Mayan Ruins of Quintana Roo: El Rey, Tulum and Coba

El Rey

Continuing on our quest for the Maya, we drove
 from Cancun, that peninsula of luxury hotels which had been, in 1970, a fishing village on an island.  Its Mayan ruins remain-- the city of El Rey which thrived from 1200-1500, is a small fragrant haven of moist grass and palmettos and mangroves and fig trees. Scores of leathery iguanas lifted their proud Mayan snouts to the sun, or ran on their little legs to the nearest hole.

Iguanas of El Rey

Nearby, on the hotel boulevard, where the Mayan museum is ensconced in forest groves and fragrant woods and green gardens, is a related site of San Miguelito, with still visible murals in the intriguing Mexican style of convoluted whorls. Little is left of these villages of calciferous chalky rock with their raised temples and colonnades and platforms that held straw homes, the religion mingled with every daily function, a lost beauty and terror. I wondered if those brown people with their beak noses, who scored their tongues with thorns for the gods, might not have been relieved to rid themselves of their god kings.

Arch for the New Mayan Era, Playa del Carmen

(In the evening we embarked to Isla Mujeres over the crashing teal waters of the Caribbean, as the full moon rose. Raven dark birds with angular wingspreads and forked tails soared motionless on the air.)

Arch for the New Mayan Era

The next day we traveled down the "Mayan Riviera" in the direction of Tulum, stopping at the seaside village of Puerto Morales, with its charming, dignified souvenir hawkers and their round brown smiles. With what machismo the tiny old man with his angular face and bass voice helped us park the car. "Welcome to our village."

But we resisted all but oranges and peanuts and proceeded, along the grandiose golf/country club Rivera Maya with its shiny leaved forests from which emerge mammals to be killed on the highway along with a few sad dogs. The noisy city of Playa del Carmen (once the embarkation for pilgrims to Cozumel, with its shrines to the fertility goddess) has an uproarious beach on which was mounted a sculptured arch for the new Mayan cycle, of a naked man embracing a naked voluptuous woman as common humanity adorn the base.

Tulum

At Playa del Carmen we walked in the foaming sea and found a few Mayan ruins, one ensconced in in a tiny forest among buildings advertising snorkeling with signs that warned: Warning! Clothing optional zone! On a little forested hill among mangroves and palms, a few odd marsupials munched with wary lovability and iguanas posed under a small temple with columns.

Just behind a loud restaurant that advertised Monday night pig roasts, mangroves had been cut away, leaving their dripping roots over another square Mayan edifice.

The port of Tulum

Then we drove on to Tulum. Discovered in the 19th c in a dense tropical jungle, Tulum was a port city for the Maya founded in 1200. Its other name was Zama, or dawn, after the rays of the rising sun. It is now a grassy spread of buildings, its architecture compact. The day we visited Tulum was filled with mostly Mexicans who did not hesitate to snooze under the palms here and there. The mostly unlabeled ruins bore some columns, traces of fresco, remnants of jaws on the corners of buildings. The most common motif is of the corn stalk. Even the descending god sprouted some corn stalks as he dove down head first on a temple of the Castillo. The latter was not a castle, though, but a center of magical religion, art and astronomy. Tulum was dedicated to the morning star, symbol of the Toltec leader Kukulcan-Quetzalcoatl who reigned in those final years. It perches on a cliff above white beaches where people swam and snorkeled, with a nesting area for turtles. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th c. they found a thriving trade network connecting with Central America, the Pacific and Gulf Coast and Central Mexico.

Our hotel at Tulum

The center of the city of Tulum is the highway, crowded with hotels, backpackers, tourists and shops. But the coastline of Tulum is paradise, a strip of relatively pricey eco hotels and charming bungaloes on the beach, a lively strip of grass huts, Mexican food catering to current American tastes, a gift shop named Shalom, and numerous slender stray dogs who hung around grizzled men selling Dreamcatchers and jewelry amidst the deep pocketed tourists. We had excellent fish tacos at the Mexican place across the road, and woke in the morning to the jade breakers of the Caribbean off our own white beach.

A ball court of Coba

As we drove on to Coba, the other significant archeological site of Quintana Roo, a dense rain fell vertically from the skies. We waited it out in a two story open sided restaurant at the entrance where we ate excellent quesadillas. Then we embarked on Coba, a beautiful wander through gentle jungle that hides 70 kms of Mayan ruins.

The peak population of Coba, built 600-800 AD, was 55,000. Construction continued till 1100 AD, in the Peten style of the Guatemala Mayans, their Tikal queens marrying into the Coba royalty. Ball courts, black with lichen or fire, were engraved with skulls. Monumental pyramids were topped with temples and altars, presumably for royal burial though bodies have not been found. Ruins sprout mangroves dripping with lichen. One follows the roads of beaten pale earth that were part of a vast network of roads that led to the greater Mayan universe. There are many stelae with traces still visible of the etchings of Mayan kings, or their queens from Tikal, looming with scepters over crouching captives. A perfectly layered monument rose in solitary majesty, three platforms encircling the graduated widths. Nearby is the Noch Mur, a great pramid that we climbed up only to be drenched in a sudden rain, while we looked down on the endless young forest and distant cenotes, the sinkholes that catch the rain. How beautifully nature can take care of the death of a civilization.

View from the top of Noch Mur--