Guayabo National Park
When I was a wee little Rachel growing up, I LOVED collecting rocks, smashing them open with a hammer, and pretending I was an archae-geologist. Well, coming to Guayabo National Park, the largest archaeological site in Costa Rica and the only real one I've been to, was pretty awe-inspiring experience.
It is located on the southern part of the Turrialba volcano. It is 540 acres of pre-Columbian ancient ruins, comparable (although much smaller in size) to the Mayan ruins of Mexico. My travel book tells me it was inhabited between 1500 B.C. and AD 1400, but so much of it is still shrouded in mystery. It says it supported a population of roughly 10,000 people before being abandoned for reasons nobody knows! The picture below is thought to be the center of the city, the biggest mound in the center is thought to have been inhabited by the chief. You can see where there's a separation of the trees in the background, is the 21 foot wide (HUGE) stone laid walkway, which is believed to have extended between 2.5-7.5 miles!!
This is so interesting to me! If only we could go back in time for a day to see what it would be like with people walking around, and what they wore! And what they looked like and how they spoke and how they worked. I can tell you from seeing the perfection in every stone that was laid in the walkway, that they were very hard workers. Building every mound and every single step of a 7.5 mile 21 foot wide road stone by stone, piece by piece. I wonder how long it took! It amazes me...
^Illegally standing on the walkway. Don't tell anyone! You can see how wide it is. The road goes straight towards the chief's mound. Imagine how many traveled on it. It has held up a lot better than any road in Minnesota from summer to winter that's for sure! I also wonder if it has any other religious significance or other meaning, like the huge road runs in the direction of north and south. But since I didn't have a compass, nor could I tell where the sun was in relation to what time it could be, nor the direction of the wind blowing, nor nothing of the lost ancient ways of the people that lived there could probably be able to do, I couldn't find an answer to that.
Just look at how every small inch of space contains a rock that fits that space like a mosaic. And each piece is smooth and flat which creates a perfectly smooth road. And Look in the bottom of the photo, an ancient keen sandal! Who knew.
Smaller pathways around the mounds.
The mound of the chief. And that green circular patch? Who knows, but my educated guess would say that it's a place where people gathered to hear the chief speak. Anyone seen Avatar? Remember how all of the Na'vi gather around the Eywa tree on their knees and listen and pray together? That's what I imagine haha..
^ something like this ^
Berto and I at the tree of Eywa...
Avatar reference #2 in 2 minutes.
Actually just a really huge tree with some crazy roots!
We followed another path through an incredibly dense foliage to get to this amazing observatory point. How beautiful.
I totally hear ya on the desire to go back in time. I think about that in many places ... over the weekend I was in Arizona and kept thinking what the area must have been like back when it was part of Mexico. I wanted to go back in time and see the small desert towns in the days before it was sprawling metropolis.
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