Campeche

-          Today we visited the town of Campeche in the state of Campheche.  This town was about 2 hours from Merida.  At Capmeche we visited two museums.

-          The first museum was El Museo Arqueológico de Campeche en el Reducto de San Miguel.  

  This Museum was utilized an old Spanish fortress that was on top of a hill that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico.  The structure was very interesting.  It truly was like a fortress, complete with a moat draw bridge.  The fortress was built within the hill and the entrance was very narrow and cut through the ground so that if an enemy were to come charging they would have to go through it.

-          Within the Museum we saw various artifacts.  The first thing that we got to see was as tone representation of a yoke, which is what ball players wore around their hips to protect them when they hit the rubber ball with their hips. 

-          Another exhibit that I thought was really cool was the tomb of Jaguar Paw from Calakmul.

  His skeletal remains as well as the earthly possessions that he was buried with were transferred from Calakmul to this museum.  At one point, someone had commented on the height of the skeleton.  Robert had lain down on the floor next to the exhibit to compare the height.  The two were very close in length.  The Mayans were not that short.  I figured that the Mayans were short people, but Rebecca had commented that the ancient Mayans were averaged sized people and it wasn’t until later that their stature had declined.  This was due to malnutrition and various other factors that affected the short stature of modern Mayans.

-          After the Museum, we headed towards the central plaza inside the walled center district of Campeche.  However, our bus had broken down so we had to take public transport to get to the city.   It was just like taking the bus to CIS everyday at Merida.  When we arrived at the central part of the city, it really was encased in a wall.

When we walked inside, I was completely blown away by the architecture.  The city was designed just like the city of Cuba, and Hugo, our tour guide had also made the same comment.  The buildings were brightly colored and the streets were stone.  It was very clean, surprisingly.  Merida is a very nice city, but like any other city, it has its filth, especially in the streets.  The walled district was very clean.  I was shocked by how clean it was.  The central plaza was also quite amazing.  Like many towns in Mexico, it too had a central square with a church and some municipal building on either side of the square.  The church was more beautiful than El Catedral in Merida.  It was mostly because the architecture was more elaborate.  It was not simple like the one in Merida.  This one was like the churches that you would see in Europe.  The European influence was clear in the construction of this church.  At night, the square, especially the street was even more beautiful.  I fell in love with this city.

-          After exploring the city, we went to El Museo de Arqueológico in the central plaza.  There we saw various stela and Mayan stone carvings of various styles and various time periods.  It was really interesting.