Maya intervention

It was quiet as we pulled into Chichén Itzá’s parking lot only 10 minutes after it opened. We shelled out $45 for an English-speaking guide, Willy, who started his tour by walking us over to a glass display case where a mini-version of Chichén Itzá had been constructed. He talked a bit about the landmarks of this Maya city that had flourished between 900 and 1100 but had eventually been overtaken by the Yucatán jungle until being excavated by archaeologists in the 1920s. Then, squeezed between historical and statistical facts, Willy added this bit of flair: “The Mayas predict the world will end in 2012.”

That woke me from the zombie state that had overtaken me after a sunrise wake-up call and a three-hour drive from Cancún.

“What do you mean — 2012? Is that fact? Do Mayas still believe that today?” I asked.

“Yes.” Willy seemed taken aback by my sudden interest.

“Why? Why do they believe that?” I prodded.

“Well, the Mayas were right about so many things. They accurately predicted solstices and eclipses.”

“But those are scientific, astronomical. They must be predicating the end of the world on a celestial event, then?” I asked.

Prisca had woken up from her sleepwalk, too: “Do they see signs of this in today’s world? Are we getting close to the apocalypse?” It would explain New Orleans’ bad juju to both of us. But Willy didn’t know that he had suddenly become the medium for the ancient knowledge that we were seeking. Prisca and I were looking for explanations of why a flood so apocalyptic could have happened.

Willy, out of his league, changed the subject.

“You’ve heard of Kukulcan?” he asked as he led us outside and down a long dirt path to the famous symbol of Chichén Itzá, the Pyramid of Kukulcan. Willy indicated the stone serpent that represents Kukulcan, the feathered serpent and supreme Maya god. “The sculpture casts its shadow during the equinoxes, pointing to the Sacred Cenote, or sinkhole,” he finished. “Cenotes were very ritualistic places.”

Willy walked us to the funeral platform decorated with skulls: “The Mayas believed in an afterlife …”; then to the Venus Platform where, he told us, offerings were made to Kukulcan, the messenger; we ended at Caracol, the observatory. The Maya were obsessed with astronomy and calendars, Willy said as we stood in front of the structure.

With that, he shook our hands and bid us adios. But I caught him before he turned:

“Which cenote should we go to? I hear Dzitnup is the place.”

“No,” he said. “Go to Ik Kil. It’s more private.”

Whether Ik Kil was as lesser-known as Willy promised, I didn’t know; I had nothing to compare it to. But it seemed to be well set up: They charged an entrance fee. Then you paid for a towel rental, a locker and a life vest. After running around for all these accessories — minus the life vests — and changing into our bathing suits, Prisca and I were sweaty. A stone staircase led us away from the steamy Yucatán jungle and deep into the sinkhole where, after a couple minutes of walking, we found ourselves alone and near a delicious pool of water. Sunlight, filtering through a large hole in the ground about 80 feet above us, spot-lit the water a deep blue. Tree roots twisted into the cenote. Water dripped off limestone walls. Then the first signs of a devilish underworld came into sight: fish — dozens of them. Catfish? Mini-sharks? For a brief second, I even thought piranhas. But I was too hot to care. I stepped in, using the wooden ladder. Prisca swooshed in after me. The water was chilly, refreshing. We were utterly alone.

“This is the best thing we’ve done since we’ve been here,” I shouted. Prisca laughed. And it was an amazing sound — not the PKL, but a real laugh — the kind you make when you forget everything.

“If the world is really ending in six years, I feel like I really don’t have that much to do anymore,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been wasting my time.” We treaded water under the filtered sunlight.

Then suddenly dozens of people, all wearing life vests, like some anti-death cult, were watching us from the staircases. Private party over. Some hidden world. I imagine the Mayas said the same thing when the Spanish arrived. I resisted the urge to tell them all to take off their vests. The world was ending.

The sky turned dark as we retraced our route, driving east again toward Cancún and then finding the turn-off, a road that heads north to the Gulf Coast where ferries depart for Isla Holbox. It rained, then drizzled, then stopped, then poured. It was a constant game of pulling off my sunglasses, putting them on, turning on headlights, turning them off and adjusting the windshield wipers accordingly. It was a lot to deal with. Each village had topes: speed bumps. They surprised me every time as I slammed on my brakes to avoid bottoming out. During one spell, I found myself behind a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that read, “Es posible.” I felt revived by this secret message. I wanted to show Prisca, but she had fallen asleep, lulled by the rain. In one village, two teenagers on triciclos, three-wheeled bikes with carts, sold us fresh sliced mango squirted with lime juice in plastic cups — a nice roadside snack.

We finally came to the dusty port town of Chiquilá, where a man on a triciclo loaded up his cart with our luggage and headed for the dock. The sky cleared up for the first time that day, serendipitously for the 7 p.m. ferry crossing. The sun lit the flatlands with brilliant reds and oranges — shades that are only possible in Mexico.

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