Chichen Itza

Many people falsely think that the Mayan people no longer exist. However, our Chichen Itza tour guide smiled at this misconception. “We are here,” he said. “We are still here.”

Sergio lead us on a great tour of Chichen Itza and Mayan culture. Truthfully, we had kind of stalled on the question of hiring a tour guide. We ended up agreeing to hire Sergio for the reduced-price short tour. We got in the park and Sergio lead us right past several other groups whose tour guides seemed to already be giving illumination Chichen Itza lessons. “Hey Sergio, did we miss some stuff back there,” Michelle asked, referring to all the places our tour guide had lead us past without comment.

But we did not need to worry. Sergio knew his material and was happy to share his knowledge in a very engaging way. He gave us the background of the merging of the Mayan and Toltec peoples who founded the city on an older Mayan site. He broke down in detail how the Maya calendar works and how the Chichen Itza temple is also a huge Mayan calendar, with the different levels and sections corresponding to different months and days. “Mayans knew that life is math,” he explained.

Sergio didn’t just do all the talking but also had questions for us. When the subject of human sacrifice came up he polled each of us to see if we thought the ones sacrificed were from the high or low caste. “High caste,” he said, “because those sacrificed were volunteers and it was considered an honor to be sacrificed.”

He showed us how the temples where built with precision to not only reflect the calendar but to also direct sound waves. “What would you say if I told you the ancient Mayans had Whatsap,” he asked. Then he showed us how a person can stand at different places within the Mayan ball court and easily hear someone many yards away because of the way sound travels along the limestone walls.

We are all fascinated with the Mayan culture and felt like we learned a lot from the tour. There is so much more to learn there and it is hard to feel like you spent enough time learning about the site. We have a few things that we’d like to see more of, like the murals inside some of the protected areas and also how the main temple is built so that a snakes shadow goes down the length of the pyramid. This optical show only occurs only twice a year and it would be fun to see this happen

One of Sergio’s most interesting surprises came at the end of his talk. “I want to tell you that this is my first time to ever give a tour in English,” he said, smiling. He must have known it went well. Then he added, “I’ve been studying English for eight months.” Yes, we were impressed by the ancient Mayans understanding of Math, geometry, celestial observation and ornate construction. But we were also really impressed with Sergio’s learning English so well in eight months. Wow! Great job Sergio!! We were lucky to be your students for the day.