Coba and Chetumal

 May 10th, I set off to Coba. It is a large mayan city a short bus ride from Tulum. I sat beside an old man  from Tel Aviv (pictured here) and we ended up joining up to see the ruins.

Coba was enormous and overgrown. They had a bicycle service to get to the different areas. Like the Romans the Maya had been able to manage such large distances by a long term and well engineered road system stretching throughout the Yucatan before the collapse

 A real life Mayan stella covered in hieroglyphs. This is like a thousand year old book

 It may be hard to see just how big this pyramid is in the picture. It is the tallest building in the northern Yucatan. There is no equivalent to this in any of the modern Mexican cities surrounding it, and it was built with basically the same technology of the Egyptian pyramids, with maybe better mathematics

 a better view of its size

 all you can see from the top is the green tree line and one other temple that rises above it. How amazing would it be if modern cities could exist within a forest? I think we have a lot to learn from the Mayan, at least those of us who live in the north west temperate rain forest regions

This temple, used to observe Venus, reminded my a beehive or a humbler creation of Gaudi. Its a same pyramid shaped architectural designs haven't made a comeback yet

 We are jumping ahead to Chetumal now, a large city on the boarder of Mexico and Belize. I didn't spend much time there as I am starting to get excited about arriving at the field school. It did have a great museum which was a welcome change to the enigmatic sites which I neglected professional guides in. In this picture are models of all the most spectacular temples and pyramids of the Maya world

This is right near the exit to the museum. It is god who guards Xibalba, the underworld. The underworld is one of the most opposite Mayan mythological concepts to Judea-Christian mythology because your place corresponds not with your deeds in life but in the mode in which you die