Chich'en Itz'a: sacred city of the Maya

Diary Page of Jan. 29, 1988 We roam these ruins as we try to trace the lives of those who piled preposterous stone on stone for temples to exalt their own existence, castles and pyramids to face us eerily, stilled now the furious pace once prevalent here. In science, they outshone their world, practicing skills so far unknown - yet time long made mere remnants of their race.

Back at the castle that we call hotel, a splendor savored by the present cast, like Mayan men sure of supremacy within their City by the Sacred Well, we wince at warnings conjured from a past much like our own vainglorious century.