The early Maya

Nope, I'm not talking about the early stages of the Mayan Civilization. I've got my very own 'early' metric - it's just the first bunches of ruins I've seen down here.

The first stop was the El Rey site in Cancun... it really wasn't all that impressive - most of the ruins were really, you know, ruined!

But the iguanas were all over El Rey, and were, as advertised, the star attraction!

next, was Tulum, where the structures were more complete

and bigger...

and most importantly, occupied a spectacular beach-front location!

After Tulum, on to Coba, and the first huge Pyramids in the jungle!

These, you could also climb, and get these spectacular views from the top

And finally, Palenque - a giant maze of structures buried in the jungle

It's a very large site, with a number of different buildings, a lot of them in surprisingly good shape (some have been restored)

Templo de la Cruz - it is funny that most of the structures have Spanish, not Mayan names... Lost Civilization and all...

Another view of the Templo de las Inscripciones

And with that, I feel the preliminaries are out of the way (well, Palenque was kinda a biggie already), it is time to move on the main attractions - the only other Mayan sites I'm currently planning to visit (list subject to change, of course) are Tikal tomorrow and Chichen Itze when Erica gets here. And I am expecting those to be the most spectacular of the sites, so more to come on them soon!