As our first newsworthy stop on the Yucatán Peninsula, we stop at the Edzná archaeological site. We are able to spend the night right in front of the site’s entrance gates, making us the first visitors to arrive at Edzná in the cool of the morning. We are probably the only visitors paying admission at this time, but we are nevertheless accompanied by a large pack of mosquitoes, who must not have paid admission. This makes us spend less time in Edzná and visit the excavation site a little faster than elsewhere.

Especially the building complex of the large acropolis with the adjacent building of the five-story palace pyramid are impressive. The five-story palace pyramid is a stepped pyramid with many rooms, which can be seen through the window-like openings at the front.
Other important structures were on the one hand the platform of the knives and many irrigation and drainage systems, which served the water management of the Mayas. Due to the clayey soils, floods were probably always possible and were kept in check by the water channels. With this background knowledge, it is quite astonishing what was already accomplished in prehistoric societies in terms of engineering.
Of course, in addition to the buildings described above, there are other temples and an obligatory ball court. The exact meaning of the ball game is still largely unclear today and there are numerous myths surrounding it. On the one hand, the rules have been changed again and again and also the meaning of victory and defeat as well as their consequences are probably not consistently handed down.

However, on the day of our visit we have no time to play ball – with the many mosquitoes we would probably have a mosquito-panicked ball very quickly and so many bites that the game would inevitably end in favor of the mosquito team. We are fascinated by the various Mayan and Aztec archaeological sites. Accordingly, there will be a few more to come on our trip – we’re looking forward to that!