The entire time my mind was trying to soak in the details and atmosphere of the place and comprehend the minds of the people who designed and built it, it kept getting interrupted with a voice saying "this is JUST LIKE being in an Indiana Jones movie!"
From the Wikipedia summary: "Baudrillard defined "hyperreality" as 'the generation by models of a real without origin or reality' it is a representation, a sign, without an original referent. Baudrillard believes hyperreality goes further than confusing or blending the 'real' with the symbol which represents it; it involves creating a symbol or set of signifiers which actually represent something that does not actually exist, like Santa Claus. Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more."
Hung out on top and enjoyed the view for a while. The stairs are incredibly steep. I'm sitting on the stairs just a few steps up from these guys. Look how far away they are!
They haven't really cleared away any of the dense jungle from the perimeter of the structure. The temple's stairs are overgrown and crumbling away so you climb the pyramid via a makeshift set of scaffold-stairs they've built alongside the structure.
...we hiked our way through the jungle again for a bit to Tikal's Temple IV. Built in 741 AD and standing 212 feet tall, "Temple IV is the tallest pre-Columbian structure still standing in the New World."
After telling us about the site, our guide let us loose to explore. So mind-boggling to walk around and try to picture what the place might've been like in the hey-day.
Built around 800AD and standing 130+ feet-tall, it's the second-tallest structure in all of Belize. After walking up the first group of steps to the first terrace, we went to the other side of the pyramid...
See those other big "hills" on the left-side of the horizon? Those are probably other Mayan pyramids buried under dirt and jungle that are waiting to be discovered and excavated!
View of the courtyard! More unbelievable than the fact that you can actually climb up to the top of these monuments is the fact that there aren't any safety railings or roped-off areas to prevent you from falling off the edge and plummeting to your death. Even getting this close to the edge to peek over and take this picture made the people up there with me nervous and made my palms start to sweat. Haha.
The museum was closing soon, so I just admired the I.M. Pei designed pyramid outside. I according to Wikipedia, "the structure...reaches a height of 21.6 metres; its square base has sides of 35 metres (115 ft)."
If you take 35 and divide it by 21.6, you get:
35 / 16 = 1.62037037037
The Sphinx kind of gets short-changed if you ask me. If this statue were pretty much anywhere else in the world, it would be one of the most impressive things ever. But considering it's basically a couple hundred yards away from two of the largest, most famous monuments in the world, it's way less impressive in person than it should be.
They're basically the opposite of the Mona Lisa - WAY more impressive in person than I ever imagined they could be. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend seeing them in person. (Fuck taking a tour and going through the official gate - it's a hell-on-earth clusterfuck of tourist crowds).
The pyramids are really big. Way bigger than I always imagined them to be. At first you don't think they're all that large, but then you keep riding towards them and riding towards them and you're like "Uh, shouldn't they be getting bigger?" Nope, they're still really far away.
Getting closer! If you look to the right of the pyramids, you'll see just how near Cairo's sprawl comes! From L to R: Pyramid of Menkaure, Pyramid of Khafre and the largest and most famous Pyramid of Khufu.
This fence surrounds the entire site and tries to ensure that people only enter the site through the main entrance. But all of the local stables simple ride you out a couple of kilometers into the desert on camelback and circumvent it.
Check it out! They spend hundreds of years building this pyramid at a 55-degree angle. But when they got towards the top, it kept collapsing, so they decided to modify the design and change the slope of the pyramid to 43-degrees in order to complete it.
Back outside and here's a final picture of the pyramid! (I didn't take any pictures of the vaults inside because there wasn't very much light (duh!) and my flash would've alerted the "camera police" inside.)
Here's a picture of our descent into the burial chamber via a secret shaft that's hidden in the side of the pyramid! The shaftway is only 3' tall, 4' wide and goes down for over 200 feet at a 27-degree angle. I only took this one picture because it was such hard work hunching my way down the shaft in the crazy-heat!
Most people go to see the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo and don't come to Dashshur so there were hardly any other people there. And, you can actually CLIMB UP THE PYRAMID and then crawl down a tiny shaft into the burial chamber!
The pyramids sit in the middle of the desert so there's nothing near them to give you a sense of scale. As you try to get closer to them, it feels like you walk and walk and they don't get any bigger. That's when their scale starts to dawn on you.
Obligatory shot of solo traveler in front of pyramid. Despite the fact that it was 110 F outside, wearing my BLACK HOODIE was preferable to exposing my skin to the mid-day Egyptian sun.
Bad ass. Ahmed and I had spent the hour-drive down doing our best to get to know each other. Despite the language barrier, we'd managed pretty well and I learned that despite having spent his entire life in Cairo, he'd never been to any of the sites we were visiting. It was cool to drive down the road with him and hear him having the same awed reaction as me.
This is the back of Djoser's Step Pyramid. It's from 2630 BCE (4,640 years ago!!!) and is considered one of the oldest stone monuments in human history.
Saqqara is a huge burial complex for the Old Kingdom of Egypt. We pulled off the lush green local roads and suddenly we were in the middle of a desert and there were two pyramids (well, one step pyramid and a pile of rubble!) rising out of the desert.
BTW, the pile of rubble is the remains of Userkaf's Pyramid! Guess that'll teach him to skimp on pyramid building supplies!
