Sacred Cenote - The Well of Offerings

Photo: Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China, CC0 (cropped)

A stop on Chichen Itza Self-Guided Tour, a free self-guided tour.

The wide path you just walked is Sacbe Number One, a raised white causeway about 270 meters long and 9 meters wide, built to lead pilgrims here. In front of you is a natural sinkhole about 60 meters across, where the limestone collapsed into an underground water table about 27 meters below the rim.

For centuries people came to this cenote to make offerings to the rain god and other powers of the underworld. In the early 1900s Edward Thompson, the American consul who had bought the land with the ruins, dredged it and pulled up gold, jade, pottery and human bones. Much of it went to the Peabody Museum at Harvard.

The bones belonged to children, women and men. Not all of them show signs of violence, and researchers still debate how many were sacrifices and how many were offerings or burials of other kinds.

Stay behind the railing, take in the green water, and imagine the long line of pilgrims arriving along the causeway.

Getting here: From the Platform of Venus, walk north along the wide straight causeway, about 5 minutes, until it ends at the cenote's edge.

Did you know?: Thompson bought the whole hacienda that included the ruins in 1894, so for decades one of the most famous Maya sites was private property.

Photo op: From the viewing area on the south rim, shoot across the water to the far cliff wall, where the green surface contrasts with the pale rock.

More on Wikipedia: Sacred Cenote · Edward Herbert Thompson · Sacbe

Sacred Cenote - The Well of Offerings

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