Chichen Itza, what I know

What I saw. Want I felt. What I know. 

The internet says Chichen Itza was one of the most important Mayan cities and was founded around the year 500 B.C. and was occupied for a thousand years. That's a long time! Look at what has been accomplished in the last 100 years, from 1919 to 2019.
According to legend (after a while it's all legend, right?) this was once a very spiritual place dedicated to a God and all good things, by a very loving people. Personally, I don't think it stayed that way. 

This is a bigger temple below. Except it is a temple over a temple. According my reckoning the good people made the first smaller temple. If I remember the Book of Mormon says the people who built the first temple were good. The people who built the second temple, well it seems to me that covering up a temple means they decided they no longer liked the first one. They had many gods they worshiped. The Book of Mormon has a part in it that is called Moroni. In there it says that in the end this temple site was a place for very very bad things to happen. Hideously horrible. The worst that humanity has to offer. At one point is says: "And the husbands and fathers of those women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them. And notwithstanding this great abomination it does not exceed that of our people in a place called Moriantum". Soon after one group of people completely wiped out another group of people. 

This big temple can't be climbed anymore. Such a pity for people like me. It's called The Temple of Kukulkan. 

So is this place "spiritual"? I have mixed emotions about that. I heard a guide here say these poles were where the prisoners were kept. Perhaps tied to the poles? I didn't get to ask.

The jungle took back a lot of what mankind previously built up. Can you see the remains of a building in this picture below? There is still a lot hidden throughout the Yucatan Peninsula like this.

Go at 8am before the assertive vendors set up shop. There are many of them throughout the paths to the ruins, and it makes this place the least appealing of the 4 sites I've seen so far. In other places it's only at the entrance, and there are not as many. We ended up buying some smaller ceramic ones, including a Mayan calendar. We couldn't tell as we were out in the open, but they had something on them that made the car reek of gas, we pulled over to check the car and couldn't figure it out. Then we got home and they stunk up the whole living room. Ye gads. Next time I'll for the fridge magnet.



I feel incomplete until I add my favorite black and white pictures. Or ones like this first one that is fairly devoid of color in the first place. I heard a guide in passing and he said this area of columns supported a roof for shade. There were a few areas of columns.