Website Upgrade With A Dash of Industrial Thames

After many months of procrastination I have finally updated my website. It was in a bit of a sorry state as I hadn't really done anything to it since I first published it over 18 months ago. It's now a lot neater and cleaner, easier to use and, crucially, has some newer photos up. I'll try to make sure I keep updating the photos with some of my newer work as the months go on but this blog will continue to be the place I keep most up to date. So, check out the new website, let me know what you think; feel free to point out any bugs or inconsistencies and also to spread the word.

www.jasonhehirphotography.com

Speaking of up to date, my latest travel plans include a weekend in Bruges next month and later in the year, September into October, spending 2 weeks or so in India. The itinerary is yet to be thrashed out but will probably centre around the standard New Delhi - Aggra - Jaipur triangle. Needless to say I am desperately excited. In the meantime I've got several more posts on matters Mexican that I want to get done before returning to more general stuff.

For no particular reason, here's a photo I like that I took a few months back. It's of Shad Thames which is near Tower bridge.

Chichen Itza

This is it. This is the Big One. This is the one I had been waiting for since I was a kid, the place in all of the promised land of Mexico that I was most keen to see. I had hiked to Macchu Picchu, hunted down the Northern Lights, seen the Great Pyramids at Giza and now I was about to see Chichen Itza. I was excited, but where to begin.....

The town currently nearest to Chichen Itza is a small, unremarkable place by the name of Piste that lies halfway between Merida and Cancun. We arrived mid afternoon having hot footed it up from Tulum on a local bus. We planned to spend at least a couple of days in the area taking in the pyramids, some local caves and the cenotes I wrote about previously next to the nearby town of Valladolid. We had deliberately picked a more expensive hotel for this stay but the benefit was it was actually within walking distance of the complex so that, with an early start, we could beat the crowds that would be bussed in from locations further afield, but that was for tomorrow. That evening we decided to get tickets to the sound and light show that is put on each night. This basically involves using the pyramid as a huge projector screen and explaining some of the history of the monument using a lot of bright lights and a big ass sound system; I believe there is something similar done with the pyramids at Giza.

I'll be honest, the show was crap and I do not recommend it. It reeked of the 1980s and badly needed updating. The story was only in Spanish so we could get the general gist if we concentrated but anyone without a decent grasp of Spanish would probably get pretty bored pretty quickly, as we eventually did. The colourful lights could only hold your attention so long and so the whole experience was a little underwhelming. What I was pleased about, however, was that it allowed me to plot a mental map of the site so that, in the morning, I would be able to march us straight to the main points of interest and hopefully get even more of a head start on most of the other tourists.

Not a good picture, hand held in the dark, but it gives an impression of the sound and light show - not all that.

And so it proved. The next day we were queuing up before the site was opened so that we could be amongst the first people over the threshold. Using my recently reconnoitered information we made straight for the main draw overtaking the less well informed tourists as we went. Once we arrived the only people there were a few gardeners doing some early morning weeding before the heat became unbearable; we had even beat the hawkers to it, they were still busy setting up their wears, only concerned with being ready before the coaches started arriving. The Great Pyramid; El Castillo; Kukulcan; call it what you will, this is a very impressive structure and the chances are that you've seen a picture of it before. It is the archetypal image of Mayan and Mexican culture and the tourist board, understandably, make a big deal of it and attract 1.2m people per year in the process. That being said it is only the second most visited archaeological site in Mexico after Teotihuacan, which I'll deal with in a future post. Chichen Itza, though, is unarguably the more picturesque of the two.

The story behind Chichen Itza begins in the 5th century when a settlement was established next to two large cenotes that are found in the area guaranteeing a reliable water supply. It was the Itza people that built the village into a large and prosperous conurbation, indeed the name Chichen Itza means 'the mouth of the well of the Itza.' From about the year 750 there began a golden age for the city that was to last half a millennium, but it was not completely without incident. For the first 200 years or so the Itza people, an ethnic subset of the Maya, prospered and grew their sphere of control building temples and palaces as they went; this was all done in their own cultural and architectural style so that the first phase of building in the area is very distinct. Equally distinct, though, is the Toltec style which takes over and comes to dominate the area come the 10th century.

One of the two cenotes that fed Chichen Itza. For a sense of scale try to spot the guy in the red t-shirt on the right.

The Toltec were normally to be found in central Mexico, away to the north west near where the capital can be found today. Exactly how the Toltecs came to dominate the area seems to be under debate. I've found some sources that say that the Toltecs came as conquerors and put the Itza under fearsome suppression and others that say it was a more peaceful integration based around commerce. There are also a multitude of local myths and legends that all contradict each other and have no archaeological evidence to back them up. It would seem we can't yet be sure how it happpened but we do know that the culture completely changed. Clothing, architecture, rituals, even sports all changed. The Toltecs introduced pelota, a ball game often erroneously compared to football. The game was full of symbolism and basically involved using your hip to hit a ball shaped piece of galvanised rubber through a stone hoop high up on a wall; don't think basketball, though, the hoop was vertical not horizontal. The largest pelota court in all of the Americas was built at Chichen Itza measuring approximately 170x70 metres. Many people today take their sports very seriously but none can quite match the Toltecs for their commitment, a lot was at stake in such games, the very lives of the competitors even, although it remains unclear if it was the winners or the losers that were sacrificed.

The pelota court with one of the two hoops through which the ball would be aimed

Human sacrifice. This is something that the Maya are somewhat infamous for. It's quite easy to conjure up an image of some body painted indian chap covered in feathers cutting the heart out of a prostrate prisoner of war before throwing the body down the steps of a pyramid. Personally I've always felt a bit uneasy about this; not the human sacrifice part, I'm down with that, it's the judging them by today's western standards that I don't like. I've lost count of the number of otherwise excellent documentaries I've seen on the Maya that talk of sacrificial rituals as barbaric, inhumane, primitive and the like; obviously they're pretty gruesome but I don't see that it's fair to judge other, past cultures by our own sanitised standards. Laws are just a matter of taste really. It used to be a high crime to speak ill of our monarch or God but nowadays most of us do it. Today, if two thugs disagree, fight and one gets killed we lock the other up, but a few hundred years ago if one gentleman called out another to a duel and killed him it was fair game. In any case, in this instance, it was the Toltecs that introduced human sacrifice to the Maya and very keen on it they were too. Many ritualistic aspects of life all of a sudden needed willing, or not so willing, people to lay down their lives for the good of the community. Lots of these would have been prisoners of war with raids being carried out on rival tribes with the express purpose of capturing live prisoners with which to please the Gods; as is so often the case, though, young, virgin girls got rather a raw deal. They were often thrown into the cenotes to guarantee the water supply and there is much evidence of this. In the early 20th century the cenotes were dredged and as well as turning up lots of ceramics and other ceremonial objects there were also multiple human remains recovered that showed evidence of being sacrificed.

This gentleman was carrying his goods to the make-shift market passed the Temple of 1000 Columns

The prosperity of Chichen Itza increased for another 200 years through the 11th and 12th centuries until the city covered more than 300 hectares of land. It was during this period that many of the larger and most famous structures were built; El Castillo, the ball court, the Temple of Warriors, the Jaguar Temple, a stellar observatory and the Complex of 1,000 Columns amongst many others. What I was most interested in, though, was El Castillo, the great pyramid that was built in honour of Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent, a God imported with the Toltecs from central Mexico that had been worshipped there since the 1st century BCE.

This pyramid is full of meaning and symbolism; as well as being an obvious symbol of power and advanced technology, the single most impressive aspect of this structure is what it reveals of the Mayan's mathematical and astronomical abilities. It is effectively a giant calendar, there are 91 steps from the base to the summit on each side with one last one at the top on which sits the temple, this makes 365 in total; I don't need to tell you the significance of that number. Also, and this draws tens of thousands of visitors every year, on the spring and autumn equinoxes the pyramid is aligned such that one of it's stepped edges casts a shadow onto the side of one of the staircases that gives a shade-like body to the serpent that runs down the pyramid. This was probably a deliberate design feature but there are some archaeologists that claim it is a coincidence.

The zig zag shadow gives the impression of a snakes body with the head carved in stone at the bottom left. Design feature or lucky happenstance? This is not one of my pictures, image used under a creative commons license.

Nearby there lies the remains of an observatory that looks remarkably like the ones that the Europeans would develop 500 years later with a domed roof with slots in it through which stellar observations could be made. They had advanced to such an extent that they were able to accurately predict solar eclipses and the orbit of Venus, putting them on a par with mathematicians of the Old World.

I can't really talk about the Mayans and their calendar without mentioning the now infamous end of the world predictions that have become so popular in recent years. Let me begin by saying that they are, of course, bullshit. What is galling, though, is that the Mayans didn't even predict the end of the world, they believed that there would be a pretty much endless series of cycles that would last for millions of years. During the winter solstice this year, December 21st, one of their many cycles will come to an end. On December 22nd another one will begin. Apparently there are people that will pre-emptively kill themselves in time for this event in much the same way people said they would for the Rapture that failed to materialise last year and I certainly wouldn't want to stop them; it'd be nice to have a little dose of good old Darwinian natural selection brought to the table.

Returning to what we do know, the Maya had 13 weeks each of 20 days (their numbering system was base 20)  in their ceremonial year giving 260 days. They thought that the number 13 was unlucky so the 13th day of the 13th week was a particularly bad day to be walking under ladders in Chichen Itza. Obviously this ceremonial calendar didn't fit in with their observations of reality and so they also came up with an astronomical calendar that had 18 periods of 20 days totalling 360 days. This gave them 5 left over which they considered literally unstable and dangerous as they belonged to neither one year nor the other. To mesh these two separate calendars together they came up with a system of two cogs of unequal size that cycled around each other known as the Calendar Round; and how long did it take for the two to catch each other up and get back to where they started? Surprise, surprise, 52 years. There's no escaping these numbers. The Mayans were so accurate in their time keeping that it can be worked out that, according to their own legends, the earth was created on August 11th, 3314BCE; this is a fairly similar sort of date for pre-history in many other cultures.

Chichen Itza, then, is a place where two cultures collided to produce one of the most interesting sites in all of Mesoamerica. It existed for nearly one thousand years and was the major economic and military power in the region for more than half of that; but then it all came to a sudden end, and no one knows why. It wasn't that unusual for whole cities like this to suddenly become uninhabited but the Mayans, such fastidious record keepers, usually made a note of why, whether it be because they were conquered by another tribe; a drought; some sort of disease pandemic; or sometimes they would do it deliberately as one of their calendar cycles came to an end and they felt that it was time to start again. Many theories compete to explain why, sometime in the 14th century, there ceases to be evidence of any new buildings or development of any kind. Some say they were conquered, others that the civilisation just ran out of steam in a slow decline over a century or so. We may never know, but when the Spanish arrived in 1526 there was still a population there although it was much reduced. Over the next decade the conquistadors tried and failed to conquer the region, but by the 1580s the inevitable happened and the area became nothing more than a cattle ranch.

Today, the area has been officially declared as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World along with the Great Wall of China; Petra in Jordan; Christ the Redeemer in Rio; the Colosseum in Rome; the Taj Mahal in Agra (where my great grandmother was born) and, my favourite, Machu Picchu in eastern Peru. I am very much a list ticking type of person, I have been to three of these places already and am hoping to get a fourth by the end of this year; maybe I could try and get them all by the end of the decade? In any case, this recognition as one of the worlds treasures has guaranteed the future of Chichen Itza for years to come for locals and visitors alike and I, for one, am very happy about that.

The Mexican Black Hairless Humming Howling Broad Billed Dog Lizard Monkey Bird

There's no history or ruins in this post, I have prepared an entry on some of the animals that we came across that are peculiar to Mexico; the first few photos are a bit shoddy but they get better. I'll begin with the weirdest animal....

Exactly when this breed of dog was established is unclear but it was certainly present at the time of the conquest in the early 16th century. In the Aztec language it was known as Xoloitzcuintle (pronounced zcltltzzzz), today shortened to Xolo. It is thought that they were bred as companion dogs and bed warmers. Yes, that's right, bed warmers; they're incredibly warm to the touch, as I can confirm. Unfortunately, it turns out that they also taste quite good and so they were sometimes bred for food; I don't know if this still goes on. The Aztecs believed that they knew the way to the Land of the Dead and so they were routinely sacrificed upon the deaths of their owners. I took this picture through a chain link fence just as the dogs were being rubbed down with some sort of sun block to stop them burning. It would seem that hot climates consistently and independently result in these sorts of hairless dogs; Africa produced the Egyptian hairless and African Sand dog, Asia the Ceylon hairless and Thai hairless (word of warning, don't be lazy and just Google Thai hairless). Dogs are my favourite animals on Earth, I'm slightly obsessed with them but even I think these creatures are uglier than, well, a bulldog chewing a piss soaked nettle; they're certainly no competition for my favourite animal on the whole planet. Nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, I give you... The Mexican hairless!! Try not to stare.

Dog ugly

Getting some sun screen applied. They missed a bit.

Now to something more exotic. In my post on Tulum you may remember that I mentioned there were lots of lizards lollygagging about the place. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, which was fine by me as I'm also quite keen on reptiles. I don't know exactly what they are but I think I narrowed it down to Ctenosaura similis, or Black Iguana, though I could easily be wrong it's certainly somewhere in that genus. If I'm right then it happens to be the fastest running lizard on Earth with a top speed of slightly over 20mph, which is none too shabby. My photo is a poor one, it's a bit out of focus but it should give you an idea of what they look like. These orgy-based ones were about 18-24 inches long, and there were some plenty bigger than that.

Lizard orgy

Right, time to break out something really exciting, monkeys. I had never seen monkeys in the wild before so I was very pleased to hear that much of the southern jungle of Mexico reverberates with the bellowing of the local troops. The first time we heard them up close it was actually almost scary; it was unbelievable that such a loud noise could be produced by, what we had been told, is not a large animal. But even with them being so loud we could tell that they were still a fair distance off; if one of them got itself excited right next to you it must be ear shattering. It was in Bonampak that we came across them having already visited Yaxchilan; you'll hear about these places in a future post.

Sue was pretty tuckered out and had remained near the base of the pyramid whilst I conducted my usual explorations to the summit, quietly humming the Indiana Jones theme tune as I went. As I was on my way down I saw a woman taking what must have been a particularly boring close up photo of a rock, but then I realised she was aiming for something far past the rock; a lizard, I assumed, or one of the massive bloody spiders that I had found nearer the top. Nothing of interest there. As I descended, though, I realised that she was a bit too excited to warrant such a photo, in fact she was so excited that she was sort of chimping around in agitation and even making monkey-type noises.

As it dawned on me that she had spotted some monkeys I went through a veritable roller coaster of emotions. First, it was amusement that this woman thought she was somehow going to talk the monkeys down, like a suicidal banker that's just lost billions, using nothing more than her best ooh ooh ooh and that strange index-finger-rubbing-your-thumb-pad-motion that everyone thinks animals love so much despite all evidence to the contrary. Next I felt the kind of giddy joy that always puts me in mind of early childhood; it's the kind of feeling you just don't get often enough as an adult, probably because you're not quite as excited by your favourite cartoon unexpectedly coming on as you used to be. I was about to see real life, wild monkeys; this made me happy. But, no, what's this? What black monster was now surging from the depths to claw at my heart and tear my new found happiness ever down into the abyss? My dream was falling apart, I was as a man broken; shattered on the rocks of despair as only one in my horrific position could ever understand, if they dare even try to do so. Yes, no doubt you already understand the tragedy of my situation: so as not to overexert myself I had left my camera bag at the bottom of the pyramid and I only had a wide angle lens to hand which would be useless to capture a picture of said simians. No, don't try to comprehend my plight, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for the all to dismal consequences.

And so I decided I'd just sit down and watch them instead. It was at this point, just as I was at my lowest ebb, that I saw a beacon of light, a star of purest brilliance. I squinted into the aura, shielding my eyes against it's dazzling radiance but slowly I began to make out an image burning it's way into my retina; the image was Sue-shaped and, yes, YES, it appeared to be carrying my camera bag. Closer inspection revealed it to be Sue! And she was carrying my camera bag! Could it be? My angel, my saviour; in one moment I was transported from the very depths of Tartarus to an apogee of ecstasy. The effect was only slightly ruined by her swearing and cursing about having to carry my fucking camera bag up the fucking pyramid as she huffed and puffed her way towards me.

Wow, what a story, eh? What drama! I quickly changed lenses and did what I could with the trees being in the way, the low light, the distance and the little buggers not sitting still. I was very pleased to get what I did out of it. Now as you can see, these monkeys are to be found in Mexico, they are black and they howl. Any idea what they're called? No? You'll kick yourself. Ladles and jellyspoons, I give you the Mexican Black Howler monkey:

I love the curling of the prehensile tail in this picture

If you think you can handle any more then I have one last animal for you, and I was far more excited about snapping this one then I was those stupid monkeys I can tell you. When we were in the town of Oaxaca we stayed in a small hostel that was dominated by a series of small, interlinked courtyards that were so packed full of plants and flowers that it was actually difficult to work your way through them. One afternoon, avoiding the hottest part of the day, we sat in the courtyard outside our room reading. As we relaxed my attention was arrested by a flash of blue-green iridescence that I couldn't identify. I stood up and tried to follow it; one thing was for sure, it was almost supernaturally quick. I didn't tell Sue what I was doing as I initially thought it was a monstrous big insect of some kind and she would be none too impressed by this. Eventually, though, I caught another glimpse and this time I was able to identify the visitor. I must have only saw it for a fraction of a second but that was long enough to pick out the body of a hummingbird hovering perfectly still next to a nearby purple bloom, it's wings moving so fast that they had become completely invisible.

I ran for my camera.

I was too late. By the time I had come back it had disappeared. No matter, though; if it had come once it would come again and this time I would be ready. So I sat back down, picked up my book and, with my camera in my lap, bided my time. From this point on, however, I was distracted. I hadn't been aware that hummingbirds were on the cards and I was very excited to have this opportunity. I lay in wait. For a long time. For a really, really long time. We were in Oaxaca for a few days, it was the first time in our trip that we had really worked in some time to chill out having covered well over 1,000 miles in the first 6 days or so, so I wasn't worried, I had time to get the shot I wanted. The next day I came close. In flew the little hummingbird, no larger than the smallest of birds you might find back in Britain with a wingspan of only 10cm. I have subsequently identified it as the broad billed hummingbird, Cynanthus latirostris, which is quite common in those parts and on average weighs something like 3-4 grams. Like most hummingbirds, each day it must consume about one and a half times it's own bodyweight in nectar. As it hovered perfectly in place near virtually the same flower I had seen it on before I sprung into action but before I could focus it had flashed away again in a sparkle of green.

Over the rest of my time in Oaxaca I slowly descended into madness, I completely failed to get any photos of the hummingbird. I got lots of photos of flowers and leaves and blurry green blobs but nothing that I could claim was an actual photograph of this elusive creature. I was not pleased. I was beginning to think that I was going to have to file it in the same place as Kingfishers in a drawer marked "Cool birds (but not really cool because everyone knows birds are rubbish) that are so rare you only ever get to see a small glimpse once per decade"; as opposed to the drawer marked "Cool birds (but not really cool because everyone knows birds are rubbish) that are big, common and stupid so you see them loads". This drawer has things like peacocks and ostriches in it. There's only one other bird drawer and it's marked "Genuinely cool birds" and has things like eagles and owls in it. Yes, I have quite an elaborate filing system at home.

I knew that our next, and final, port of call was Mexico City and I was never going to get a good hummingbird picture there. Or was I? I left Oaxaca with nothing having resigned myself to failure on this particular point but I was due some good fortune. On our very last day in Mexico we had a flight late in the day which meant we had most of the day to spare. We had fun going around the Museo Templo Mayor which was somewhere I was really excited to see as it was on the site of the main square of the original Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, a place I had been desperate to visit since my mid teens (more in a later post). With that done we decided to seek out a roof top terrace overlooking the zocalo, the modern day main square of the city, have a few drinks and observe the city go by. We had a decent view of much of the city so I snuck off to take a few snaps but upon my return Sue said that she had seen a hummingbird. Initially I thought she was winding me up, a cruel and sick joke, but I waited and she was absolutely right. The roof terrace was flanked by dozens of flower pots and hanging baskets and the hummingbird seemed perfectly happy buzzing from one to the next. I couldn't believe my luck. I was within 10 feet of a hummingbird that wasn't in a hurry to bugger off. I put my fastest lens on the camera so that I could freeze the action as best as possible and make the background nicely blurred and snapped away. I managed to get quite a few decent pictures my favourite of which I've put below. These were literally the last photos I took in Mexico and I couldn't have hoped for better way to end my time there. The third picture shows the wider context of the environment we were in; this was in the centre of one of the largest cities on Earth but the bird appeared more than happy. And so was I.

One four thousandth of a second and the wing tips are still a blur

Spot the humming bird

And, finally, here's a manky looking chicken.....

Cenotes and Dinosaurs

This cenote had the roots of a tree hunting out the fresh water

Natural wells.

That's the closest translation I can find for the Spanish word cenotes. A cenote, then, is a naturally occurring underground aquafer or reservoir. So far so boring. Where it gets interesting is that these water courses can sometimes work their way through the soft and highly permeable bedrock of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula to form large, freshwater cave systems. As the rock is so permeable all the rivers in the Yucatan have burrowed their way away from the surface so that, unless you know where to look, the whole region appears to be devoid of any drinking water; but before I continue with caves I have a slight digression.

The Yucatan peninsula is quite a place, not just historically and culturally as I have begun to explain in my previous post, but geographically and geologically as well. Let me explain via the medium of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs, for those that have never seen Jurassic Park, are super mega cool giant lizards that mostly went extinct approximately 65 million years ago at the end of what is known as the Cretaceous period. I say mostly as all birds are evolved from dinosaurs. But what caused this extinction? Volcanoes? Meteor impact? Climate change? Disease? Well, the answer is that it was probably a bit of all of these but the single most significant of them has now been shown to be a massive strike from a meteor 10km across. And where did this most monumental of meteors strike the Earth? The Yucatan. You would think that the crater left by such an impact would be huge, and indeed it is, measuring some 180km across, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to see. If you were to wonder along the north coast of the Yucatan you would walk right through it and never know you'd been inside one of the planet's largest scars. It was only discovered in the late '70s and it was many years before it was even established that it was a crater, nevermind the most likely candidate for wiping out the dinosaurs.

These little fellows were abour 6 inches long but kept to themselves

In the years since it's discovery the crater, known as Chicxulub after a nearby town, has given up a wealth of evidence including a layer of impact dust covering the Earth and a gravitational anomaly at the site. You can see a review of this evidence along with several cool pictures here. But what, you ask, does this have to do with today's topic of discussion? Nothing really, I just wanted to write about it. Actually that's not strictly true; if you look at the third image in the link above you'll see dozens of little white dots that rather nicely help demarcate the boundary of the crater. Each of these dots represents a cenote. The two cenotes in my pictures here are on the very right hand edge of the picture just over half way down.

These cenotes were the lifeblood of the Yucatan and wherever one was discovered a habitation soon sprung up; today, Valladolid is the nearest large town near these two particular remarkable structures. We had made our way there from the next town along specifically so that we could go for a swim..... and take a few photos. These caves are basically the local swimming baths and very popular in the summer; on a weekday in spring, though, they were all but deserted. The temperature was in the mid 30s Celsius and we were clad in our finest sun hats and shorts, slathering sun cream onto our pasty forms at every opportunity; some locals were still wearing heavy coats and gloves. So it was with tangible relief that we descended the thirty or so metres into the cool darkness of the first cave down a higgledy piggledy staircase hacked out of the bare rock.

The lines through the water are ropes there to help anyone that gets into trouble

Straining eyes and ears we began to see and hear the bats that make up half of the permanent population of the subterranean grotto we were about to enter. Sympathetically placed lights around the edge of the cave both above and below the water line changed colour every minute or so altering the atmosphere of the cave in a mesmerising sequence. The main feature of the cave was very much the 30m wide almost circular pool of crystal clear freshwater, but it wasn't long before the eye was inevitably drawn upwards to the mass of stalactites that hung almost menacingly, like the Sword of Damocles, from the roof. One area was so thick with the formations that the stalactites had congregated into a tight formation that put me in mind of an organ from one of the worlds great basilicas. This wasn't the only feature that gave this great cavity the feel of a cathedral; the coolness, the respectful quiet, the mass of stone and faint echo of hushed voices all added to the effect. Further, the small opening in the roof through which poured a single perfect shaft of sunlight could almost be a typical rose window so popular in medieval Europe's Gothic masterpieces.

The water was cool, perfectly so. I'm a keen swimmer, I'll be in the Thames again next week, and I have swam in many beautiful locations but none, I think, as tranquil and captivating as this. With the bats and stalactites above and the shark-like fish, the other permanent inhabitants, as black as jet, gently swimming below this was an experience that will stick with me forever. After we'd had our fill we went across the road to the neighbouring cenote; this one didn't have such an impressive array of stalactites but it did have something to make up for it. Hanging straight down from one edge of the hole in the roof there was a mass of  tree roots eagerly seeking out the precious water below; and instead of bats this cave had lots of little birds flitting in and out chirruping as they went. Somehow, perhaps because it's easier to envision the growth of a tree than it is the incremental elongation of a rock formation, this cave felt even older than the first one although they're actually contemporaneous.

I've never seen anything quite like these underwater lagoons and I'm not surprised that they were often considered sacred places in times past. Hundreds of offerings and sacrifices have been found in some cenotes, not just ceramics and jewellery but human remains too, thought to be an attempt at appeasing the gods in times of drought. Before the Europeans built their churches and cathedrals it is easy to see how these caves could have served a similar purpose bringing an air of sanctity to proceedings designed to make the participants feel closer to god. I don't care for gods, but as I swam in the cool waters I certainly could appreciate the elemental nature of this most imposing of pools.

Tulum

It's pronounced TOO-lum. No, I hadn't heard of it either. Nice place, though; you can find it in the Yucatan peninsula on the west coast of Mexico. About half way between Cancun and the border with Belize lies this most unusual, not to mention beautiful, of sites. As you can see from the picture below it is quite popular with the tourists and this is by no means a new phenomenon established by the gringos. This was a coastal retreat of Mayan kings in the 13th century, and who could blame them. I mean look it. I have read many books on pre-Colombian America, I have watched many documentaries about it and I have scoured every last inch of the British Museum's Mexico gallery but I had never come across this jewel of a location and we basically decided we were going to come here on the strength of pictures just like these. Having arrived at Cancun airport, then, we hopped onto a couple of buses and got ourselves down the coast arriving slightly after dark.

Fancy a visit?

Perhaps the reason that I hadn't come across Tulum was that, by Mayan standards and Mesoamerican civilisations in general, it's not a particularly important place. The buildings are quite small and they were mostly built at a time when the once great Mayan empire was in decline. There are no grand pyramids like at Chichen Itza or Teotihuacan; it wasn't a permanent seat of power like Yaxchilan or Palenque, and it's not in a geographically significant position like Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City. Yet it's position is, essentially, why it exists at all. The main building complex straddles two headlands that form a cove about 100 yards wide. The volcanic basalt cliffs embrace the golden sands as if to protect them from the unknown dangers of the deep. An arrow shot from the shore there is a coral reef, the second largest in the world, that, viewed from the cliff tops, tantalisingly breaks the water's surface between the gentle white waves. This reef perhaps gives a hint as to the first function of the site; it may well have acted as a lighthouse and, indeed, there is growing archaeological evidence to suggest just that. The main building of the complex, known as El Castillo, has a novel and sophisticated lighting system that would have allowed navigation of the narrow channel between the reef and the cliffs. So Tulum was once a port that was soon appropriated by the ruling class of the time and so began it's long history as a tourist resort.

It is about a kilometre walk from the road that runs through the town of Tulum, often referred to simply as Pueblo, to the ruins on the coast. A wide gravel path has been hacked out of the jungle to allow access and as we made our way down it the heat and humidity became ever more oppressive. 35C and 95% humidity does not lend itself to so much as a gentle stroll much less lugging a heavy camera bag up and down hills. To protect the trade that went through the port the three landward sides of the complex were surrounded by a very large, very think stone wall through which two breaches have now been made on the north and south sides for the passage of tourists. This wall was 4 metres high, 8 thick, ran for over 700 metres and would have been an incredible undertaking which gives some measure of how important a trade route this was considered at the time.

This photo nicely sums up the Mexican attitude to polite notices

As the port grew in importance this inevitably attracted a larger and more diverse set of people to the area and soon a town of more than 1,000 inhabitants had been born. More and more structures were built, residences, a commercial area; an observatory (the Mayans were accomplished astronomers and mathematicians, temples for worshipping in; and so it was that, in 1518, when Juan de Grijalva saw this mass of structures all painted red, blue and white atop the cliffs from his boat he declared that he had found the Seville of the New World. Anyone that visits Tulum will know that this is a gross exaggeration but it would still have been an imposing sight. Grijalva was leading a small expedition from Cuba under the instructions of  the legendary Hernan Cortes who had set up a base from which to explore the New World; it would be he and his men that would conquer the Aztecs who controlled the interior of Mexico over the next few years.

Tulum was not put under siege or fought over with the invaders, the fall of this city was a gradual one caused by the breakdown of society that occurred as European diseases swept through the continent and decimated populations. Within 70 years of Europeans landing in the area Tulum had been abandoned to the jungle; it's only permanent residents now being the hundreds of black lizards 1-3 feet long that sun themselves on the exposed rocks. It wasn't until the first decades of the 20th century that it was put back on the map as archaelogists slowly revealed it's secrets.

All of the places and people I have mentioned in this blog will have their stories revealed over the next weeks and months. Everyone has heard of the Aztecs but not many people know the remarkable story of the collapse of this awesome empire at the hands of just a few hundred ruthless men. This was our very first port of call in Mexico and whilst, perhaps, the structures themselves were not the grandest or largest that we would see we could not have hoped for a more tranquil and beautiful beginning to our travels.