A trip to Maya wonderland

After 2 days in Tulum I figured it would be time to move on, and since the weather still wasn´t really cooperating very much and stayed Belgian summer cold (thank God for my sleeping bag!), I had no hard feelings leaving the beach that soon. Oh well, I will see enough beach before I head home, but maybe not enough of places like Coba and Chichen Itza, where one can wander around some of the most mysterious marvels ever build. Coba is probably a lot less known as Maya site, but certainly as interesting to visit I think. A lot less tourists, a pyramid even 15m higher than the one in Chichen Itza and most of all, a jungle setting that makes you feel very small once you have climbed the thing and get a 180° look around. How the Mayas managed to build their cities, nobody really knows, which makes it even the more fascinating. The juego de pelota (ball court) in Chichen Itza has the acoustics of a modern opera hall, and the grandeur of a Roman arena. Imagine then too that the captain of the team ´winning´ the Maya soccer game got ritually sacrified afterwards, on a shrine bearing sculptures of birds ripping out human hearts. What a honour. Yummie! Anoher wonder of Maya architecture in Chichen Itza is ´El Castillo´, not just a pyramid, but the Maya version of our Filofax calendar, but with staircases instead of pages. The time temple has 4 staircases with all 91 steps, which makes in total 364, adding to 365 with the step of the temple on top, or the number of days in a whole solar year. Every equinox, on March 20th-21st and September 20th-21st, the sun produces a shadow-and-light illusion of a serpent ascending or descending the side of the pyramid´s staircase. I also went to the night show, where under a star clear sky, the same light effect is optically reproduced. Well, it tops the climb of the pyramid for me. Although that that American tourist - yes the one who couldn´t get up on it in the afternoon - is again next to you, not spoiling the view with his big fat ass this time, but with his camera flash light.Enfin! After that one day in Chichen Itza, I made it safe to Campeche, a very pretty city on the Gulf coast of Yucatan, where I will chill the next few days, before heading South into Chiapas and Oaxaca. So more next week!