A Vacation in Ruins

With our scuba adventures finished, the next day of our vacation took us inland. We wanted to visit one of the Mayan city ruins. There are several to choose from, and when we were first planning out the trip, we were considering the most famous, Chichen Itza. After a little research, however, we found out that a few years ago, the site was closed off to visitors. You can still go and see the ruins at a distance, but you're no longer permitted to climb them and see them up close.

We decided to look for an alternative instead, and settled on Ek Balam. Though rediscovered in the late 1800s, excavation of the buildings on the site only began in earnest in the late 1980s. The site is thus among the "newest" of the Mayan ruins, and still allows visitors full access.

You enter the ruins on the south side, near a building appropriately named the Oval Palace:

From there, you can see across to the north side of the ruins, where the largest building, the Acropolis, towers over everything:

We had a tour guide lead us through the area for half an hour, explaining the history of the place and explaining some of the Mayan civilization. We were then free to explore the ruins on our own. There was a lot to see, but we were naturally drawn to climb the Acropolis. About halfway up the main staircase were landings with interesting features of their own. To the west side was the temple believed to contain the tomb of Ukit Kan Le'k Tok', and marked with all kinds of interesting carvings:

The west and east ends of the landing offered great places to try out the panoramic photo feature on my phone:

But of course, we pressed on to the top of the Acropolis itself. As expected, it offered a spectacular view of the city and the surrounding jungle.

But there were many other things to see at the site, including a variety of animals. A snake...

Bats...

And the busiest ants I'd ever seen, carrying bits of leaves from a tree dozens of feet away back to their enormous hill.

Ek Balam was a neat stop on our trip, but it was only the first part of the day's adventure. Our next stop would be a cenote that offered a completely different experience than the scuba diving of the previous day.