Coba: Mayan ruins
In its hey day, 900 to
1400 years ago, Coba was a massive Mayan city of 55,000 people. 
Raised
white roads (sacbeob) linked parts of the city together and also
extended as far as 60 miles to other population centers. The city
of Coba was located on the shore of a lake, which is quite unusual in
the Yucatan, and is along the dividing line between drier thorn forest
to the north and wetter rainforest to the south --- an ecological
paradise.
Today, you can explore
the ruins at your leisure by walking down the newly cleared 
sacbeob
(or by renting a bicycle or taking a ride in a bicycle taxi.)
Although the site is full of tourists, they feel like a different ilk
than those you'd find elsewhere in the Yucatan. Most are
European, and they kept their voices low and reverent (and I couldn't
understand a world they were saying, so I just assumed they were
talking about history and culture instead of whether to stop at
Wal-Mart on their way back to Cancun.)
Best yet, except for
clearing broad avenues between ruins, the management left most of the
native tree cover in place. If you take one of the many uncharted
side paths for a short distance, you can leave all of the tourists
behind and imagine you're walking through the jungle during Mayan
times. Granted, the trees are nearly all young secondary growth,
but here and there an ancient behemoth dominates the landscape, and in
between there are all kinds of smaller plants and animals to keep you
occupied. In later posts, I'll showcase the amazing fauna that
seemed quite happy to have their pictures taken, so here I'll just
mention the dozens of epiphytes
that kept me snapping photos for the
first half hour before we were able to tear ourselves away from the
entrance. (The epiphytes are pictured a little further
down on the page.)
The modern day site of
Coba is set up in a Y, with the entrance (and medium-sized ruin
complex) at the west end, a junction (and small ruin complex) after
about a half mile walk, 
and
then another half mile walk in each direction to reach the other two
main sites. On the south end of the Y (taking a right at the
junction), the Macanxoc group consists of 8 stelae --- huge stone
tablets upon which historical events were inscribed. I highly
recommend starting in this direction since it is much less travelled
and allows you to get a real feel for the natural history of the area
without hordes of tourists boxing you in. Then backtrack to the
junction and take the other avenue, heading northeast, and you'll end
up at the Nohoch Mul group, the tourist mecca --- a huge pyramid you
can climb to look out over the forest. During our visit, we felt
like the strolls between ruins were walking meditation, and by the time
we ascended the pyramid, we were nearing enlightenment (marred only by
the crowds at the end.)
Although you could walk
the entire site in an hour or two, we spent more like four hours there,
which allowed us to gently stroll and really experience
everything. You can hire a tour guide at the entrance, but we
preferred to just bring a book (Mexico: A
Hiker's Guide to Mexico's Natural History has a short chapter on Coba)
and immerse ourselves in the site.
Although
cruise ships try to scare you away from booking outside tours, we're
coming to believe that you get twice the experience for the same money
by going on your own. For $59 apiece, we could have spent two
hours each way packed into a tour bus with fifty other people and then
spent a scant two hours at the site in a press of humanity that would
have shielded us from the real world. Instead, we spent $140 to
hire a private driver (Anthony, who is an employee of Vicente
Rodriguez, who you can contact by email at
ridetravelcancun@hotmail.com) who picked us up at Calica and got us
to the site in a mere hour
and fifteen minutes, leaving us double the time 
to
explore the ruins. Granted, we did have to pay around $20 for
parking and admission, but contrary to what various internet sources
report, we had no trouble using American money for this. Anthony
let me practice my Spanish on him, telling me about his garden (banana
and orange trees, chile peppers and tomatoes), his three kids, and his
home in the outskirts of Cancun. And at the end he led us to a
buffet restaurant overlooking the lake, where we tasted authentic Mayan
food for $12 apiece.
Our experience at Coba,
although compeletely different, matches and perhaps exceeds our
glorious day at Serpent
Mound a year and a half ago. The
combination of nature, walking, and glorious ruins make this my top
recommended side trip in the Yucatan. Plan an entire day, or two
if possible, and go --- you won't regret it.
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