October 16-22, 2017 - Ruins of Iximché, Cold?, Motorcycle Tot, Many Sessions
Week 9 ... Oct 16-22, 2017 ...
Monday
Iximché ruins
Nine of us Temple missionary couples rented a 20-passenger tour bus to visit Iximché (ish-im-CHAY), an archaeological site in the western highlands of Guatemala. It was only about 60 miles from our apartments, but it took 2 hours to travel to it. We went through three cities during rush hours.
Iximché was the capital of the Kaqchikel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524. The architecture of the site included a number of pyramid-temples, palaces and two Mesoamerican ballcourts. Excavators uncovered the poorly preserved remains of painted murals on some of the buildings and ample evidence of human sacrifice. The ruins of Iximche were declared a Guatemalan National Monument in the 1960s. The site has a small museum displaying a number of pieces found there, including sculptures and ceramics.
At this time, it was 11:30 am and time to find a restaurant...
We saw a lot of agriculture near Iximché. The corn was tall. Larry superimposed us over the photo to show how we would have looked standing next to the corn....
Coats?
Why do you Guatemalans wear coats and jackets? Not me!
Safe?
Not uncommon down here. Photo shot by a smartphone through van windows by Elder Holman. Then Larry snapped the photo with his iPhone off Holman’s phone. Still a good photo....
Friday
Today was a Guatemalan holiday, but we didn’t get the day off. In fact, the first endowment session was at 4:50 am, with Babette and I in charge. There were sessions about every half hour until 11:30 am. For the day there were 13 sessions and every one was full.
Wow! This was/is so interesting! Please keep up the blogging -- love the pictures. Wow, that was a very early session! So busy! So great!
ReplyDeleteHave an awesome week.