Coba

Our pictures:

• Christopher and Alex at Nohoch Mul
• Christopher at the "Church" pyramid
• Christopher at a stelae

Coba is really a neat place since it is so undeveloped. We walked through approximately 5 miles of jungle trails in about 2.5 hours seeing only a handful of other visitors the entire time. The ruins were opened to the public in 1973. Only a few structures (of the estimated 6,000) are restored or uncovered. One of these is shown above - Nohoch Mul, which means "big hill." It is 140 ft high and is the second tallest pyramid in the Yucatan. It is taller than the famous pyramid in Chichen Itza.

The restored structures are in 5 groups connected by trails. Walking the trails is fun - you hear birds, monkeys and there is almost a canopy of trees above your head. The vegation and smells are lush and it is pretty humid.

Stelae: There are a large number of stelae at the Coba site with thatched roofs (recent additions) above them - presumably to protect them. The stelae are fairly large stone slabs which have drawings, glyphs and so. Apparently one in Guatemala is 30 ft high, 4.5 ft wide and 3 ft thick and weighs 65 tons ! The stelae served religious and/or historical record-keeping purposes.

Sacbes: Coba was the hub of a system of highways called sacbes. There were about 50 sacbes - paved highways which were between 10 and 30 ft wide and one was about 100 km long. They were built of limestone and it is estimated that the manpower and effort required in their construction exceeded that for the buildings and temples. It is interesting that the Maya did not used wheels so transportation of goods along the sacbes was done by people carrying parcels. One of the books we looked at showed an aerial photo of the jungle which showed intersecting sacbes. These were also seen by astronauts on a shuttle mission.

References: The Easy Guide to Coba by Richard Bloomgarden, The Descriptive Guide Book to Coba by Gualberto Alonzo and The Mayan Magnificent Ancient WHite Roads by Jose Diza-Bolio.