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This past week I got a great deal, took a personal day, and Stella and I made a quick trip to Tulum, Mexico. It was her idea. And now that I have done it, I can’t believe I never thought of going there before. When I asked her why she was so fascinated with the area, assuming she learned about it in school, she said she got the idea from videos she watched on TikTok. That’s a pretty good use of the oft-maligned app.

After Adelaide abandoned us to move to college last year, we consoled ourselves by making a bucket list of places we’d like to go. Some are fairly unrealistic for now, like the Great Wall of China and Petra, Jordan. But Chichen Itza, which was Stella’s first choice, is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from home.

Being a schoolteacher means having a low budget. I got the travel bug from my granny and parents, however, who also had low budgets and managed to take me a great many places. In my childhood that looked like epic road trips, bologna sandwiches at rest areas, and inexpensive hotels in which my brother and I would always race to get to sleep before Daddy started snoring. I saw every state in the U.S. that way except for Alaska and Hawaii, until my granny splurged and took me to Hawaii for her retirement when I was in third grade.

Some of my best memories were made in a red Ford Econoline van that never went faster than the “double nickels” as Daddy required. He is one to stop at every historical marker. The other day someone asked me how I know so many random things; this is a large part of the reason. My brother and I had a system we called bunk beds where one of us would make a pallet on the floor and the other would lie across the comfy couch to stretch out and sleep in the back of the van. One time I woke up sweating and realized he had made a tent for himself over the air vents, which I promptly knocked down while he cackled. We played Rook every night and swam in the hotel pools, which was a huge treat.

These trips helped glue our nuclear family together and instilled in me the value of learning about other cultures as well as sharing that experience with people I love. I realize now it was also my parents’ way of enhancing my education. I feel proud when I am able to do that for my kids because I know how it broadens one’s world.

So with basketball ended and Presidents Day off, we threw bathing suits in a bag and flew the red-eye from Little Rock into the new airport at Tulum. I arranged with our hotel to pay a driver to pick us up in order to avoid anything shady. Shadiness greeted us as we exited customs, however, and walked through a corridor where guys dressed in official-looking uniforms tried to haggle us into various costly excursions. When I figured out they were not tourism helpers, or whatever they pretended to be, we moved on, and Stella got her first lesson in not falling for the hustle that pervades Mexico’s tourist spots.

We quickly found our driver, and the most interesting thing that happened on the way to our hotel was that we saw road signs warning about possible crossings of jaguars, monkeys, and cows. The only thing we ever saw on the road, however, was a coati, which looks like a big red raccoon with a longer tail.

Our hotel was a bungalow steps from the beach in eco-friendly Nueva Vida de Ramiro. It had the basics, which is all we need, as well as decorative touches like colorful Mexican tiles and a jar of purified water for brushing teeth. As it was not high season, the beach was sparsely populated with other tourists–a few Americans, Germans, and other Mexican families. The sand shimmered like white sugar between our toes. We mostly stayed under a shady pavilion built of canvas and sticks, reading and sleeping on a double air mattress. I graded papers and consulted via phone with a few students who needed help with assignments. When we got hot, we’d dip into the greenish turquoise water that further out fades into a lapis lazuli blue.

The reason we came here, however, was for the big pyramid. We booked a tour, again through the hotel, that picked us up at our hotel at 6:45 a.m. It made a few more stops to gather five others, all Americans. Stella and I especially enjoyed two retired friends from Montana named Katherine and Gloria who were on a girls’ trip. We both decided we want to be like them when we grow up as they were smart, fun, sweet, and adventurous. And in great shape. Stella could hang, but I had to work to keep up with them.

Miguel the knowledgeable guide rode along and explained things of interest on the two-hour drive through the Yucatan jungle. He didn’t seem too annoyed by all my questions. I was glad we arrived early to Chichen Itza, because it was cooler, and because we were ahead of most of the 5,000 visitors Miguel said go there each day.

We had tickets with bar codes. You went through a counter like you do everywhere and they tore them in half. I noticed that when the worker took mine and Stella’s, he pocketed them and gave me back the bottoms of some others he already ripped in half. That made me sad. But we walked through into a different world that soon overwhelmed me to the point I could not wrap my head around what was in front of my eyes, much less think about anything else.

It is just a few steps and there it is: One of the wonders of the world. I have been to the pyramids in Egypt and the only thing that made them more exciting at the time was that I had heard about them all my life in school and Bible training. I don’t know how I missed any emphasis on Chichen Itza and Mayan culture, but I did, except for the Latin American history class I took for my master’s degree. Thankfully it started coming back to me as I stood there gaping.

Many things moved me that day, not the least of all being Stella’s sensitivity and curiosity. But there was one thing that absolutely blew my mind. If you stand inside a certain range of the giant temple and clap, a sound comes back to you. But it is not the echo you would expect. It is the call of a bird that still exists today. In Mayan culture it was the heavenly representation of the god Kukulcan, also known as Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs. The Mayan engineers calculated and created the acoustics that allowed for that exact sound. Crowds of ancient people would gather in a circle around the pyramid and clap together to call it forth. I am not sure I could believe it if I had not done it–clapped and heard it–myself.

The irony of these ingenious people is they sacrificed their own to this god. There is a sports arena on the site where a brutal game called Pok-ta-Pok ended with the beheading of the winner. The guide saw me flinch when he told us this and he said, “he died with honor,” as if this explained it. I said, “The winner? The winner died? And people wanted to win?” He laughed at me and said, “Of course. The god didn’t want any losers.”

I am still thinking about all of that. But that night before I went to bed I thought about cultural conditioning, and how gods like Kukulcan were normal in ancient times. Even those extremely sophisticated engineers would not have found it strange back then to sacrifice a human being to the bird god.

I wonder how we are different. We don’t decapitate people or rip beating hearts out of their chests, but some folks do conjure up a god who doesn’t care for losers. Or foreigners. Or outcasts. What a contrast it must have been in the ancient world for Jesus to appear not as a conqueror but riding on the back of a donkey.

For God to seek a relationship with us, take on human form to walk with us, desire our love over our fear. And ultimately, not to require sacrifice from us. But sacrifice his own son to prove how much he loves us.

Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is an author, teacher, and award-winning columnist from Ozark. Email her at [email protected]. Watch her vodcast here: https://small-town-girl.castos.com