Honeymoon Part 1: Exploring the Ancient Mayan Ruins of Coba and Tulum

David and I just got back from our Honeymoon in Cancún, Mexico! During our stay by the Riviera Maya, we celebrated 1 year of knowing each other and took an excursion to Coba and Tulum, where we learned about the Mayans and their ancient culture.

Hoop for ancient Mayan game

The morning of our tour, I was surprised to find that the other family we would be touring with was from Bentonville, Arkansas and the dad worked for Walmart—where I interned a few years ago. His boss was also my old manager’s boss. It’s a small world, right? They were a friendly, super-nice Christian family, very similar to the other families I've met in Arkansas.

At Coba the excavation site is huge, so we rode bikes on trails to each spot.

Ancient Mayans played a game with hoops where two seven-player teams would try to get a ball through the hoop. The game not only looked ridiculously challenging, but pretty morbid—to honor the victorious team, the captain of the winning team was sacrificed. If I remember correctly, the game is shown pretty well in the movie The Road to El Dorado (clip).

We even got to hike up one of the temples while we were there!

Afterwards we went swimming in a Cenote, an underground fresh-water sinkhole. The water was beautiful—it was crystal clear. Check out this clip of Morgan jumping!

After lunch we visited Tulum, which was even more impressive than Coba because the excavation team has done a lot more with the site to uncover all the buildings. (Archaeologists started excavating Tulum in the 1920s compared to Coba, which wasn’t started until the 1970s).

Tulum

When the Spanish visited the Mayans in the early 1500s, they thought they found a wicked people, because the Mayans were sacrificing people and worshiping a feathered serpent, which the Spanish took to be a symbol for the devil. (The serpent is a sign for the devil that beguiled Adam and Eve). The Spanish were able to use this rational to massacre the inhabitants. Our tour guide explained to us that both types of serpents could be symbols. The Mayans worship the feathered serpent because it represents an angel and has feathers to visit earth and return to heaven as it pleases. The featherless serpent is a sign of the devil because it lost its feathers; it is a “fallen angel”.

Normally, the serpent is a symbol of the devil; however, in the Bible (Numbers 41:8) Moses holds up a serpent on a staff to the children of Moses and asks them to look upon the serpent and live. In this story, the serpent on the staff is representative of Jesus Christ. Many were given the opportunity to look and live but few did (Ensign).

We saw another ancient Mayan Temple, similar to one we found at Coba, and discussed its similarities to Solomon’s temple. I felt grateful that my seminary teacher back from freshman year of high school spent so much time describing Solomon’s temple in the Old Testament.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/temple-of-solomon?lang=eng

There’s an outer wall, homes for the high priests, an inner wall, and a temple with two rooms (holy place and holy of holies).

The front of the main temple in Tulum has three pictures—two with images and a third that is empty. They could symbolize God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. (Sorry it's so hard to make out in the picture below!)

Front of the temple with three carvings

A symbol that was on nearly every temple was an upside-down man (or try googling "Tulum temple of the descending god"). Our tour guide explained that it depicts a God that would descend from the heavens  (him being drawn up-side down to represent descending down) in all of his glory as he once did in the past, in other words Jesus Christ.

We loved our tour and our tour guide Helaman! If you ever decide to take a trip to Cancun, Mexico area, I’d highly recommend you book a tour with Helaman at HelamanTours.com.

-Mr. D. and Mrs. M.

Yes, we're standing on a rock together :)

...Is it just me or is the Predator a Mayan God?

See the two eyes and mouth on the corner of this building?