You measure the Mayan city in footfalls along its prescribed pathways, from pyramid to cenote to ball field. Step after step, the high jungle gives way to crumbling walls, which turn and open with a slam to a clearing. You reach Chichen Itza, the legendary Mayan city, from the coast on a toll road. You drive and drive for more than 200 kilometers, humming along, solo, passing armed guards at the toll plazas and a couple of lonely convenience shops. As you drive further, the land ascends to an upland that is less overtly jungly, drier than you expected.
Smoke filled clearings occasionally reveal huts thatched with palm branches.
After passing through the ticket booth, past hawkers and guides, you walk down a broad avenue, following the bobbing crowds. You can sense immensity ahead, a silence that overwhelms the nervous chatter of turistas. Immensity of form, sacred iconography, myth, spiritual presence, and power all rest there, a stone temple as broad as the human imagination. 9 stories, representing passage through the levels of the underworld. Oriented with exactitude to the equinoxes.