I had read earlier that the Coba ruins meant lot of walking. With two kids, it is not possible to walk through all the sections as they were quite apart. So, we hired Daniel to drive us around the ruin sites and Orlando as our guide.
This is the map of the archaeological site of Coba. There are three sections and these are spread out and that is the reason, it would be a challenge to navigate to all of these sections using foot. Grupo Cuba is where we enter at through the gate with the car just parked outside the gate. So, we can explore Grupo Cuba without the need for a transport.
Orlando first took us to a monolith in Grup Coba and said that Grupo Macanxoc is just eight such monoliths and nothing else and that the Grupo Macanxoc is not covered as part of the 1.5 hours trip and would get closed early. But we wanted to see everything, having come from this far. So, the plan was to first visit Grupo Macanxoc and leave from that section before 4 PM as the gates close around that time , then visit Grupo Nohoch Mul and finally come back to the starting point Grupo Coba after releasing Daniel.
Three Wheeler
So, after a little wait at the cycle stand, Daniel arrived in this three wheeler and the nice breezy ride to
Grupo Macanxoc started. That was a sweet start for the journey and everyone of us enjoyed the cool breeze agains the shaded trees and the nice greenery and the wide plain roads. With our iPad , we took some nice selfie videos and some videos showing the road.
Sacbe
The city of Coba had a maze of roads going in various directions, one of which led to near the other popular Mayan site, Chichen Itza. Orlanda, who was riding on a cycle besides us described that the road we are going on, on the three wheeler is actually built by mayans several hundred years ago , elevated roads with sea shell and limestone that shone in the moonlight. So farmers used to take this road early in the morning 3AM or so as during the day, the road would be too hot to step.
Estela
Monolith - So, we had a nice relaxing three wheeler ride from Grupo Coba to Grubo Macanxoc and Daniel waited outside while Orlando showed us around. This was the first monolith he showed us.
Monolith ( Estela) made of limestone , writings on the stone. Used to write birth/death and other significant astronomical happenings etc. Some monoliths can go up to 11 meters high(in Quirigua, Guatemala).
Orlando explained the carvings on the monolith. Head dress, face, hands holding a staff. Two people in the bottom representing middle class and lower class.
All these sites have been restored by the archaeologists. Before restoration , it would look like mount of rubbles. Coba apparently has about 6500 such unrestored sections.
Historically, there were three eras - the pre-classic, classic , post classic. Spanish burned 5000 religious books. When writing came in, monoliths stopped.
Houses
As per this diagram that Orlando showed us, Complete stone house for the high class , middle class stone walls and thatched roof, lower class completely thatched. High class lived in the middle of city, middle class around them and low class in the periphery. And now we are about to see the remains of a high class house.
High class house. Inside the house there will be arches inside. From outside , it is a cuboid with many doors.The walls of the house are very thick and they are filled with rocks, probably used as insulation.
That is a a closer look at the boundary walls of the house. As can be seen, middle of the wall is filled with small rocks.
Also, there is evidence of plastering in the bottom section of the house as there are portions that are smooth. The entire house could have been plastered and painted.
Middle class is typically much smaller than high class houses. In archaeology terminology, 3 meters or below are called platforms and above 3 mtrs are called buildings.
Another big high class house remains.
When reconstruction is done by archaeologists, they plan new trees inside the building so that the root of the trees hold the building together.
The painting group ( Conjunto Pinturas)
The purpose of this section of the city is to manage the offerings / sacrifices to the God. The reason this section is called the painting group ( Conjunto Pinturos) is that the main building in this section still has visible yellow, blue , red lines on top , discernible to the naked eye from the distance which are probably the remains of a huge mural.
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| There were 13 altars like this one where the rituals were performed. |
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It is not clearly visible in the photo but through the thatched section
,the colored lines
were visible to the human eye.
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This section with columns must have had a thatch on top and
could have been used to keep the vegetables and other such
perishable offerings. |
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The section with the small wooden gate must have had a thatch
as well and that is possibly where the offerings were stored.
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Divya, looking at another Estela(Monolith) with much clearer
engravings. |
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That is apparently a long kitchen and the small columns towards
the right of the picture is where the food was served. |
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That is a tomb. While burying, objects used by the person is buried as well.
Archaeologists have found jade buried. Palenque in Chiapas had a Pakal(old emperor)
mask with obsidian eye and sea shells. |
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Another big house with seven doors. Each of the seven people in
the house have different doors for entry and the height of the house
is to protect from animals, from water etc. |
Pok ta pok ground
From the house section, the next stop was the pok ta pok ground. Pok ta pok is a game played with a ball and seven players trying to put the ball into a hoop and the first team that puts the ball into the hoop wins. The game lasts about 2-3 hours. The game has rituals associated with it. And it is believed that the winner gets human sacrificed in Chichen Itza but there is no evidence of human sacrifice in Coba. The reason the winner is sacrificed is that the God must get the best and the reason the human is not worried about this is that he believes in rebirth and it is a pride/honor for his family/town. The real hoops have been preserved separately and the hoops currently present on the pok ta pok ground are replicas. The hoops must have got damaged with the crumble of time and unlike pieces of rocks that just need to be re-stashed , the hoops are rings which have broken and not easy to put those back in one piece.Pok when the ball falls and tak when they hit them.
No head, hand or feet in this game as those parts are considered impure. Chichen Itza’s ball court is ten times wide and ten times long. Vertical wall reached 12 meters in Chichen Itza.
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| The remains of the original hoop is preserved here. |
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| That is a stone depicting a jaguar holding his own head |
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Note that the same structure serves as both the play ground
and the gallery. Nobility would watch the game and probably use the
steps visible in this photograph to get to the top section of the gallery |
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That is a tablet used to represent the score of the game.
Orlando explained some of the number literals and how
those corresponded to scores at a birds eye level |
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That is the pok ta pok ground , the hoop is visible on the right.
There is a similar hoop on the left. The players will play in the center.
Only the captain is allowed to step on the slanted portion and he is
allowed to go only to a certain height, from which he can putt the
ball into the hoop.
Coba Observatory
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This is the observatory that probably served as
an observatory to see the roads to see who is coming
or as a check point / astronomical observation. |
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| Another monolith with carvings nicely visible. |
Nohoch Mul
Next , we reached the temple section which has the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula, taller than Chichen Itza. Also, we were allowed to climb on top of this pyramid. I can get scared of heights , especially while coming down. I climbed half way up and did not feel any fear yet but I still did not want to go all the way up and get stranded on top , especially thinking about the two kids and that we had already exceeded the guide time.
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Ixmoja - the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula,
located amongst the Nohoch Mul group of structures. |
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I climbed halfway up the temple while Divya was
feeding Amey downstairs. |
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Having seen me climb, Niya wanted to climb up as well and
she did pretty well for her age. |
Grupo Coba
Finally, we reached back to our starting point to explore Grupo Coba. Daniel was panting real hard by now carrying our weight on his three wheeler.
The second pok ta pok ground in Coba is here.
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Orlando explaining the pok ta pok game to Divya and Niya using
his photographs as illustrations.
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| This is the temple of the rain god at the Grupo Coba. |
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Aerial view of the Grupo Coba section with administrative
buildings, residential area and a big 100m X 200m plaza and
the ball court. |
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Section of the huge plaza in the grupo
coba set of structures. |
It was truly a journey into a different world in time and space. Orlando did a pretty good job with the information that he offered. The longing I had for learning from Chichen Itza died down a bit as I thought I got quite a lot of insight with the trip today. Orlando ended his guide tour with a monolith
without any inscriptions which apparently might have been used as a bill board.
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| This is the un-engraved monolith, possibly used for bill boards. |
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| That is Orlando with our son Amey. |
