El Rey, Cancun Mexico January 2008

This site dates from 1200 - 1550 A.D, when the native population was more or less wiped out by smallpox.


there were these iguanas all over the place...catching some rays

Looking down the "main street" to the temple(s)

Remains of the mayan pyramid

apparently they built their huts on these rock platforms

Some type of firepit or storage area. It was unique versus the other houses so I took a picture of it.

One of the older houses that had pillars. Most of them had altars in the back. Apparently the mayans would bury their dead around the foundations of their houses. Once all the available area around the house was filled up, they would then build a new house on a new platform. The old house would then be built up as a monument/temple to their ancestors. They would burn incense in the altar on holidays for their ancestors (the altars are still plainly visible).

View from the backroom of one of the mini-temples. The altar is immediately left of the "doorway."


Front view of the pyramid. You can see the stairs don't look very stair-like anymore. As a matter of fact all the stairs were very steep and hard to climb. This was a feature in mayan architecture. Something about climbing to the gods or something like that. You can see the Cancun Hilton hotel in the background there.

Back side of the pyramid (crappy pic, sorry)


A ruin protected by a roof for some reason. Some of the buildings had evidence of murals/paint that they were trying to preserve from the elements.


View from the top of the pyramid back down the "main street." That overgrown area to the right of the photo is unexcavated and overgrown, but there are more foundations in there somewhere. The "mini-temples" are the buildings with walls that are the furthest out. Those people in the photo were some poor tourists trying to find some shade (the sun was very bright and hot).


More foundations in the other direction, take from the top of the pyramid. There were more foundations and ruins stretching all the way out through those trees, but it was very overgrown and difficult to pass through. There was a trail but it wasn't really worth trying with shorts on and without a machete or something like that to hack a path.

And last, there was this fallen over tree...it was just kind of neat because the roots pulled up a bunch of mayan bricks and stuff.


Overall it was a neat little 2 hour diversion/day trip. I can only imagine how the first european explorers must have felt when they viewed the place - Which at the time was thickly populated with the native people (Cancun/El Rey is right next to Cozumel - a large trade center at the time, where Hernan Cortes first stepped foot in Mexico and fanned out to conquer the Yucatan back in the 1500s.)