SACRED MAYAN CROSSING

The Sacred Mayan Crossing is the renactment of a ritual that ancient mayans used to do hundreds of years ago and that was forgotten with time. They used to canoe all along the Yucatan Coast up to Honduras trading their products and when they arrived to Xaman-ha town, today Playa del Carmen, they crossed to Cozumel Island to venerate the goddess Ixchel (goddes of fertility, good weather and good croping) and came back to continue their trading journey. Now a days inhabitants from Quintana Roo state: Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Tulum and Cozumel in an effort to recover this ancient tradition get physically prepare for 6 months in order to be able to cross from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel Island and back, about 26 kilometers each way!

This event is promoted by X-CARET, where the farewell and blessing ceremony takes place. There’s a lot of stuff to do there such as the Mayan Ball Game, listening to Mexican traditional music, watching the “Voladores de Papantla”, folkloric dances and more!

It started on Thursday 21st of May finishing on the 23rd. The first day we were there at 6:00pm, where pezzies and mahahualians met for spending some cultural and fun time together. We went first to the art crafts market, then we took a look to the Mayan Ball Game court where suddenly a pecari appeared running across it as if it had scaped from somewhere!

After that, we went to the Interactive Market where at the entrance we were given some cacao beans; the idea of this was to understand this ancient way of living where there was no money, just cacao, so you would trade it for products such as fish, meat, fruit, clothes, made! Also, they exhibited amazing animals like the macaws, huge snakes, and a very interesting one was the hairless Mexican dog, Xoloitzcuintle, beautiful but highly endangered specie.

After all this we walked out to the beach where the ceremony started with some important people speeches such as the First Lady followed by a ceremony and interpretation of the arrivals, fights and success of traveling on the canoes.

The next day, very early at 5:00 am we were ready to leave, the farewell ceremony will start at 6:00 am in Xcaret. It was amazing to see all the handmade canoes and the people that had been training for several months for this event departing, all dressing in white, with a strong will to achieve their goal, cross the sea all the way to Cozumel and back!

There were support and rescue boats, some people took the ferry and waited at Cozumel to see the arrival. The next day the same happened but everybody was at Playa, in Plaza Fundadores for welcoming and congratulating them.

SACRED MAYAN CROSSING