One of the nice features of hiring a personal guide to take me on a tour of Mayan sites, is that I also got to see some of the Mexican countryside. After my guide and I finished at Chichen Itza, we went on our way to Ek Balam. We passed a donkey tethered at the side of the road.
My guide was so surprised he stopped the car. He said donkeys are rarely seen in those parts.
We also passed a prison.
Although we didn’t stop there, there was a roadside stand selling crafts made by the prisoners.
I also got a little glimpse of Valladolid.
Yes, I thought it was a prettier place than Merida.
We had lunch at a beautifully preserved colonial house, now a hotel and restaurant – El Meson de Marques.
We sat around the courtyard and listened to the tinkling of the fountain while we ate lunch.
I had chicken pibil, which is chicken wrapped in banana leaves and slow roasted.
It was delicious; so tender it fell off the bone.
Ek Balam as a tourist site is in some ways, the antithesis to Chichen Itza.
Chicken Itza was thronged with tourists, mostly I expect from the cruise ships and the beach resorts, like Cancun.
It is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico, attracting about one and a half million people a year. The tourists were almost all white. This was also the case in the restaurant in Valladolid. Every table was occupied by white tourists, along with their Mexican guide. I confess it made me somewhat uncomfortable. A Canadian academic has postulated that tourism in numbers and in places such is this is a form of colonialism.
On the other hand, tourism provides badly needed employment and tax dollars. And it’s not like Mexicans don’t travel within their own country. Certainly Teotihuacan was thronged with Mexicans intent on experiencing their cultural patrimony. Perhaps it is just a question of distance and proximity to resorts?
Ek Balam is only 56 kms away from Chichen Itza, but there were only a handful of people there when we visited.
The site covers at least 23 acres, but very few of the buildings have been excavated.
Maybe because of all these things, I enjoyed visiting there, in some respects, more than at Chichen Itza. Don’t get me wrong – I purely loved Chichen Itza. But Ek Balam doesn’t feel so groomed for presentation to a modern audience. There are no hordes of vendors selling souvenirs. One gets more of a sense of being an explorer of ancient civilisations, not a mere tourist.
Yes, I know that the cold fact is, I was merely a tourist. Still, a girl can dream at this site.
Ek Balam reached its zenith from about 770 A.D. to 840 A.D., so it flourished at the same time as Chichen Itza was holding sway over the area.
You walk through the jungle to the remains of the defensive walls.
These originally ended at sinkholes which would have been impossible to cross, and so provided additional security. You then come upon an entrance gate with an arched doorway which spanned the road entering the city.
My guide had a very good book which showed drawings of how the structures would have looked back when the site was occupied, overlying photos of the structures as they are today.
The entry arch stood on a platform and was reached by a ramp. I’m not sure how carts and wagons seeking entry would have passed into the city through that narrow opening.
You wander around a handful of partially ruined buildings, including a small temple structure.
We came across a very worn stela.
The guide’s book helped me to make out the carvings.
It may portray Ukit Kan Lek Tok’, a ruler of Ek Balam.
This is an arid area, but the inhabitants of Ek Balam, being Mayan, came up with an excellent system of cisterns for holding and preserving rainwater.
Then you reach the centrepiece of Ek Balam, named the Acropolis by modern explorers.
It is not as imposing a structure in and of itself as El Castillo at Chichen Itza, although it is one of the largest ancient buildings found in Mesoamerica (525 feet long, 230 feet wide and at 102 feet tall, higher than El Castillo).
But there is a surprise here.
About three quarters of the way up, there is the phenomenally well preserved tomb of Ukit Kan Lek Tok’, the ruler on the worn stela. My guide showed me a picture of the entrance to the tomb, which is carved into the likeness of a jaguar’s mouth.
It is shielded from view from the ground by a mat awning.
So of course, I had to climb up to see it for myself.
Near the bottom of the stairs is a mask. The hieroglyphics read: Lord Ukit Kan Lek Tok’, the lord, is in Ho’…lunal (a mythical place).
Once I reached the platform, I could see sculptures and carving so fresh and well preserved, they seemed surely to be a reproduction.
But my guide had assured me that this was the real thing. It owed its preservation to having been buried for centuries; perhaps deliberately.
At the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya in Merida, I saw a replica of the tomb, which was helpful to get a full view of it.
On the platform on which the tomb itself stands, if you step back too far, you’ll be stepping off into space.
I clambered over to the other side of the stairs to see what was there, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive.
Having reached the tomb, of course, it would have been unthinkable not to go up the remaining steep and crumbling stairs to the top.
Those stairs were pretty daunting.
There was nothing to hang on to. Certainly not my guide, who stayed firmly planted on the ground.
He was just a dark shadow under the trees.
The summit required transferring from the already scary stairs to a rickety ladder with round rungs, polished to a slippery sheen from the feet of thousands who had gone before me. I waited for a young guy to come down. His foot slipped and he nearly took a header.
There was a group of young German tourists at the top, watching me coming up on all fours. When I transferred gingerly to the ladder I heard a female voice say ‘Hilf ihr!” To my surprise, I realised I knew what it meant: “Help her!”
So I guess something from that semester of German in my first year at university 38 years ago is still lodged in my aging brain. Wonderful what stress does for your mental processes.
Strong young arms grasped me and steadied my ascent to the platform on the summit. The view from the top was amazing.
I came back down the pyramid on my butt, step by step, like a child. When I arrived at the bottom, I was quite honestly amazed at my own temerity. The ascent and descent had been frankly scary in places. But I was glad that I had cast all fear (and dignity) to the winds, for the opportunity to view this archaeological wonder, in situ.
My guide then announced that we would go to the cenote and I would swim.
When I booked this tour, the tour company had repeatedly included a visit to the cenote on the itinerary, offering the opportunity to swim there as a treat. As often as it was offered, I had refused. There was no way I was going to change into a bathing suit in the middle of a tour day, with changing facilities whose conditions I could only imagine.
I therefore thanked my guide, but said I would decline, on the grounds both that I didn’t have a bathing suit, and that I was tired.
Apparently, this was not my choice to make. My guide informed me that he too was tired and wanted a siesta.
I was torn between annoyance and amusement. Amusement won when, with endearing candour, he told me that we would go to the cenote, and I would amuse myself there for half an hour, while he took a nap.
Alrighty then.
We walked over to the cenote area, and the guide negotiated the hire of two sort of bicycle rickshaws. We would travel the two kilometres to the cenote, sitting in the front while the operators cycled from behind.
The cenote was certainly beautiful and worth seeing.
People were swimming and zip lining.
I don’t know if human sacrifice was practiced here as it was at the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza. Perhaps those happy people are swimming over the skeletal remains of victims.
I didn’t go closer to see. One look at the stairs decided me that there was no way I was climbing down – and up! – after a hard day of clambering around pyramids.
Instead, I pulled up a convenient rock and watched the birds swooping around the turquoise waters.
If you get the chance, go to Ek Balam.
It is quite an extraordinary place, and one of the highlights of my Mayan adventures.