mexico day 3

our 3rd day in mexico started off with another early morning

so early, in fact, that we saw the sunrise over the ocean

i think it was worth it

my dad arranged another day of visiting the mayan ruins.  this time, we were going to ek balam.  a site about 2 1/2 hours away from where we were staying and a place where very few tourists go because of its distance away from the coast.  we were picked up by 2 returned missionaries that work for alma tours and traveled with another family from georgia to ek balam.

on the way there, we traveled through a small mayan village of about 3,000 people who actually had an lds church house right in the middle of their town!  the rm's told us that the book of mormon stories correspond so well with the stories the mayan's have been told from their ancestors that teaching them the gospel is easy.  we were allowed inside the building for a mini tour and we even got to meet a cute little mayan lady outside.

when we arrived at ek balam, there was a mayan lady who handed us this weird looking creature for us to take pictures with.  we still have no idea what on earth it was.

i can't even tell you how amazing these ruins were.  this site was huge and had some amazing mayan art and architecture here and is an active archeological site.  again, our tour guide connected so many of the ancient ruins, statues, and carvings to the book of mormon and the gospel.  it was such an amazing testimony building experience that brought the book of mormon stories to life.

 the city has a wall that surrounds it, but they believe that it was not for protection, but rather was built for ceremonial purposes.  the arch that is shown is called a mayan arch.  it was used extensively in mayan architecture.  the entrance actually sloped upward toward the arch because you always walk upward toward the temple.  this is symbolic of entering higher, more sacred grounds.  

ek balam had a ball court, just like other mayan ruins like coba and chichen itza.  one thing that our tour guide showed us was a circular rock structure that current lds archeologists believe to be their baptismal font.

this is the temple (el torre) and the largest structure in ek balam.  we were able to climb to the top of the temple (on some of the smallest and steepest stairs you ever did see) and got quite the view.

this shows the temple facade including the mouth of ek balam, called the black panther or black jaguar.  this was absolutely amazing to see.  there was a lot of symbolism carved into the facade including symbols used in our temple ceremonies.  there was also a painting on the wall that depicted several darker-skinned people surrounding a light-skinned instructor.  these are mayan stories of three white men who would travel around together and try to teach the people about God.  

i thought it was interesting how they found this facade- the mayan calendar is 52 years long and a new ruler would take over as each calendar turned.  the new rulers would add new construction or "layers" to the temple, making it bigger and better and covering up the prior temple.  when the archeologists were excavating this part of the temple, an entire wall came down revealing this un-touched facade.  here they found the opening to the tomb of the ruler of ek balam and the doorway is made up of a jaguar's mouth with fangs all around it.

these are pictures of the ruins where the priests and their families would live.  the area where the priests lived was inside the first outer wall and there were usually two walls.  the temple is inside of the innermost wall.  the two walls create three areas- symbolic of celestial, terrestrial, and telestial glories.

the rest of the plaza is surrounded by high structures- two of the biggest ones are still un-excavated and covered by the jungle.

after spending a few hours in the hot hot sun, we headed to another fabulous cenote to cool off.

we also headed back to the same little buffet we went to the day before for round 2 of yummy mexican food.