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Cobá -
Yucatan
 Trails
through the jungle lead to the ruins of an ancient city.
Tree roots and vines engulf the walls of crumbling temples
and palaces and a lone pyramid soars above the forest
canopy. Silence reigns, the only noise the rustle of
leaves in the breeze and the distant cry of a hunting
hawk. The mysterious Mayan metropolis of Cobá
is ready to reveal its secrets.
Forty-two kilometers inland from Tulum and a 90-minute
drive from Cancún, Cobá is one of the
Maya World's largest archaeological sites and has an
extension of around 70 square kilometers. The city is
clustered around five shallow lakes, which would have
provided fresh water in ancient times, and its name
in Maya means “waters ruffled by the wind.”
 The
city reached its peak during the Mayan Classic period,
A.D. 250-900, when it was a regional capital. About
70 metres to the southeast of the main pyramid is Stela
20, the best preserved carved sculpture at the site.
It depicts a lord standing in an important trade centre,
distributing goods to and from the eastern seaboard,
Central America and cities in the Yucatán. Commodities
such as honey, beeswax, cotton, henequen, cacao and
copal incense would have been bartered for sting ray
spines, spiny oyster shells and salted fish from the
coast and jade, obsidian, quetzal feathers and gold
from Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and other parts of
Central America.
 Archaeologists
believe that Cobá had links with the Guatemalan
city of Tikal, pointing to certain architectural similarities
in the earliest buildings at the site, for example,
pyramids, false arches, lintels, huge, roughly cut blocks
and a coating of stucco plaster which was painted red.
Cobá also had ties to coastal cities such as
Tulum and some lesser structures at the site are built
in the East Coast architectural style characterised
by small temples decorated with niche figures of a descending
god, smooth walls, flat rooves and walls that tilt outwards.
Furthermore, the city was a rival of Chichén
Itzá, preventing the southern expansion of its
powerful neighbour.
 At
its peak, Cobá was inhabited by up to 70,000
people. Unlike other Classic period cities which suffered
a catastrophic decline and were abandoned for a variety
of reasons including drought, famine and warfare, Cobá
did not suffer the same fate and was still trading during
the Post-Classic period (A.D. 900 – 1521) albeit
with diminished influence.
Cobá is so vast that only a small area of the
ancient city has been restored. Indeed, one of the thrills
of a visit is exploring the trails through the jungle
and coming across ruined temples. You can almost imagine
what it must have been like for the first European visitor,
German explorer Teobert Maler, who studied the site
in 1891 after hearing tales of mysterious carved stones
and giant paintings hidden deep in the forest.
The jungle at Cobá is medium growth tropical
forest, rich in flora and fauna. Easily recognizable
for their straight and smooth green trunks which turn
grey with age, a row of majestic ceibas or silk cotton
trees crowd round the entrance to the park. Called yaxche,
the ceiba is the sacred tree of the Maya and it played
an important role in ancient cosmogony. An immense ceiba
or world tree stood at the center of the earth (Cab),
its branches reaching up towards the heavens (Caan).to
support the sky and its roots extending down into the
Underworld (Xibalbá). Other forest trees you'll
see during your visit are chicozapote, cedar, chaka,
guarumbo, tropical fig, mahogany, chechen, wild tamarind
and a variety of palms and vines. Orchids and bromeliads
festoon the branches.
The most famous building at Cobá is the Nohoch
Mul pyramid. Standing 42 meters high, it is the tallest
pyramid in the northern Yucatán and the views
from the top are spectacular.
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