temple just below the town. The altitude here is
8400 ft, and the name also means "inside the
warm place", a reflection of the proximity of this
high spot to the sun, in a place that honors the
source of energy it has depended upon, sun and corn.
It is still heavily used by the community, in a myriad of ways. People sit atop and watch the band gathering to play below. Mothers come to sell snacks for the kids, chip bags and freshly made tamales.
Brendan is perched just below the temple. He had seen young students draped all over the temple and stellae, studying, and wanted to come up and study too... A good reason to return.
My favorite one is of a local girl, up on the temple top studying with her dog. I think it is the perfect blend of old & new... as a young Mayan woman reaches for an education, reclining against the backdrop of the same setting her ancestors built hundreds of years ago.
Her first trip to the temple,Michelle was swept up by several girls who were thrilled to walk with her. It is a place of amazing vistas, along with the comings and goings of daily life, livestock mingles with the activities, including pigs. The ball court is still used for soccer... and grazing.
Looking down from Yol K'u, you can see the band practicing in front of another structure (on which we later saw laundry spread out to dry) and the town rising behind.
The ball court is the rectangular depression to the right of the smaller structure. I watched turkey, pigs and dogs frolicking in the basin when there were no soccer players.
A trumpet player practices at the base of Yol K'u.
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