Coba, Mexico

The look of terror on Coman's face as he stands petrified, shaking and sweating, clinging to the narrow pyramid steps 100 feet above the earth, frightens me no end. "Sit down," I implore him, "just sit down and you'll be ok!!"

But he's frozen, unable to look up or down, and seconds turn to minutes as he clutches the stones for dear life, until he manages to finally take the next step and make it up to where I'm reaching out my hand for him. It's the worst attack of vertigo he's ever had and high above the jungle canopy is not somewhere to let the nerves take over.

The pyramid at Coba, named Nohoch Mul, is the second largest on the Yucatan peninsula standing almost 45 metres high, and is the only one the public can still climb. And climb they do in their thousands with up to 4000 a day making the perilous ascent, compared to the 12,000 a day that traipse round Chichen Itza.

But despite the crowds, this ancient city - the oldest of all the main Mayan sites - still manages to make visitors feel like they're living out their very own Indiana Jones style fantasies as they discover the ruins, out of which the jungle is still growing. And so our final exploration of the Maya takes place deep amongst this forest in the fascinating but barely excavated ruins of Coba, that once stretched over 50sq km and housed hundreds of thousands of people, dating back centuries before the likes of Chichen Itza and Tulum.

We're picked up at 8am on a coach and leave Playa del Carmen past the little airport which takes passengers across the straights to Cozumel and, rather worryingly, has some rusting wrecks sat on the airstrip. Our guide today is not Armando, praise the Lord, but a chap named Galo who not only has a working microphone but a coachload of English speakers and is great company, and highly entertaining.

He reveals he's pure Latino; his mother is Hispanic and his father Metzitas (mixed Hispanic/indigenous heritage), he was conceived in Cuba, born in Mexico City, lives in Playa del Carmen and avoids Cancun like the plague. "You know what Cancun means in Maya? 'Can' is serpent and 'Cun' is nest. So, it's very well named, amigos, yes? It's a nest of snakes!"

Galo asks if we've been to Chichen Itza and tells us the site is now owned by the Barbirosa family, Spaniards who live in Miami and they make a fortune from entrance fees from the government. "Hey, we all know Mexico is corrupt, right amigos?" He also says that the reason we can't climb Chichen Itza any more isn't because an old lady fell off as Armando told us - after all, a Canadian girl tumbled down the pyramid at Coba just last week and they've not closed that - but because tourists started to leave graffiti in the temple at the top. So we're all now banned because 'Rob & Cindy woz here' apparently.

Fortunately Coba seems to attract a more discerning crowd and certainly our coach seems far more interested in history than the previous one, so Galo talks to us at length about the Mayan calendar system, passing round a beautiful engraved calendar wheel to illustrate it. For a full explanation of it, and why the Maya never predicted the end of the world, check out the next blog entry.

All over this area the Maya still work the land farming squash, habanero peppers, corn and so on, and those who don't live on the land now work in the tourist industry as cleaners, gardeners and labourers. It seems mainstream Mexican education - in Spanish - leaves them behind as most of them still speak Mayan as their main language.

We stop en route at a Mayan village which is run with help from guides like Galo to raise money from tourists. Unlike the stop on the way to Chichen Itza this does seem far more authentic, in terms of quality and money going to the people, rather than creamed off for the government or healthy commissions for the tour companies.

The ancient Maya traded in coffee beans and like all the peoples of Mesoamerica had no knowledge of the wheel - in terms of using it for transport - but of course had such advanced mathematics and astronomy that they could calculate incredibly accurate calendars and build massive pyramid structures that were as precise as modern computers in their calculations.

Nowadays they trade in pesos and dollars so we hand over $25 to have our anniversary commemoration dates painted in Mayan heiroglyphs on tree bark paper. It'll look lovely framed on a wall.

After a 90 minute drive we arrive beside a large lake full of crocodiles, and the place from which Coba, meaning 'Dirty Water', gets its name. There's a small entrance way into the jungle and within moments we come across the first, highly imposing structure, named La Iglesia by the Spaniards. To be honest, this steep pyramidal building isn't the kind of church you'd want to worship at, being a massive sacrificial altar with grooves down the sides to channel rivers of blood from the many human sacrifices that were carried out.

Galo explains that in the Mayan bible, the Popol Vuh, there is a creation myth. The first people created by the gods to inhabit the earth were made of mud, but then the rains came and they were washed away. So the gods made a second race of men out of wood. But these men had no hearts and while they became architects, warriors and farmers they did not worship the gods. So the gods sent a big flood to cleanse the earth sending the wood people into the trees where they were promptly turned into monkeys.

For their third attempt the gods made men from corn but poured their own blood into the human veins. These corn people, the Maya, could also build and work stone like the wood people, make fire, fight and sow crops but now they worshipped the gods and recognised the gift of blood they had been given.

So they practiced human sacrifice to return the divine blood to the gods. The more auspicious or desperate the situation, the more blood was spilt - from captives, traitors, the unlucky and in many cases volunteers, willing to sacrifice their lives and their blood to return to the gods.

From the sacrificial altar we head to the first of two ball courts and then, further down the jungle trails, come upon a temple. The trails that stretch for miles inevitably have plenty of other tourists on, some of whom hire bikes to get around while others with limited mobility, or in certain cases sheer laziness, opt for the tricycle rickshaws on offer as local Maya descendants, who are naturally short and slim, pedal people two or three times their size up and down the paths at high speed.

We head off the trails and start to explore a little into the jungle, mindful of snakes and other nasty surprises. All over the site are overgrown buildings just waiting to be excavated. What's on show is just the very tip of an incredibly large iceberg, and the wonder of this place is how beautiful the intertwined buildings and the forests are - trees grow through the stones, their roots and vines making beautiful patterns.

And then we come to the very tip itself - Nohoch Mul. It's enormous and slighty daunting but there's no way I'm not climbing to the top and looking out over the jungle; king of the world! Coman's got more of a fear of heights than me but decides to attempt it too, which is how we find ourselves stuck 20 feet below the summit, not knowing if we'll make it to the top.

Coman steels himself and after five minutes perched on one of the narrow steps while people climb past him decides it's easier to crawl up the remaining distance and get a proper breather on the summit than try a descent in his current state.

So we finally ascend to the very top and can enjoy the magnificent views. There's plenty of other intrepid souls up there with us, all jostling for the best position to take photos, and once Coman's fear subsides we manage to get some snaps of our own.

Getting down the pyramid proves a little less fraught, mainly because Coman opts to go almost the entire way down on his bum, and once firmly back on the ground the colour returns to his sun-burnt cheeks and a rush of adrenalin courses through him as he almost punches the air with a sense of achievement. He's conquered Coba!! Now for lunch...

Galo counts us all back onto the tour bus which drives us round the lake to a cute little restaurant at the far end. It looks pretty basic from the outside but is nicely colourful once under the awnings.

The Mexican fare is tasty and Coman, with his new taste for beer, tucks into a Corona as we chat to Jean and Virgil from South Virginia and learn all about dairy farming from them, and their desire to visit Europe again some day - although they seem to think that Europe is actually just Germany and possibly Italy too, at a push.

It's 3pm when we arrive back at the hotel and our waiting sunbed, ready for a few hours of pure relaxation. God above, it's hot hot hot!!!! Now, where's that cocktail?...