Oxkintok

            Yesterday we went to Oxkintok.  Hugo came with us, and he talked about all sorts of things on the way there.  He told us about how Merida used to be a Mayan city that was given a name meaning “the ones facing the sky.”  Spaniards came from the city of Merida in Spain (I think there are 3 cities named Merida now) which was poor and struggling economically.  In 1542 Francisco de Montejo was given the charter from Charles the 5^th to found the new city of Merida, right on top of the Mayan city.  They rebuilt all the buildings and got rich quickly from growing and exporting sisal (aka henequen).

            While driving we passed two electricity plants, one is old and the other is new.  The old plant employs 3,000 workers.  The new plant, which was designed in Japan, only employs 12 workers.  How high tech is that?!  A lot of people didn’t like the new, more efficient plant because it didn’t create more jobs. 

            Hugo also explained that to become a policeman here, a person is only required to study (and be trained) for three months.  Then they only get paid 10 to 15 dollars a day, and so bribes are the easiest way to make money (not trying to justify this, I’m just explaining).  This is what leads to all the police corruption.

            I learned a lot just on the drive to Oxkintok!

            Once there, we walked around the ruins and identified as much as we could.  We all saw a motmot, which is a beautiful bird with long tail feathers that swing side to side like a coo-coo clock.  In Maya it is called a t’oh (pronounced like “toe”).  Inside one of the ruins there was a big tarantula, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one outside of a pet store or zoo before.  We crawled into a small room inside the ruin because someone had identified a tailless whipscorpion inside.  I’ve been told that in Harry Potter, the arachnid that Mad-eye Moody (or should I say Barty Crouch?) enlarges and does an unforgivable curse on is a tailless whipscorpion .  I haven’t seen the movie in a while so I can’t be 100% sure about that, but we use the idea to remember the whipscorpion’s Order, because Amblypygi sounds like a fun spell name.  Nerds.  The whipscorpion ended up being very small and so I was disappointed that I summoned all the guts I had to crawl through just for the little thing.

            After the ruins we went to a cave, which had Mayan writing and carvings on the walls.  Mayans believed caves and cenotes to be sacred just like temples or churches, so we weren’t allowed to wander off and take pictures as we pleased (mustn’t disturb the spirits), but we did get to see a lot.  In one part of the cave there was a small nook where the Maya would make offerings.  We crawled inside (we could only fit a few people at a time) and it was beautiful and sparkling with quartz.  The nook was filled with small rocks that must have come from outside of the cave and given as offerings.  There was also a small figurine and a small carved seashell left as offerings. 

Hugo told us that it takes 100 years for a stalactite or stalagmite to grow 1 centimeter, and it was really cool to see little ones starting to form all over the place.  I’ve noticed that a lot of the Mayan architecture and even some the hieroglyphics in the cave face certain directions depending on their meanings.  For example, the picture of an owl faced west to depict part of its meaning.  The two men showing us the different parts of the cave and explaining the hieroglyphics were very nice and as we walked out I had a conversation with one.  It’s actually really fun to try and communicate with someone who speaks a different language.  It’s a challenge, especially because of my poor Spanish and he only knew a few words of English.  He knew Mayan though, and I was proud to tell him I knew that bellybutton was tuch in Mayan.  He taught Megan and me that nose is ni and mouth is chi and that legs are called walks.  He said a lot of other words but those are the only ones I remember, and I’m not sure about the spelling.

From the cave we went to another cenote, and it was in someone’s backyard!  It was way better than having a pool.  We climbed down a ladder through a small hole and inside was completely enclosed except that little hole.  They had light bulbs strung up along the rock ceiling and it was very dark, humid, and the most cavelike cenote we’ve seen yet.  The boy whose backyard it was, named Concho, swam around with us.  He was 8 and really cute.

On the way home we stopped for dinner at a Mayan restaurant, where they served us cochonita pibil, which is pork cooked underground.  They showed us how they buried the huge tray with cochonitas and shoveled over it.  It tasted amazing.

After the long day we had an even longer night.  We went to Canta Mexico again, and danced and sang Uptown Girl.  It was the only English song sang all night and we sounded horrible but people were still nice to us.  Then we headed to the beach and went night swimming.  It was my first time ever doing that, and I loved it.  In all it was the longest and best day yet.