On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
This series was created by Alain Chamot (1971-2020).
On the Road: Week of Feb 22 (5 am)
Albatrossity – Yucatan #1
Gin & Tonic – Stockholm #2
🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Forget about it Jake, it’s Chinatown
way2blue – Agrigento / Villa Romana Del Casale, Sicily
ChasM – In The USSR #2
🌺 And now, back to Albatrossity!
Albatrossity
In 2011 Elizabeth was working on a book that combined her interests in landscapes, archaeo-astronomy, and time. The book was to be published in 2012, just before the end of the world event that was allegedly predicted by the Mayan calendar. So naturally she wanted to go to see Mayan cities and observatories, to put the final touches on the book. We found a perfect tour, visiting various Mayan sites in Yucatan, and convinced my brother and sister-in-law to join us for the spring equinox in the land of the Mayans.
Some weeks before the trip, the US State Department issued a travel alert for US citizens traveling to Mexico, based primarily on an uptick in drug-trafficking violence near the US-Mexico border. As you probably know, that is nowhere near Yucatan, but nonetheless most of our tour group dropped out of the trip. We looked at a map and decided that was silly, so we kept to our plans.
When we got to Cancun, where the trip was to begin, we found out that only four of us, along with two other members (a retired 82-yr old woman from Boulder, and a 40ish advertising executive from Atlanta) were still on the tour. Our 14-person group was reduced to 6, plus the tour guide (an American archaeologist based at Tikal, in Guatemala). It was wonderful to be able to explore these sites with a small group, and to spread out in the buses which were designed for more people. So here are some images from that time, when travel was possible and the sun was shining.
Our flight into Cancun landed in the evening, and we went straight to the hotel, which was on the beach. We didn’t see much of it that evening, but the next morning we watched a beautiful sunrise while strolling on the beach and watching the frigatebirds wheel overhead.
The first Mayan site we visited was Ek Balam (which means “black jaguar” in Yutatec Mayan), near the old colonial city of Valladolid, a couple of hours west of Cancun. This site was one of the last Mayan cities to be built and inhabited; it is thought that it was still inhabited at the time of Columbus’s voyages. Parts of it were still being excavated when we visited, but this ball court had been dug out and restored. The highlight of a visit to the site is the huge pyramid in the city center, which you can still climb for a sweeping view of the surrounding country.
Not surprisingly, there were birds in these archaeological parks! So I took their pictures too. I’d make a lousy architectural photographer, since I am easily distracted by birds. This one was new to me. A Yellow-faced Grassquit (Tiaris olivaceus), which sounds vaguely like a Victorian insult!
This one looks familiar to North American birders, but it actually is not a Northern Mockingbird. It is a Tropical Mockingbird (Mimus gilvus). It is very similar in appearance and voice to the familiar Northern Mockingbird, but it lacks the big white flashy wing patches that our local mockingbirds display in flight.
This one also looks familiar, and actually can be found in the southern US. It’s a Golden-fronted Woodpecker (Melanerpes aurifrons), and is very similar to another familiar North American species, the Red-bellied Woodpecker.
From Ek Balam we headed to another fantastic Mayan site, Uxmal. This is a UNESCO World Heritage sites, and one of the most significant of the Mayan archaeological sites. Conveniently we stayed at a lodge that is within the Uxmal Archaeological Park, and could stroll right up to the ruins. This structure is the Pyramid of the Magician (aka Pyramid of the Sorcerer), and at a height of 115 ft, it was built on top of other temples and pyramids.
This is the only ballcourt at Uxmal; ballcourts are not common in this region. It was constructed in 906 AD, near the start of the decline of this city from the Mayan Classical period. The buildings visible behind it are known as the Nunnery Quadrangle, supposedly because the Spaniards thought it resembled a convent. As far as was known, there were no Mayan nuns…
South of Uxmal there are several other interesting sites. This is Kabah (aka Kabaah or Kaba), which was connected to Uxmal (11 miles to the north of here) by a sacbe, one of the white raised white roads, bookended by stone arches, that connected centers of Mayan civilization. There were birds to photograph there, I suspect, but I settled for this interesting bird glyph instead. The main attraction at Kabah is the Palace of the Masks, where the facade of a temple is decorated with hundreds of repetitive stone representations of the rain god Chaac.
Another UNESCO site south of Uxmal is Labna, a small city of the Classic Mayan period (600-900 AD). This is the famous Labna Arch, which was at the end of a sacbe connecting a structure called The Palace to a plaza. This is the one of the most architecturally complex and decorated Mayan arches known.
On one of our nights in Uxmal we were treated to a lightshow near the Palace of the Magician. Multicolored lights play on the surfaces of these ruins, and the crowd is urged to chant “Chaac! Chaac!” to summon the rain god. Apparently Queen Elizabeth was present for one of these when the crowd chants immediately preceded a tropical downpour. We had no such luck.
Lightshows are hard to capture on film (or pixels), but it was an interesting experience.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Pretty sure the Sony A73S could handle it, I’ve seen video of the Milky Way core shot with it.
We went to the Yucatan in the mid 90’s very interesting place.
p.a.
Beautiful. You didn’t go to Chichen Itza? If not, I’ll try to dig up the shots I have from around ’94-ish and scan them for a viewing. Lots of people in my shots.
One thing I remember about the Yucatan itself is how flat the landscape. And green. But from the top of a C.I. pyramid the land seemed like a tabletop.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: We went to Chicken Pizza too, I think the same year.
Uh oh.
Albatrossity
@p.a.: We did. On the equinox. Lots of people in those shots too! Those are scheduled for next Monday, in chapter 2 of this trip account.
p.a.
@Albatrossity: 👍
Mary G
Ocean, birds, buildings all fascinating. I will be out chanting to Chaac myself as we have had so little rain.
J R in WV
Love archaeological trips – the AIA does a great trip to view paintings in caves of NW Spain and SE France, ours was an overflow trip with a relatively small crowd, highly recommended, but not so many birds.
This is a great piece, nice balance of ruins and birds, as usual the great photos. Thanks so much for playing with Balloon Juice! Love your posts, every one. Even the sad one on the deep freeze, very thoughtful.
Wag
My first trip to the Yucatán was a junior high spring break trip with my family in 1976. We went to Chichen Itza and Uxmal. An amazing trip. I remember being able to climb all the pyramids. Su CI there was a a small gate to the side of one of the staircases up the El Castillo pyramid. It led you to a tunneled passage revealing a staircase from an earlier pyramid. An the top of the stairs was an excavated shrine within the Castillo that had a jade Jaguar as the focus of the altar. A very memorable trip.
cope
Ruins, glyphs, exotic (kind of) birds, light shows, astronomy, a low pupil-to-teacher ratio…what a wonderful trip and what wonderful pictures to remember it by. Thank you.
The Golux
These are great, Albatrossity! As always.
Watergirl, often in these On The Road posts, the submitters will say something like “If you look closely in the upper left…” and I frequently can’t see the thing they are describing. I always hope in vain that clicking the image will embiggen. Would it be possible to add this feature, ideally by opening in a new tab and automatically switching to the new tab?
There are many photos in this series that I would like to look at more closely (especially Albatrossity’s), even apart from hunting for a feature mentioned by the author.
TIA!
currants
@Albatrossity these are all wonderful. But that ocean shot at the opening is spectacular–I love it so much!
WaterGirl
@The Golux:
Yeah, something about the On the Road form makes it so the images don’t embiggen. That is already on the list of changes we will ask for in another round of work with the developers. No idea when that will be, but it’s on the list.
UncleEbeneezer
Great pix. We had a trip fully booked in 2019 to stay in Merida and visit Uxmal and several other sights for the week of Halloween, but had to cancel at the last minute due to pet health issues. We are hoping to get down there next year when Covid is hopefully no longer an issue.
Benw
Super cool! On our trip to the Yucatan peninsula, we visited Chichen Itza and Xel Ha. Google tells me that Xel Ha is now a super fancy water park, but back when we were driving around, it was just the ruin (with a gorgeous view of the ocean) and a dirt parking lot and some vendors.
SeniorMoment
I am old enough that I visited these when you could still climb on the major monuments. The Palace of the Magician in Uxmal was the scariest — extremely steep and I am not a fan of heights. Had several “second thoughts” going up but eventually made it.
I got ten steps up the famous Pyramid of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza but it was so hot that I couldn’t conceive doing any more so turned around. And every time I think about it since then I mentally kick myself for that. If I’d only known that was my last opportunity.
My favorite site, which is not covered in this post, is the jungle setting of Palenque. I climbed down what had been a secret tunnel, only discovered in 1952, to Pakal’s tomb. There was a replica of the original tomb cover. (Chariot of the Gods spaceship for you old enough to remember Von Daniken.)
JanieM
Fascinating photos and stories. It’s fun to see be taken on a visit to a part of the world that I don’t see covered as much as some others, and that I wouldn’t naturally gravitate to.
The Golux
@WaterGirl: Another option that springs to mind: if the submitter has higher-resolution versions of the pictures on a photo sharing site, add a link to each picture to open the appropriate page.
way2blue
Albatrossity, your first photo reminds me of a painting by my great aunt, Alma, who immigrated to Seattle from Denmark as a young adult. Used to hang over my parent’s living room sofa…
Albatrossity
@Benw: Xel Ha is the name of the ruin AND the water park. We visited there (the archaeological site, not the touristy water park) as well. It was wonderful!
Ken
First comment after starting Firefox and opening BJ. (Watergirl is testing FF 86.0)
Just Some Fuckhead
“first comment after opening Firefox and opening BJ”
No flashing cursor in comment box until I click inside the comment box. I started to comment here and decided maybe this comment should be in the testing thread so I switched tabs and it would not let me click in the comment box until I reloaded the page. Same thing then happened with this page.
dmsilev
Firefox 86.0 on Mac. On first loading page, only the Text option was available. Clicking the “click here to refresh” gave the Visual tab. No cursor, could not click in field (posting this in Text mode).
dmsilev
Second comment. Visual mode is available, but no flashing cursor, either before or after clicking in the text box.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: If you have to use “click to refresh” THEN I need you to close BJ and close Firefox and then reopen Firefox and open this BJ thread and then IF you see the visual tab, then start the steps at #8. :-)
Refreshing changes EVERYTHING, so that’s why we need to take that out of the equation for this first baseline test (steps at #8).
mvr
No flashing cursor after I hit comment in the white bar at the top.
No flashing cursor when I click in the box
No ability to type until I change over to the test box.
mvr
Same result when I scroll down to the comment box after doing that.
mvr
But when I hit comment just now to get to the bar the flashing cursor showed up and I can type in the visual box.
mvr
Also could not edit my first comment (to make “test” into ‘text’), but I could just start typing in the box this time.
mvr
@mvr: This is all after shutting down and restarting and going to this thread to test things, as requested in the other thread. (typing this in the visual box with no trouble now?)
jeffreyw
First try, clicked comment in the header, got to comment box it was sans tabs. I did get a cursor. I did not click the click here to refresh. The comment box was in text mode.
Before I edited this comment after posting it I had both tabs showing.
Win 10
Usually I get text box only in a new session, then it behaves correctly for the rest of the time. I thought yesterday I did not see the cursor in the comment box but I am not sure.
The biggest bug for me has been a return to the top after hitting refresh. Seems random, I have yet to remember where I was so getting back is a scrolling exercise.
The other bug is the back arrow misbehaving after I make a comment but I have a workaround that works well enough and is fast enough.
mvr
@mvr: Also adblocker seems to be off.
trollhattan
Comment 1, using Text tab.
trollhattan
Comment 2, also text tab only.
trollhattan
Comment after rebooting FF (AdBlock off).
No cursor, but cursor appears after clicking inside field.
Rob
First comment after opening Firefox and opening & logging in to BJ
Rob
Second comment
Rob
Third comment, closing FF and opening yet again, and commenting in Watergirl’s thread. I do not see either Visual or Text tabs on this box though the blue tabs above this box tell me I am in Text.
There go two miscreants
First comment: After hitting “Comment” in the white bar, the Visual tab does not show a flashing cursor, nor the I-beam cursor. Clicking in the Visual tab does not help. This comment posted using the Text tab.
Upgraded to FF86.0 earlier today.
There go two miscreants
Second comment: exactly the same behavior.
Edited this comment. The “mce” embeds that formerly would appear did not appear this time.
Since I see other folks mentioning adblockers: I do not use an adblocker within the browser (I use a hosts file).
There go two miscreants
After restarting FF: No flashing cursor, no I-beam. Clicking did not help. Using the Text tab.
There go two miscreants
Posted using the Visual tab, after quiting FF, restarting FF, and going directly to this OTR post (pasted the URL in the address bar).
There go two miscreants
But that trick didn’t work a second time. Too bad.
Gus
Seems to be working fine from the ‘comment’ in the top bar?
Gus
@Gus:
After reboot, visual tab no longer functions?
LongHairedWeirdo
First comment after opening Firefox and Balloon-Juice.
WaterGirl
Wednesday testing ended here.