Knight School Yucatan 2012: Chichen Itza

Today we walked from our hotel to Chichen Itza through the back entrance. We took a leisurely walk and stopped along the way to point certain things out like some birds. Once we got to the park and we stopped by a smaller centre than we saw yesterday. The cenote was used as a well for water. After that, we saw the small Temple of Venus. We started seeing carved stone right away and our guide started telling us about the different meanings. The paint on the temple lasted which was surprising because of the erosion of the temple. They used more red colors as a base color. Later, we saw a round platform nearby the temple and it was used for rituals for four men to hang upside down on ropes connected to a tall pole and slowly be lowered spinning to the ground and once they reached the bottom. They would walk off. This is kind of like a tether ball. We then saw a building called an Osario which is small pyramid which has staircase on each of the four sides with serpents going up and down.

After an authentic Yucatecan lunch in Piste nearby, we returned to the site. There we walked along the sacbe which is an ancient Maya paved road. After the. Sacbe we saw the sacred cenote which was used for ritual sacrifice until the early twentieth century. Just like the cenote from the morning had a corresponding Temple of Venus and pyramid nearby, this larger cenote also had a larger Temple of Venus a pyramid nearby as well. The pyramid also had four staircases with serpents but was much larger. The structures were duplicated on a larger scale from the morning ones. Everyone was surprised by how grand the Castillo was. Compared tot the one in Coba, it was more put together and less destroyed. The one in Coba was taller, but the one from today looked more massive and had a stronger impression because it was more intricate and had more space around it.

Towards the end of the day we visited Chichen Itza's famous ball court which was famous in the Maya World. We don't know exactly what it was used for but some theories thought it was for humans vs. lords nfrom the underworld.