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The other pyramids
Contrary to what many people might think, Mexico’s Riviera Maya didn’t pop up in the last 40 years like Cancun, just to the north and whose airport most folks use to get here.
The Maya populated this southern coast of the Yucatan peninsula for hundreds of years and numbered in the hundreds of thousands until their influence waned and pretty much disappeared in the 15th and 16th centuries, about the time the Spanish were arriving. Mayan descendants still make up a large portion of the local population, and bits and pieces of the Mayans’ cities pepper the landscape.
Visit places such as Muyil, Coba and Tulum, and you can step back into different eras of Mayan history, walk among moldering ruins, climb ancient pyramids. And, if you use your imagination, you might in some places hear the grunts of ancient players of the Mesoamerican ballgame as they throw a hip into the hard rubber ball in a game where the losers might face death.
Muyil is nestled in the massive Sian Ka’An Biosphere Reserve, which is about 70 miles south of Playa del Carmen. At 1.3 million acres, the biosphere is the third-largest natural protected area in Mexico and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temple ruins here are surrounded by jungle, unlike sites such as Tulum, where, our guide told us, “100 years ago when they found the place of the Mayan people, they cut down all the trees to start to make a reconstruction.”
Muyil’s ruins were discovered more recently, and a more conservation-oriented mindset resulted in the removal of only trees on top of the temples.
Sian Ka’An, which translates as “Entrance to the Sky,” is populated by a wealth of wildlife, including tapirs, peccaries, deer, spider and howler monkeys, jaguars, anteaters and ocelots, and you need a guide to visit.
Our guide, a Mayan, peppered us with facts as we hiked through the jungle, occasionally blundering into concentrations of large black ants that like to bite.
El Castillo is the largest temple here, topping out at roughly 50 feet. Climbing it and the other temples at Muyil is a challenge, because the steps are very narrow, requiring you to sidestep up and down. “That was so that when you were going down, you couldn’t turn your back on the temple, which would be a sign of disrespect,” our guide said.
Later we enjoyed a break from the intense sun and heat by donning life jackets and floating down a section of a canal the Mayans constructed to connect Muyil to the sea.
Coba, translated as “waters stirred by wind,” “water with moss” or “murky water,” is inland, northwest of Muyil, and is home to the Nohoch Mul pyramid. At 140 feet, it’s the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan.
Thankfully, the steps at Nohoch Mul are wider, but the climb to the top (there’s a rope handhold) isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s worth it, though, and the view, along with the climb itself, will take your breath away.
Back on solid ground, you can walk through the site, which is much more open and developed than Muyil, or do as I did and rent a beater bike for a few pesos.
Read more: Chicago Tribune
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