Climbing Temples

One cool thing about the Mayan sites we visited is that, not only do you learn about the Mayan history and archaeological theories, but you also get to climb on stuff. Archaeologists believe that the steps of Mayan temples are so steep and large so that the Maya would crawl up and be prostrate before the king. I did quite a bit of crawling myself, and I'm pretty sure I'm taller than the average Ancient Maya.

Above is the aptly named High Temple at Lamanai.

Here is me climbing it. I swear that the pictures don't adequately depict just how steep those steps are. It was scary. At one point, I stupidly looked down and froze. I was this close to saying "screw it" and just going back, but I pushed on and I'm glad I did. I'm a "face your fears" kind of person, as uncomfortable as that can be sometimes.

This is Liz going descending. This shows more accurately the steepness of the stairs. We have perfected our sideways temple walk technique for going down the stairs. It works pretty well, and if you fall, you fall on the stairs instead of down the stairs.

And, in an abrupt lack of segue, here is us on top of a completely different temple at Caracol, just because it was a much better picture than us at Lamanai.

I'm actually blogging from the airport now, as my flight home is much later than Liz's. I'm in my home away from home, the airport lounge, in which I have spent way too much time this trip, waiting for other people's flights to come in. Back in the US soon! I'm in the very comfortable place of having thoroughly enjoyed my trip, but I've also been gone so long that I'm excited to be home, even though it is just for a day.