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Climbing a Mayan Pyramid — Still Not There Yet pg198
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
Some vortex-seekers I met in the lounge suggested visiting Coba, where the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan had been partially uncovered. Another bouncy bus ride got me to the town and a sweet little tiled room at the Archeology Hotel. I got up early to hike out to the pyramid, climb up it with my watercolors and paint all alone at the Temple of the Descending Gods on top. It was the perfect place to ask for divine guidance. A generous god gave me the gift of patience, which I hid in a place so safe I can’t find it. In another Mayan village I was served dessert where the great god Chocolatl first handed down the recipe to mere mortals. I snorkeled the reefs off the coral sand beaches of San Morello. I was restored, fully alive, divinely protected and not too badly sunburned. — From Chapter 10
Shortly after this lucky trip in 1998, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia closed the Nohoch Mul pyramid stairs to tourists. Idiots had been damaging the temple on top, and the stairs themselves are a dangerous climb. Each stone step is narrower than my size 9 feet, and the risers are knee height. It is dizzying to look down the steep cliff-face of stairs from the top, and most people crawl back down facing the rocks while using their…
