Los piramides

Many cultures built pyramids, but most north americans do not know or understand the native cultures of Mexico and their legacy of Pyramids. The largest pyramid on Earth (by volume) is Cholula, in Puebla (we've been there) and the 3rd largest pyramid on earth is the Pyramid of the sun (in Mexico City - most of our visitors have been there with us). These pyramids were likely built long after the mayan pyramids, and could have been influenced by Mayan design.

The egyptians built pyramids before the Mayans, but the Mayans likely didn't know about those pyramids and built their own pyramids - without slaves, pack animals, or wheels - about 1,000 B.C. Many of them are still standing today.
On this vacation, we visited 5 major mayan pyramid sites.

1. Palenque, in the state of Chiapas. This was fun to visit, bc most of the city surrounding the pyramid has been excavated and can be visited. It was abandoned and recovered by jungle by the time the Spanish showed up. Some local native americans brought the white explorers over to see it, but when no gold or silver was found here, they lost interest. Since then, it has been expertly excavated by archaeologists.


2. Calakmul, in the state of Campeche

This set of pyramids is deep, deep in the jungle. It is hidden within 1.8 million acres of biosphere reserve, home to endangered plants and animals, including jaguars, pumas, and spider monkeys. Thankfully, we only saw monkeys. We had to drive for over an hour from the park entrance to the pyramid entrance. But then, we could climb the pyramid to see over the jungle. Very very cool. This site is still being actively excavated, so they don't know much about it.

3. Tulum, on the east coast of the yucatan peninsula. This was actually a walled city for the maya, to protect their ocean port from invaders.

This pyramid is within driving distance of Cancun and Cozumel, so it was overrun with buses of tourists from cruise ship excursions, which was very annoying. We tried talking spanish so we wouldn't get mixed in with the crazy gringos. It didn't really work. We look too gringo.



4. Ek Balaam, in yucatan. This is a small site, but worth visiting because of the many preserved carvings.




5. Chichen Itza, yucatan. This is also a popular cruise ship excursion location, as it is driving distance from both cancun and cozumel. Even so, it was worth visiting, bc along with the center pyramid, there is an entire walled city of artifacts and foundations for temples. Unfortunately, it was too hot to spend the day wandering around. Instead, we spent an hour trying not to melt or be harrangued by mexicans selling cheap chinese-produced "souvenirs". As it's the most famous Mexican pyramid (and has 4 sets of stairs to the top - really unusual) I'm still glad we went.


We highly recommend the pyramid tour for any ancient history buffs. We may even come back some day, if I can figure out how to not melt during the tour!