Las ruinas y la playa de Tulum
Today we visited the ruins at Tulum, the only coastal city in the ancient Mayan civilization. Due to their proximity to the ocean, Tulum was an important port city for trade. They obtained obsidian and jade from Central America and corn and cotton from Guatemala in exchange for fish, feathers, and animal skins. The Aztecs in Central México were willing to pay a high price for feathers to use to make headdresses for their emperors. .The city of Tulum was surrounded by a stone wall that served as protection and separated the nobility/government officials from the rest of the people who lived outside of the wall. It also enclosed el Templo del Dios del viento, Templo del Dios descendente, and Templo del mar.
Wall surrounding Tulum 
Ruins at Tulum
After looking at the ruins, we drove to a market to buy food and then to the beach at Tulum to eat and swim. There were a lot of vendors at the beach who were walking around selling things and lots of people paying money to go out on boats. Like Chichén Itzá, Tulum is very popular with the tourists. Both the beach and the ruins were crowded with people. In the book A Salty Piece of Land, the main character, Tully, visits Tulum and notes, “…a parking lot was filled with tour buses that made the daily trek down from the hotels in Cancún with loads of gringos. Unlike the Spanish before them, these gringos were not armed with metal helmets and muskets but with Instamatics and video cameras…the throng of visitors combed over the ruins like ants… going about their vacation activities of taking pictures, posing for videos, eating ice cream, buying T-shirts, and yelling at their misbehaving children in four or five different languages” (Buffett 146-7). This entry in the novel sums up what the tourist life is like at these popular ruin sites. I love that all these people (us included) are able to come to places like Tulum and walk around the sites, but I can’t help but wonder if it takes away some of the true magic and awe of being in what was once a thriving Mayan city.
Jan. 15, 2019
Explorando en Yucatán 