed using the locally found limestone. To preserve this ruined city, the entire area has now been designated as a protected ancient cultural center.

Tourist buses and vehicles are stopped about two to three miles away; one must explore the entire ruined city either on foot or on rented bicycles. There are a very small number of rickshaws available.

Just like the bicycles, you have to buy a ticket for the rickshaw too. The rent for a bicycle is 60 pesos, and for a rickshaw, it is 100 pesos. That means about 3 dollars and 5 dollars in American currency, respectively. After a portion goes to the park organizers and another portion to the rickshaw owners, only a very small part is left for the ordinary people who pedal the rickshaws.

Fortunately, by the time we stepped in, there was only one single rickshaw left. Without even bargaining, I took Siri, went over, and sat down. Satya and Varu each rented a bicycle.

In the rickshaws here, the seat where people sit puts the pedaling person right behind your back, making you feel like you might fall forward. Even though Siri made a fuss initially saying she wouldn’t sit in the front, within two minutes she was happily looking around shouting “Hurray!”.

The rickshaw boy, who was speaking a mix of a little English and Spanish, mentioned that he belonged to the Mayan lineage, so I enthusiastically struck up a conversation with him.

During the nearly half-hour journey along a narrow dirt path—surrounded by short, Casuarina-like trees and dense climbing vines with large-leaved plants on both sides of the path—we stopped and got on and off at important structures. By the time we reached the main structure, the Ixmoja (Lomaha) temple, he told us many interesting details along the way, ranging from a plant used to make whistles out of leaves to a plant used as medicine for wounds.

He was probably around 25 years old. Like all the locals there, tourism is his primary livelihood. He explained that all his grandfathers and ancestors lived by farming small plots of corn and utilizing forest resources, and that there is great happiness in living right where his ancestors did, away from the civilized world. One must appreciate this young man; I wondered how many people think like him.

Having stopped the rickshaw wherever requested and taken good care of Siri by keeping an eye on her whenever I went to look around, I gave him 20 dollars when we got down. His joy knew no bounds. He expressed immense happiness, saying he wouldn’t earn this much even if he worked the whole week.

Satya and Varu, who were coming right behind us, kept stopping along with us. Throughout the path, Siri was laughing and shouting enthusiastically while looking back, “Daddy! Come on, quick…”.

Along the way, there are many structures of various sizes, built square and tall. Some were meeting places, some were temples, and some were collective residential quarters.

By the time we reached the final Ixmoja temple, my mind was blown with amazement. That structure is the tallest of all the structures seen so far, even taller than Chichen Itza. I don’t recall seeing such a magnificent, tall structure anywhere recently.

They went on stacking stones in a square shape. I stood staring without blinking at that structure, which expanded into the sky, transitioning from a massive square at the bottom to smaller squares as it went higher.

Unlike many other places, the special feature here is that they allow you to climb it. However, because it is like a steep mountain where the height between each step is very steep, and because it is slippery in places due to broken stone pieces, one has to climb up with the help of ropes hanging from the top to the bottom.

Even though Satya and Varu climbed up quickly, I stopped at the tenth step finding it difficult with Siri. Though I felt very enthusiastic to climb up and find out the significance of the temple built at such a height, I dropped the idea after seeing fellow visitors coming down getting bruised among the stones and steps.

Nearly a hundred enthusiasts started climbing up. At the bottom, except for about ten rickshaw pullers chatting and five or six people like us who couldn’t climb, there was no one else.

Climbing up and coming down that structure during peak sunny hours takes well over an hour.

*****

(to be continued)