Progresso - Chichen-Itza

The second day on land for the cruise was stopping at the Yucatan Port of Progresso, 2 hours from the famous Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza has been recently designated as one of the 7 wonders of the world. How can you miss the opportunity to see that?

Our ship sent 7 or 8 busloads of tourists to the Chichen-Itza ruins. This was a day of crowds and tour guides during the 2 hour stay.

Here you see the famous Mayan temple to the Sun God on the right with the smaller Toltec temple to the warriors on the left side. The Mayan temple survived the later Toltlec domination because the Toltecs believed in the same sun god, Quetslquatl (sp) represented as a plumed serpent. This large temple is actually built on top of a smaller temple of the same shape (and intact) which is completely covered by the larger building. The temple lines up perfectly with the Summer and Winter solstice, has 364 total stairs with an additional step on the top (for the 365 days of the Mayan calendar) and has a convenient place on top for human sacrafices.

The temple on the right side has the famous sitting area on top where people were placed during the sacrificial process. This Toltec temple is part of the 1,000 columns complex in which each column represents one of the Toltec warriors that conquered the Mayans.

This picture is to prove that we really did go there and that these photos did not come from Chris's trip. This is the backside of the Mayan temple. You can see the plumed serpent heads at the bottom of the stairs on the right side of the photo.

We also got to tour the ball field where they came together to play games. The captain of the winning team was always sacrificed as part of the honor of winning the game.

Conveniently located next to the field is a small platform for sacrifice. In the Toltec warrior

culture, they viewed themselves as being black jaguars or eagles. As you can see from the picture at the right. Both the Jaguar figure (in the bright square) and the Eagle figure (in the square to immediate right of the Jaguar), are having their favorite lunch, a human heart fresh from the sacraficial alters - yuck!

In addition to lots of stories, there was lots of vendors. This vendor was one with lots of colorful blankets, pottery and other souveniers from Pier One imports.

At the end of our tour, it was back to the bus with a box lunch and a 2 hour siesta (for those that could sleep).

This was one of our guides. The spoke English well and were well versed on Mayan, Toltec and other central american histories.