Indiana Jones and the Dead of Santa Elena

(Cue Indiana Jones Theme song)

Indiana Jones and the Dead of Santa Elena

We woke up Saturday morning bright and early to grab a bus to the Centro. Our destination: Ticul, a small pueblo to the south of Merida, where we could base ourselves for the day to see the Mayan ruins on the Puuc Route that we missed last year. We were quickly on our way and arrived after an hour and half later in Ticul.

The first thing I noticed was that there were shoe stores EVERYWHERE. Ticul is the hub of shoemaking in the peninsula. I found myself wondering how all the stores managed to survive if they were all selling the exact same thing. The second notable thing about Ticul is that there is a great deal of orange. Everything there is a dark orange color, from the church to the plaza to the buildings surrounding it. The streets are divided by cement boulevards, punctuated by sculptures of Mayan gods at either end. Some of these statues had flowers laid upon them, which gave me cause to wonder if there are still followers of the pagan Mayan religion in this area.

After poking around Ticul for a few hours, we found a collectivo to Santa Elena (once a Mayan city known as Nohcacab), which brought even closer to the ruins that we wanted to see. I had read about a small museum in Santa Elena that greatly piqued my interest…

Upon arrival, I did not like Santa Elena. It was a creepy little run-down pueblo that didn’t have much of a main plaza… just an impending orange church on top of a steep hill. In the plaza in front of the church was an almost-deserted carnival that had less than ten attendants, one of which included a three-legged Chihuahua. The whole scene was a bit strange, and I felt jumpy because a nearby car kept backfiring, sounding more like a gun than anything.

Because the church and the museum are the main attraction, we climbed up the slanted steps toward the church. It was locked, but the museum on the side was open for visitors, so Emily and I paid up and walked in. On the left side was a room dedicated to the harvest of henequen, one of Yucatan’s most lucrative products. You have all seen it before… it is fibrous and very course and used to make rope. The fiber comes from the long, tough, spiky leaves of the bush-like plant. In the middle of the exhibit however, was an object that (as far as I can tell) does not relate to henequen in any way…

In the center of the room in a prominent case of glass, a large stone replica of… male genitalia… seems to float in mid-air. There is no plaque or explanation to explain the presence of this strange finding, and I was too abashed to ask the woman who ran the museum, so I suppose that it will forever remain a mystery to me.

The rooms off to the right held an even more interesting and grisly find. Beneath the floor tiles of Santa Elena in 1980 were found several human skeletons, some of which had been naturally preserved and mummified. Apparently, it was traditional during the time of the Spanish arrival in Mexico to bury members of the congregation under the floor of the church, or even under the floors of their own houses. These remains, long forgotten because they were unmarked, were discovered almost 30 years ago when some construction workers were tearing up the floor. Four of these remains were in boxes; all of them are the remains of children between the ages of 1 and 7. Given the fact that they died in the early 1800s and that the Spaniards probably did not mummify them purposefully, their condition is both astounding and gruesome. Two of them were in excellent condition… everything from their decorative burial garb to the fingernails on their hands were intact. It was kind of sad to see… and rather frightening.

After we went to the museum, we say and waited on the steps of this impressively large church. The church itself is so high above the village. When the conquistadors came, they often built churches on top of great Mayan pyramids, making the churches visible for miles. I haven’t been able to find out if this is the case with the church in Santa Elena, but I STRONGLY suspect so.

Sooner or later, a nun came along with the keys. The church was too big and too empty. The mildewed ceiling and the graphic depictions of the suffering of Jesus gave the entire interior a very frightening mood. All of the statues of Christ had real human hair and were covered in blood.

Having seen my fill of the interior, I approached the sister to ask if we could climb up into the balcony. I had read in my trusty lonely planet that if you ask, they will unlock the staircase to get onto the roof of the church… but we had no idea what we were getting into. She looked at us severely and told us that she would unlock the door, but that we would be climbing at our own risk.

“The stairs are rotting out,” she said, “they haven’t been replaced since the church was built.”

Well, since when has Dr. Indiana Jones been stopped by a few moldy stairs?

“Okay,” I replied, “Well, if I am going to die, I think I would like to die in a church.”

Emily and I asked her to open the door and we began up the rickety staircase. “Rickety” might be a tad bit of an understatement. The spiral staircase consisted of a series of giant wooden steps that came together in the middle to meet with… what had once been a tall wooden support. The support however, was missing pieces and rotting in various places. About one story up, my legs began to shake. The stairs had gaps between them, so it was easy to see how for up you had come, and how far you still had to climb. The goal was 115 feet… almost twice the height I jumped last year in that cenote. We climbed and climbed… until we reached the balcony, which was almost two thirds of the way up. The walls of the church on the upper level crumbled at the touch. Along both sides were long hallways that stretched the length of the creepy church.

Upon returning from the balcony, Emily told me that she was not willing to go further. The steps above us grew thinner in width and the space between them was much larger than those that we had just climbed. I wan’t about to quit, though. I began to climb, putting my weight on three steps at a time in order to spread out my weight and to test the steps ahead of me. My legs were tensing up and I could feel adrenaline coursing through my entire body. Slowly but surely, I reached the top of the tower. The last few steps were impossible to climb without falling all the way down. The third step from the top had rotted out completely, and the two above it looked as though they were about to do the same. They top few hung out of the wall in midair like rotten teeth… I was just tall enough to peek out the window of the tower onto the roof. High! I paused there long enough to take a picture and revel in the fact that I had actually climbed this 250-year old wooden staircase.

The sister awaited us at the bottom of the staircase anxiously. I think she half-expected that I would have come crashing down with the wooden stairs all around me. I just smiled and thanked her, saying: “I survived.”

I don’t think my legs will ever be the same after that. They were tense and shaky all the way to the hotel, which might have been a good mile from the church. We stayed in a quiet little cabana that night, preparing to get up early the next morning to hit the ruins.

The next morning we grabbed a bus headed south that dropped us of at Kabah, which is a smallish ruin along the Puuc Route. The Puuc region is just south of Merida and is famous for its unique style of architecture. All ruins in this region are of similar architecture, which many of you read about in all of my emails from last year. In case you are the forgetful sort, or in case you are a new follower of my doings, here is a bit of history for you:

The Puuc region is a region rich with Mayan cities that generally date from the Classic Period, around the 6th century. The architecture in this region is unique because of it’s layout as well as its facades. Most Mayans in the Puuc regions adamantly praised Chaah, the rain god, who is typically portrayed with staring eyes and a long, curling nose. This is because there are no above-ground rivers in this region, and during the off season, there is hardly any rainfall. The Mayans therefore placed heavy significance on Chaac, whose image litters the ruins of the Puuc region. This image of Chaac, more commonly known as the Mask of Chaac, is made up of exactly 32 pieces of stone, fit together to create Chaac’s face. Also in this region are facades that are basically just a bunch of carved Xs. While this may not sound like anything special, it is pretty amazing to see wall covered with them, and it is VERY unique to this region… you won’t see it anywhere else.

The ruins we arrived at today were called Kabah, which I am told is Mayan for “Mighty Hand.” It was probably constructed sometime around 850 or 900 AD and reached its peak about a century thereafter. When the Toltecs invaded and took over the region, I know that they occupied Kabah for a while before abandoning it completely.

Kabah’s main attraction is the Temple of Masks, which has over 250 masks of Chaac covering the front façade. The sight of it is impressive beyond belief! I felt like I was right back at home again, clambering all over the ruins of Puuc architecture. This site is amazing because its carved limestone. The stone facades have lasted surprisingly long. Many Mayan cities used plaster for the facades, but the majority of Kabah’s architectural gems are still perfectly visible because they have been carved in stone. Ornate flowers and images of priests and gods and zig-zag designs… it was beautiful.

The whole site was very small… I would say over half of the centro is unexcavated and it would be more than safe to presume that there are unexcavated ruins in the surrounding selva. We did find a cool little spot… it was a small plaza to the side with images of flowers (or the could have been suns) on either side of the door. Emily and I decided that that must be the princess’s house and that we wouldn’t mind living there ourselves.

The return trip to Merida was uneventful… You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that the entire weekend (food, housing, ruins, travel) cost me under $35.

The adventures will continue this coming weekend when I go to see the much-anticipated Caves of Calcetok.

In short: Stay tuned for next week’s episode of… INDIANA JONES and the OLMEC UNDERWORLD.