Tulum is around an hour's drive south of our resort. We were on a tour so we ended up stopping at 3 or 4 other resorts along the way to pick up other people.
Our tour guide - Marko Polo - was great. He told us a lot of the history behind the area. Cancun, for instance, translates to "nest of snakes"..."can" meaning snake...and "cun" meaning nest. He told us about the Mayan people...how they have started to work in the resorts and at different places so that they can be educated and eat better. He said that the Mayan people still, for the most part, live in their small villages and some will have generators now. That they sleep in hammocks because of the snakes. He also told me that the women in the Mayan culture are very important. This is because women were in charge of raising the families and making sure that no one was left out of anything...such as eating. Men did the hunting but the women prepared and distributed the food. In modern times, it is still the same way. We went to a small Mayan market at the end of the tour and there were women running the cash registers...and they also made any final pricing decisions over and above what the men had already made with us. I wish I had a pen and paper and had written some of the stuff down because it was soo interesting.
Once we arrived, we bought "tram" tickets to ride behind a tractor on a wagon type thing with seats on it. It saves LOTS of walking.
We walked into the "park" through this rock gate.
When we were inside, Marko gave us a little more of a history lesson about the Mayan people and the town of Tulum. The buildings were once covered in colored adobe and onyx. The buildings are all made out of limestone (as that is the only rock there) and are held together by a mixture of limestone, sand and water.
This little guy found himself a new home:
They did human sacrifices to the gods. In this picture, the small stone in front of the three doorways was where they did them.
There are carvings on some of the ruins depicting the gods as well, but I couldnt' get close enough to take pics of them. On each corner of this one building, there are faces carved into it. Each face is showing a different expression.
The square stone in this picture was used as a primitive lighthouse. The people would put a fire inside that square and the boats would know that once they were directly inline with it, it was safe to come in through the reef.
The design of the city was amazing as were the buildings (or what is left of them).
After he was done with his lesson, we were allowed to go and explore on our own...and go down to the beach. The stairs were very steep to get down there. It was very warm so we all spent some time in the water.
I also spotted two iguanas. This is the male...he had puffed up his chin and was bobbing his head up and down.
What a beautiful view from the lookout.
While we really enjoyed the history lesson and seeing the ruins, I really wish that it wasn't so "busy" and commercialized now. We had been planning on going to Chitchen Itza to see the ruins there but in listening to some of the people, Tulum was less busy...so we decided not to go.
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