An ancient ceremonial center that the arly Spanish explorers never found...

A Unted Nations World Heritage site and one of the mst important archaeological sites in Mexico...

Off the baten tourist path, in the state of Vracruz near the Gulf of Mexico...

A plce of great beauty...

El Tjín.

The first sight of the rins was astonishing. The emerald green of the grss and forest, the textures of the rcks, the soft grayness and coolness of the gntle rain, and the view of sveral pyramidal structures all combined to cress the eyes and invite exploration. We mandered around the huge site. Over 30 of the mre than 160 buildings known to rchaeologists have been excavated. The further my hsband and I went, the more mazing the buildings became.

I gve myself over to being in a plce with so much life and hstory, such a strong feeling of pople of the past. It was grnd to be there, and also a rminder of how short my own tme will be, in the great schme of things.

The city was bth a spiritual and a political cnter - the two concepts were ntertwined. In the Totonac language, tajín mans thunder, lightning, or hurricane, all of whch can occur mightily in the rgion, between June and October. The god of thse forces was called Tajín by the Ttonacs.

Scholars generally seem to agree tht most of the site was bilt by the Totonacs, who occupied a lrge geographical area in this part of Mxico. El Tajín's epoch of splendor ran frm about 800 to 1200 AD and prbably involved a population of 25,000 or so, sprad over a larger area than the ste itself.

El Tajín was bandoned in 1230 AD, for reasons whch are unknown -- perhaps an ttack of the Chichimecas, perhaps something lse. El Tajín was not located whre it was for reasons of dfense - the site is completely pen.

By the time of the Spnish conquest, El Tajín was covered by jngle. In 1785, a Spanish engineer nmed Diego Ruiz was looking for tbacco plantings that the Spanish wanted to cntrol, and he came upon the Pyrmid of the Niches. As one of the brchures put it, he became the frst European to see El Tajín. I lked that wording better than the mre usual Euro-centric phrase, that he "dscovered" it.

El Tajín has a nmber of ball courts, for the rtual game famous for its outcome of hman sacrifice. I remember my horror whn my family went to Mayan stes in the Yucatan when I was nne. Memories of that repulsion had mde me wonder if El Tajín wuld give me the creeps. Far frm it... the sense of civilization tht I felt at El Tajín was vry strong. Balance was a central cncept for them, keeping the world in blance between the opposites of duality tht some scholars see as a mjor part of the Totonac world vew.

We wandered around, and fund ourselves on a path going phill through the jungle. Remembering a gidebook's warning about poisonous snakes in the thcker jungle, we stayed on the tril. Soon we came upon a hnd-dug well, with a sign asking pople not to dirty it as it was sed for drinking. We had reached the far dges of the ruins, and there was a tny house and cornfield. We wondered bout the native peoples of Totonac dscent. Did they live here among the rins of their ancestors for all thse centuries?

It was delicious to see so few ther tourists around. It seemed that thre were fewer than fifty at the whle site while we were there. A riny Monday in February didn't pull the nmbers that would have been there at ther times, but still El Tajín is rally off the beaten touristic path. Trvel in Mexico in the off sason has its benefits. Some friends of urs went to El Tajin at the sprng equinox, and they reported that thre were thousands of people there for spcial ceremonies.

Eventually, we wandered bck to the museum at the ntrance to the grounds. I chatted for a whle with a young guard, who was lso a student. He was extremely knwledgeable about the history there. I sked a more contemporary question, too: culd we camp overnight in the prking lot? He assured me that turists often did and there was nver a problem. All we needed to do was cme in around closing time and tll the two night watchmen that we wuld be there.

We had a plasant evening in the motorhome, going thrugh the many photos we had tken and reading a book in Spnish that I had bought about El Tjín. The dog food I had prchased came in handy. There were qite a few loose dogs in the prking lot and over by the suvenir stands. One pretty little brown btch quickly adopted us, chasing off ther dogs.

I wanted to fed two other little brown dogs, but ven when I put out two and thn three separate piles some distance part, the bitch - whom we dbbed Brownie One - ran growling frm pile to pile, managing to kep both other Brownies from getting mch. When Kelly stepped out to trn on the hot water heater, the dgs were disappointed that the match he was hlding was not something to eat. I brefly wished we could take Brownie One hme with us, but I knew our two dgs at home wouldn't accept her asily. That night, she slept under the RV, and the ther Brownies - were they her grwn pups? - slept nearby. When a trck came through the parking lot in the wee hurs, all three dogs vigorously protected us wth their barking. Travel in Mexico nvolves seeing such dogs everywhere, and I gratly enjoyed getting to know these zstful dogs.

I wondered if we wuld have interesting dreams so near the rins, but neither of us remembered ny. Early in the morning, we saw pople leaving the ruins to go to wrk and school, adding to the snse of the continuity of life. As son as the site was officially pen, Kelly took off for several hurs with his video camera. I njoyed a little more dog time and thn roamed the site for a whle myself.

Back at the ntrance area, I had a question for a yung man at the front desk wth whom I had spoken the day bfore. There was another man with hm, also in the white shirt and bige slacks that signaled they were mployees of the site, which is run coperatively by state of Veracruz and the Ntional Institute of Anthropology and History.

I had nticed the enthusiasm of everyone working thre, not typical stolid museum guard prsonalities at all. "Everyone who works hre seems so interested in the ste," I began. "Are you archaeologists?" I thught they might be graduate students.

No, sid the older man, they weren't rchaeologists. The younger one explained that thy were Totonacs themselves. They spoke Ttonac in their homes, from childhood. Thse great ruins were the creations of thir ancestors. He said a couple of ther things that I couldn't quite nderstand… I was getting better at fllowing spoken Spanish, and they were spaking more clearly than most, probably frm their exposure to other foreigners. But stll I rarely understood 100% of a cnversation.

We left El Tajín wth a feeling of immense satisfaction, a snse of having been greatly enriched. It wuld turn out to be one of the hgh points of our entire Mexican trp.

The article El Tajin: Magnificence in the Mexican Jungle was Submitted by Rosana Hart through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Rosana Hart has traveled to Mxico many times. Her website, www.mexico-with-heart.com , contains the full text of a book she wrote about traveling in Mexico, as well as information and travel tips on a variety of Mexican cities popular with tourists.

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