Port 39 Costa Maya, Mexico

by Ed · March 27, 2022

The sun was high when we arrived at Costa Maya the morning of Mar 20th, 2022, a little before 9 AM.

The dock is a long “T”. We dock all of the way at the end! Long walk to shore!

Near the end of the pier at the shoreline is this beautiful mural!

Welcome to Costa Maya!

We’re heading to the Pre-Booked excursions. Today we both have different excursions. Joy is going to swim with the dolphins! Ed is going to look at more rocks – Kohunlich Mayan ruins!

First we check the weather. Hmmm, looks like it will be sunny and breezy today!

Joy’s dolphin swim is here on the island. My tour leaves on a bus, so I need to get in line!

Let’s start with Joy’s adventure!

The dolphins are ready for this!

Everybody lines up in the pool, then the fun begins! Everyone gets to shake flippers and get a kiss. Joy’s group gets to spend quality time with the dolphins!

Here’s a moment from the special time! Joy was able to ride with Frida pulling her along, Joy holding Frida’s flippers! She also got to take a boogie board ride with two dolphins pushing her through the water! It was a short excursion, but she had a great time!

It was fun to see the sign for the turn to Merida – Joy and I spent a week there a few years ago! That’s where we saw the “ball game” the Mayans played that I described in yesterday’s Quirigua visit description.

On the way to Kohunlich we passed through the city of Bacalar. We learned the designation of “Pueblo Magico” is a highly sought honor of the cities of Mexico. It means “My Village” and shows the city goes the extra mile to improve their “magical” qualities in beauty, history, and legend. There are just over 130 cities with this designation now.

After a couple of hours we arrive at the entrance to the Kohunlich Mayan ruins. It is deep in the Mexican jungle. See how tall the trees are here?

Welcome to Kohunlich! The instructions on the right tell us to not eat food inside or run or climb on the ruins. We’ll honor the first – no food, but not the second. (And by “we” Joy will be quick to point out that she is not with me. “We” means my tour group.)

Here is a map of the site. We start at the bottom, but we don’t follow the arrows. We go in this order: 4, 3, 6, 9, 8, 7, 2, 1 (we obviously need more time to see the rest, huh?)

The first building we encounter is the Temple of the King. It is easy to see that each king added a layer to this to make their temple larger than the previous king’s. This is the backside.

As we come to the front of the Temple of the King we see the structure on the top. According to Roberto, our tour guide, it is believed the setting sun would shine through the openings at the top of this temple, go across the plaza of the stelae in front of this temple, and shine directly…

… into the doorway of the Palace of the Stelae. This would cause the doorway to shine brightly so when the king appeared in the doorway he would glow and shine, cementing his position as a god to the people! (In case you’re wondering, the trees weren’t here then.)

This is the Palace of the Stelae. You see a couple of stelae (vertical stones) erect in front of the building. Stelae, as you saw in Quirigua, typically recognize the king and record information on the times. These stelae are so worn there is nothing that can be read – we don’t know what these kings wanted to say.

This is the ball field. The trees in the middle were first used to hold up the tennis net, then as they grew they could support a volleyball net. OK, just kidding! The trees weren’t there at all! Only a hoop on a pole was needed.

To recap, the ball game was played with a gum ball about half again as large as a softball. It was moved by knees, hips, elbows and shoulders, with the intent of putting through a vertical hoop about 8 feet off the ground. Kind of an early version of quiddich!

From the ball field we head farther back to the Temple of the Masks. A stairway has been constructed to get to the path, but many of us chose to walk up the incline on either side of the make-shift steps. These take us to a path that heads off to the left then comes back to the right, just under the temple’s steps.

The temple’s front is almost fully covered with the grass hut for protection. Only the stairs on the front are exposed. The masks this temple is famous for are protected under the roof.

From the side as we approach the temple you can see the sides and back are not under cover.

Peeking under the left roof we have this view of the masks.

On the right side these masks are visible. There are six total masks in honor of the six kings that ruled during the time of this site.

These steps are steep! But it is worth it to get a closer look at each of the masks.

On our way back to the entrance we pass the Acropolis on our right.

Coming around to the front of the Acropolis we get this spectacular view!

These steps are almost normal for us! They are deep, but not tall! It is easier to run up these than to walk up, believe it or not! Jason and I run up side by side. (Jason is the guy in blue at the bottom of the steps.)

From here you can see the shape of the steps. The residential Palace is the structure at the lower left – we’ll see that a little closer in a moment.

There are some trees doing everything they can to survive on these structures!

And there is a very curious triangular doorway, but we don’t have time to explore.

We have this lovely view of the Plaza of the Stelae and Temple of the King from the Acropolis! That’s part of our group in the distance, waiting for us to come down.

At the bottom of the steps of the Acropolis is the residential Palace. I can believe royalty lived here!

Back at Costa Maya we are routed through the shopping village to get back to the ship. These dancers are waiting for a group to come through!

There is a temple-like set of stairs in the middle of the shopping plaza! I discovered this leads to an elevator that takes one down to the beach behind this wall!