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Carnaval in Mérida & Kayaking in Sisal

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Mérida Carnaval

Here’s my last update from my time in the Yucatan. At the end of my stay, my travel plans got pretty convoluted. I decided I wanted to experience Carnaval in Mexico, which led to some backtracking and long bus rides. As a kid, I grew up going to Mardi Gras with my family in Mississippi and Louisiana, but I’ve never seen the festivities outside the United States. There are two big celebrations in the Yucatan, one in Mérida and one in Cozumel. The Mérida festivities are held in an entirely separate part of town in fairgrounds they call the Ciudad Carnaval. I went with Lily, another student from the Spanish school I was attending. We met up in the center of town and hopped on the free women-only shuttle that took us directly there. It’s basically set up like a giant fair with rides for kids, typical street food like churros and elotes, and different stages with performers. The big highlights of Carnaval are the parades and the concerts, but we had some time to kill before they started so we explored the mostly-empty rides.

giant bouncy obstacle course (they let us go through even though we were grown), me and Lily in front of the crazy worm roller coaster, view from the top of the ferris wheel

Finally, it was parade time! The parade went around the outside of this entire “city” and there were bleachers set up for everyone to sit and watch. We, again, scored some seats in the women-only sections which were filled with women and kids. The parade was everything I hoped it would be, with ridiculous costumes, massive floats, and people having a great time.

dancers, special performers, giant floats

The dancers were full of energy and dressed up in brightly colored costumes. Some groups were completely in sync and others were just feeling the vibe.

various dance groups and their costumes

The floats were mostly sponsored by a few different large corporations.

different floats in the parade

One major difference is that not nearly as much swag is thrown to spectators. At Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I came home with bags of beads and toys. Here I managed to catch a few cookies, a couple sets of beads, and a souvenir cup.

frozen strawberries and cream treat, my swag from the parade, headless man costume

The other huge difference is that Carnaval in Mérida holds huge concerts. We didn’t stay for the entire concert, but Matute plays old hits from the 80’s that everyone in the crowd (except us) seemed to know. It was getting pretty late, so we hopped on our free shuttle bus back to the city. Mérida is one of the safest cities in all of North America, which meant we walked back to our hotels without any issues even though it was well past midnight.

Kayaking in Sisal

On one of my last weekends in Mérida, another Spanish student Lucy and I made our way out to Sisal for a kayaking experience. Our guide seated us in the front of his moto-taxi and added a trailer with 2 kayaks in the back and off we went on a long bumpy ride to La Carbonera. The water is very low in the winter months, but we still managed to see a few flamingos hanging out. We kayaked through lots and lots of mangroves and eventually came to an ojo de agua, a natural spring. The water in the ojo is freshwater, bubbling up from an underground source. Back on the main lagoon, the water is brackish because it mixes with saltwater from the ocean. When the rainy season comes, the water gets higher and a lot more flamingos come to feed. On the way back to Sisal, we stopped and went for a swim in the ocean at a beautiful pristine beach.

flamingos, me and Lucy in our kayak next to mangroves, view from swimming in the ojo de agua

More Mayan Ruins

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Balamkú

My guidebook mentioned that Balamkú was near Calakmul and was definitely worth a stop because of an enormous frieze that is actually open to the public. Now, I love art, but there’s a lot of art vocabulary that still baffles me and for some reason, I thought it would be a giant painted mural, maybe with a little bit of texture. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the size or scale of this piece of work. A nice guardian let me into the locked room and proceeded to share with me all of the animals carved into the giant stucco wall. There are four tall sections which are composed of a king on top, an amphibian in the middle, and the “monstruo de la tierra” (Earth monster) at the bottom. In between these four kings are kneeling jaguars. The whole scene represents entering the underworld for whatever rituals needed to be conducted there. Click on the images if you want bigger photos.

tall king section of frieze, jaguar (look for the claws), frieze and me (for scale)

pyramid view, decorative archway, and trees growing through steps on the main plaza

Within a short drive of Balamkú, the Zotz Cave puts on a nightly show with over 3 million bats leaving the cave to go in search of their dinner. There’s only room for about 20 people to watch from a path overlooking the cave. Right around sunset, the bats start to emerge. Eventually, it looks like a giant bat volcano and there are so many that the bats sometimes collide with the humans that are standing around. One bat attached to my shirt and another one landed in my hair. They both safely detached and went on their way. There are between 7-10 different species of bats that live in the cave and most of them join this nightly insect feast.

Chicanná

This site doesn’t have giant pyramids, but instead is a small town filled with intricate carvings and decorations. Chicanná got its name from one building in particular – the House of the Serpent Mouth. Chi means “mouth,” can means “serpent,” and na means “house” (thank you, Wikipedia). This building is still incredibly well-preserved, but when it was built around 750CE, it would have covered in a layer of stucco and been painted in vivid colors including red and green. This elaborate carving probably represents the monster of the underworld. No one knows exactly how this building was used, but one idea is that rituals were conducted here and this door representing a symbolic portal between the middle world (where humans reside) and the underworld.

House of the Serpent Mouth

Because of the huge number of decorations, archeologists think this was a town for elites where some rituals would’ve been conducted. It’s situated very close to Becán and probably functioned as a rich suburban enclave.

close-up of carvings

Becán

Becán is a big city with a giant pyramid. Due to some complicated rental car logistics, I only had about an hour to run around and climb up these awesome ruins. I definitely wished I’d budgeted some more time for this sprawling site. This city was surrounded by a giant moat, which probably functioned to both protect the city, as well as to serve as a supply of water for the town itself. It served as regional capital for the surrounding countryside where goods were brought and distributed to other locations.

biggest pyramid in Becán (Structure IX), view from the top of the pyramid down onto another ruins (Structure VIII)

One of the most interesting parts of Becán was how much housing has been uncovered and is open to tourists to enter. The rooms are relatively small, but most of them have some kind of built-in bench or bed. The Mayan arch is a a set of parallel walls that at some point is angled inwards and is then covered with a single layer of wide bricks at the very top. This approach to construction appears frequently in Río Bec architecture, the style associated with Becán, Chicanná, and Xpujil.

really thick tunnel wall with a Mayan arch, view from the top of one of the ruins, typically Mayan bedroom with Mayan arch above

Xpujil

This is a relatively small site, located close to Xpujil (pronounced eesh-poo-heel) town which is why it gets a lot of visitors. Río Bec architecture frequently includes rounded corners, temples with two towers (although this one has three), and monster mouth doorways. My photos of the large temple with three towers didn’t come out to well with the shadows from the afternoon sun.

carvings, close up of one of the temples three towers with clear layers, tree growing on top of the ruins

If you made it this far, here’s a bonus video of spider monkeys playing around in Balamkú.

Calakmul

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Ancient Mayan City

Despite being one of the largest and most powerful Mayan city states, Calakmul has never gotten the same attention as Chichen Itza to the north and Tikal to the south. It does have UNESCO World Heritage status, but I’d never even heard about it until I started looking through my guidebook. Right now, the public transportation options are limited and there aren’t many group tours, so it’s challenging to get to. I chose to rent a car in Bacalar and drive many hours on pothole-filled roads. However, everything is changing: the Tren Maya is currently being built (all the heavy trucks contribute to the pothole problem) and will probably be done in the next year. This area will soon be inundated with tourists. The tiny 20-car parking lot is being expanded; the roads are being widened and repaired. Tourism and its impact on the area is about to explode.

Because I knew almost nothing about Mayan history and culture, I hired a guide for this tour and we met at 4:30 in the morning so that we could arrive in the park right when it opened. There were only a couple other people wandering around at that time and it is truly surreal to try and imagine the hustle and bustle of a once-thriving capital city when almost no one is around. The view from the top of the king’s pyramid (Structure II) is incredible: a clear view of miles and miles of trees. But 1500 years ago, there would have been settlements and roads in every direction. Even though the large structures of Calakmul have been excavated, the foundations of the old city remain buried beneath the trees.

from the top of Structure II, the home of the former kings of Calakmul and one of the tallest Mayan pyramids

The king’s palace actually has two levels and it is impossible to see the place where I’m sitting from the ground. The king’s quarters on top would’ve been relatively hidden from the common folks down below. He also would’ve had an elongated head because all of the elite Mayans had their heads tightly bound as children. Everyone in the elite class actually looked completely different from the rest of the people. Mayans also engaged in face scarification and wore a lot of heavy jewelry, especially in their ears.

view of the king’s palace from the bottom, a close up of one of the stelas that depicts a ruler standing on top of a slave who is kneeling

Stelae were often constructed to commemorate people and events. Many of the stelae at Calakmul are in bad shape. There are a few different ways to write in Mayan language: one way uses pictures to depict a specific meaning, another uses pictures to match the syllables of the word, and a third combines both of these together. Despite the complexities, experts can generally decipher most Mayan script today.

top part of stela showing the ruler standing above the slave, view of 5 stelae from the top of Structure I (pyramid that was probably used as a temple)

The pictures below show another large pyramid (Structure VI) where astronomical sightings were made. This building and others were built so that the sun would line up in specific places on the solstices and on the equinox. Some of the engravings on the sides of the stelae are still very clear even after all this time. Although the front and back of these stelae were removed by looters, the sides discuss the people involved as well as the dates of events.

view from bottom of the pyramid, view from top of the other two large pyramids, engravings on side of a stela

So far, at least four tombs have been found inside the king’s pyramid and even more tombs were found in other structures. Even houses of common folk have skeletons buried inside of them. The bodies of the elite class were buried with elaborate outfits and offerings to the gods.

Many graves not only have masks made of jade, but also necklaces, ear plugs, and other fancy adornments. There is no jade in Mexico, so all of this jade was most likely imported from what is now Guatemala, which shows the extent of trade in the region. All of these jade funerary masks below were found in Calakmul, but were removed and put into museums in the city of Campeche. (Side note: this is actually one of the reasons it took me so long to write about this, because I had to go to Campeche to see these masks.) The mask in the top right is the most elaborate and probably belonged to Yuknoom Yichʼaak Kʼahkʼ, the ruler of the Mayan snake kingdom starting around 650 CE.

top row (l to r): mask of Yuknoom Yichʼaak Kʼahkʼ, jade mask & ear plugs with cinnabar used on the mouth, another intricate mask depicting a few different animals
bottom row (l to r): a mask representing Yuknoom Ch’een II (the father of Yuknoom Yichʼaak Kʼahkʼ), another jade mask & ear plugs, jade mask probably for a priest with a second set of eyes representing his supernatural vision and the red lines on his cheek showing ritual scars

Calakmul Biosphere Reserve

After our tour of the ancient city, my guide took me on a short walk through the nearby protected natural area. Even wearing insect repellant, a swarm of mosquitos kept threatening to attack my face. There’s so much to see in the rainforest, but my guide started by showing me the chewing gum (chicle) tree. By cutting diagonal lines in the trunk, they were able to get the natural resin to flow and that was harvested and exported to make chewing gum. I also was introduced to the Mayan breadnut (ramón) tree which is used to make bread or a type of porridge. We came across a swamp and I could see a crocodile hanging out on a log. Perhaps the most exciting thing I saw was on our slow drive (avoiding potholes) back to the entrance, when a tayra crossed the road. I didn’t get a photo of it (but Wikipedia has some) and my guide said it was only the third time he’d ever seen one. Folks here call them the viejo de monte (old man of the mountain) because of their white heads.

top (l to r): chicle tree with scars, natural chewing gum, Maya breadfruit tree starting to grow from seed
bottom (l to r): papaya tree, Central American Gulf Coast toad, termite nest with holes most likely made by parrots that are living inside of it