The Yellow City

Izamal tour busses

Once upon a time in Izamal, The Captain Who Trained with Eight Thousand Flints lived in a palatial home just around the corner from Jumping Rabbit and up the road a short distance from the Temple of the Fire Macaw. A couple of neighbors, Habuk and Kabul, were across the main square and probably crossed paths now and then. All in all, it was your basic, quiet warrior-class Mayan neighborhood somewhere between the third and sixth century A.D.

David and Panchita take us on a tour

We’re clip-clopping through the narrow and ancient streets in a convertible horse-drawn carriage listening to our driver, David as he narrates the story of the city. Panchita, his horse, snorts and whinnies as she hauls us along at a leisurely pace. She knows it’s too hot to hurry anyway.

As time went on, David continues, the Mayan town’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. Deforestation brought on climate change. Harvests began to dwindle, and deferred maintenance wreaked havoc on the grand temples and houses. Diseases flared. Political alliances so carefully stitched together completely unraveled. Other cities, such as Uxmal and Tikal, seemed to be more favored by the gods as places to live, work, and worship. The Captain, the Rabbit, their neighbors, and soon the Mayan population as a whole, began to disperse. Eventually and inevitably, the jungle repossessed the place. The sound of human voices almost vanished even before the Spanish brought both disease and religion.    

Convento de San Antonia de Padua

Magdelena in her gift shop

And then, after a while, a long while, one small church appeared, then another and another. The stones that were once the sides and capstones of the grand Mayan temples now are repurposed to serve as walls and walkways for the Convento de San Antonia de Padua, completed in the mid-1500s. Now, though somewhat worse for the wear, the Convento is a home to shy Magdalena and a small group Francesan sisters. 

Candles of rememberence

The huge grassy atrium, enclosed by the 70-plus arches of the convent, is second only in size to the Vatican, although Magdelena’s small, lonely gift shop and an alter of burned candles for the lost or sickly children of the village are now the only evidence of religious life.  The Mayan spirit, however, was never lost. It was, and still is, deliberately commemorated by the rich yellow paint that covers every single home, store, or iglesia in Izamal, the Yellow City, the color of corn, the manifestation of the Mayan body, mind and soul.

We came into the glowing city after a long ride from Merida. It was mad dog hot. We couldn’t wait to get to the cool confines of our hotel, Posada Ya’ ax Ich, and the little blue swimming pool in the garden. The town is very walkable – even the Mayan ruins can be accessed by short neighborhood walks - but we elected right away to do our exploring on an early morning/later evening schedule, saving the middle of the day for a museum crawl and cold drinks.

Mayan women dressed for success in Izamal

How families ride in this town

We discovered that the town had a definite rhythm. In the morning, the townsfolk hustle about making ready for the few tourist vans that show up in the hottest part of the afternoon (go figure). After about two hours each day, the clattering, chattering, photo-clicking tourists melt into the heat of the day. Then the town slides into a torpid afternoon and then into an easy evening. Entire families strategically arrange themselves on put-putts, elderly motorcycles, or they pile themselves into 60s-era VWs and venture into the cool evening. A constant, but not unpleasant, buzz of vehicles of all shapes and sizes slowly spins around and around the central zocalo as the horses are unhitched from their buggies and led off to food, water and rest. Townspeople sit on park benches and talk and watch, probably a lot like they did in Jumping Rabbit’s day.

Eventually, we give up our bench spot and take a walk to a recommended restaurant with the aid of a villager who has clearly been hitting the cactus juice (Eric sure knows how to pick ‘em). Apparently, he is under the impression that he is providing a guide service, albeit for about three blocks, and shakes us down for a couple of pesos. Once at the restaurant, we’re a tad disappointed to see that it is inhabited solely by gringos who are being hovered over by squadrons of waiters. The place feels dark and grey, much like the food. It was so unlike the lunch we’d had earlier at Conchitas – a noisy, bustling place with card tables and folding chairs and elbow-to-elbow diners crammed into the middle of  the central market. 

Conchita's crazy mercado restaurant

Round little Conchita, about 4 and a half feet of steely-eyed ornery, basically told us what to eat and then proceeded to pile the table with delicious fare. It was quite clear that our only job was to eat and enjoy, no questions, no lip.

The house of Fire Macaw

The next day we wake with grim resolve and face the blistering, early-rising heat in order to hike to and climb the suburban pyramid, Kinich Kakmo (Fire Macaw). It is an enormous structure, the largest in the Yucatan, but it is not as photogenic as Chichen Itza, or Uxmal. Still, from the heights, it is possible to see many miles of the jungle interior of the state. Supposedly, one can see Chichen Itza from the upper level, but we have no luck spotting it in the morning light. As the heat begins to really grab hold, we slip back down the ancient stairways and, as planned, seek out the cool of the town artisian museum.

Fridas at the Artisian museo

What a place! Clever art, full of color and humor is distributed throughout the building and is truly delightful. We spend the hottest part of the day gawking at the work of local artists, which include truly fine textiles, sculptures, carvings and paintings.

Our last day, we head off to the local hotel for desayuno and, lo and behold, Lord Harumf and Lady Overtan-Hyde are there at breakfast. Eric says hello to Lord H and he responds with a “Have we met?” Eric says he was sorely tempted to say, “Why yes old boy, don’t you recall? India? That spot of nasty business… mounting elephants…fleeing for our lives, what, what?” But he chickens out and simply reminds his Lordship of our Uxmal encounter. Lord O is effusive this morning and does give us what turns out to be good advice on places to eat in Campeche before he returns to tea and toast.

Chac and Awe

We are sitting atop an ancient Mayan structure looking down on the Nuns Quadrangle at Uxmal.  It is already a deep, dark night with the moon and Saturn midway above the horizon. Orion gleams over our heads and except for muted jungle sounds, everything is still. The park is empty of daytime tourists. Only a few of us have come early for the sound and light show later in the evening. Flashlights flicker as people find places to sit, but otherwise the buildings around us are washed only with moonlight. Behind the quadrangle looms the huge and forbidding Temple of the Sorcerer, said, in Maya legend, to have been the home of the Dwarf King who built the structure in a single day and night.

It takes very little imagination to place lighted torches at the entrances of the buildings and to watch a slow-moving procession of Mayan high priests and city officials dressed in rich textiles and tall, feathered crowns as they cross the square below to booming drums, bird-like flutes, wailing calls and prayers. For us, the show has already begun.

Two headed snake during light show

Later, lights and sound from the nightly show reverberate through the square, by that time there are many more people, but still a small crowd compared to other ruins we have visited so far on this trip. It is a lively group, not particularly quiet, especially with children about.  Nevertheless, the magic remains. At one point in the show, the crowd began to chant “Chac”, “Chac”, “CHAC” calling for the rain god to unleash the water and grant the Mayan people abundance once again. All through the evening, one has the feeling that ghosts were still here, watching us.

Uxmal, though much smaller than Chichen Itza, somehow seems to take up more space, possibly because all of the buildings seem to crowd in on one another. It feels like an abandoned megacity, complete with skyscrapers towering overhead. Like so many other Mayan ruins, though, this was not a city per se. It was a religious center. The buildings are adorned with dramatic, interwoven symbology, almost all of which is devoted to Chac, the rain god, and Kukulkan , the principle diety in the Mayan pantheon who is usually depicted as a serpent with a bird-like head.

Governor's Palace shows Puuc style architecture

Clearly, though, Chac, as bringer of the rain, was the main focus of this place. Rain was vital to the Mayans, so you see his masks adorning most of the buildings. The temples themselves are entirely different than those at Chichen. The corners are rounded and the largest structures are built like huge cakes on progressively smaller and smaller ovals up to a crowning “house” or temple. Uniquely, these buildings were plastered over and brilliantly painted. They must have literally gleamed in the jungle light.

Two-headed snake in daylight

On purpose, we saw the sound and light show before we visited Uxmal in the daytime. We felt this would give us a much deeper experience of the place. Also, we were ready for a mini-vacation from the heat of Merida, so we made the Uxmal trip an overnighter.

By sheer luck, we booked ourselves into a hotel – the Hacienda Uxmal and Plantation, which turned out to be stunning. It was a throwback to an earlier, more luxurious idea of what a “jungle hotel” could be. Long, tiled corridors, polished wood rocking chairs and sofas, iron-framed beds. Some years back, it had hosted the likes of Jackie O, Queen Elizabeth II, King Faisal, and the Shah of Iran. An elegant ambience permeated the place. You could easily imagine Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall strolling arm in arm around the grounds as men in white suits hunched over hand drawn maps planning expeditions. In fact, there had been a number of such Yucatan explorers who had stayed in the original hacienda, including Frederick Catherwood and his partner John Lloyd Stephens, who were the first to discover and accurately describe the Uxmal ruins in text and pictures.

Even better, there was a swimming pool! Right in the middle of all the luxury was a cold, clear plunge that instantly took away all the day’s heat. As we swam, we noticed iguana sentries posted on the hacienda roof. They looked down up us with an air of haughty tolerance as they chewed quietly on palm fronds. Even the weather was exceptional. There was a cool breeze blowing through the corridors most of the afternoon keeping the temperature perfect and the bugs nonexistent. In the morning we awoke to a bird concerto -layers upon layers of bird sounds: hummingbirds, some sort of warbler, possibly some Peruvian oropendola, little brown birds (LBBs) and big, noisy birds (BNBs) and on and on There were far too many to keep track of. We gave up and chose to just listen to the music. All together, a perfect respite from the busy hustle of Merida.

The hotel was not particularly crowded, but there was an interesting international mix of characters – a French couple, clattering their steamer trunk-sized suitcases over the tile floors and sniffing the air for complaints. A German fellow who could not leave his technology for a single second - now and then spinning around and around shouting something in German - as he showed the hotel grounds to yet another person he’d Skyped. A British couple, who we came to refer to (affectionately) as Lord Harumpf and Lady Overtan-Hyde, who apparently did and did not live in England, who were apparently well off, but not so well off that they could leave the management of affairs to someone else, and who seemed rather restless yet a trifle weary. Lord H, on our first encounter, did not deign to speak directly to us. Lady O, however, was quite cordial and gave us the broad strokes of their itinerary as she translated the sotto voce mutterings that erupted from his Lordship now and then. As is so often the case in the synchronous world of travel, we would meet up again down the road. One especially helpful guy was Luis Chen, an employee hotel who gave us loads of information about Uxmal, including all the sites worth visiting in the area. He spoke excellent English, Spanish, and (as far as we know) Mayan and gave us thoughtful reflections on the state of Mexico now and his hopes for the future.

After a good night’s rest in our huge room, we packed up to return to Merida. The cries of “Chac” from the night before must have propitiated the rain god. We were drenched in a downpour that followed us back to Merida.

Dona Ofelia (retired flamenco maestro) & Eric at Hotel Mucuy

The next morning, we packed for our next destination, Itzamal, and said goodbye to Ophelia and Lilly (who we discovered was actually named Lena) and the staff folks we had befriended at the Hotel Mucuy.

The younger Ofelia (current flamenco maestro) and her husband at the Hotel Mucuy

You Say Flamingo, I Say Flamenco

A hot day, another excursion, and more stories. This time, off to Celestun, a small coastal village set within a biological reserve known for it’s vast flocks of flamingoes. We arrived at the dock just in time to group up with two young couples and boarded a small lancha out to the breeding and feeding areas of the flamingoes. At first, you chug along a beautiful mangrove shoreline populated by blue herons, white herons, ospreys, as well as gray and white pelicans.

After a while longer you begin to see, in the distance, a pink blanket covering the reddish water. Closer, you start to see the flocks of stately pink birds with long snaky heads, spindly legs and gorgeous plumage – a stir of pink shades, dappled with white, with black borders along the wings. By the time the boat stops, you are the regulation distance from the flock and it is a swirl of sheer beauty. Flamingoes  are there in every position, landing, flying, and walking across the shallow water. They walk, they do not paddle, despite every appearance to the contrary. For all of their gangly features, they are graceful dancers spinning about in all manner of configurations, one, two, three, ten, a hundred. All together, the guide estimates that there are 3,000 flamingoes mas o menos there on that day.

The total number in the flock, he says, is around 40,000. Much of what we learn is at the behest of Marco, one of the young Mexican people, who more or less volunteered to be our interpreter. He is a handsome fellow and his companion, Celine, is a blonde, Swedish sunburst of smiles and warmth. We take to them immediately. We continue silently watching the birds with only the “click” of cameras punctuating, now and then, the cries of the birds. The trip continued with a high speed entry into a narrow slotted waterway at the beginning of a mangrove forest that was nothing less than thrilling. After a short hike, we boarded the lancha and headed toward home. 

Entering the Mangrove

Our new friend, Celine

In the interim, we got to know Marco and Celine a little better, discovering that they had met on a grueling Machu Pichu hike awhile back and struck up a serious relationship – as in having met both sets of in-laws. We decide to have lunch together at the beach at Celestun and over fried fish and shrimp cocktails we learned that Celine is just about to start a new job as a HR person (she will be a huge success) and Marco is a part owner of a startup energy management consultancy, who, though he attended and graduated from law school, decided that he could make more of a contribution to the fledgling energy management sector of the Mexican economy than as a lawyer. He is thoughtful, fair-minded, realistic, and now, as the result of our political carnival up north, very concerned about the future. He is mindful of the corruptive backdrop that seems to be ever-present in his country and worried about the damage that it, coupled with our current and nearly complete misunderstanding of his country, may cause. Our conversation continues all the way back to Merida, as they kindly afforded us a luxurious ride in their rental car, sparing our tired butts the caramba ride we had expected on the return bus. We parted with an invitation for them to join us at some point in Oregon. As they are both rabid outdoor types, we think they may actually follow through.

We have a temperate day for a change and elect to take an inner city walk around the main zocalo with a city-sponsored guide who is the fastest speaking individual, in both English and Spanish that we have ever encountered. He is full of fascinating facts about the main buildings in the colonial center of Merida i.e. that they are constructed almost entirely of stones purloined and repurposed for churches and other nearby buildings, from five Mayan temples that once stood in the city center. He guides us through the buildings rattling like a machine gun.

Yucatan Governor's Office with Pacheco paintings

We are particularly taken by the artwork in the governor’s building by an artist named Pacheco. His mural-sized images are actually paintings that create a harrowing pictorial history of the exploitation of the Mayans from the beginning of the Spanish Conquest to the present day. Unlike the expansive murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Sequieros, these are personal, tightly focused studies of pain and heroism, hung on walls that were once the pride of Mayan kings.

Eric doing his best to smile

A hot day comes next. We are off on a voyage to find and swim in cenotes. Eric is not at his best but soldiers on through the usual folding into bus seats in a hot, claustrophic collectivo, out to two small villages about two hours south of Merida. Once there, we undergo a quick ritual of locating a motorcycle-like contraption with a bench seat on the front that will be our chariot of sorts for the rest of the day. It is quite something to be seated about where an engine ought to be while observing the rather large buses heading right at you. You quickly realize that you are, essentially, functioning as the tricycle driver’s airbag. That is just a tad disconcerting, along with the sobering fact that the combined weight of the two of us seems to be just a tick or two over the carrying capacity of the engine which is howling like a coyote. Just behind us Eric, ever the optimist, pictures a sudden detonation in which we are separated from the driver and sent headlong into something coming the other way. It’s a bit like being Ben Hur - had he been sitting backwards and in front of the horses with no way to steer them.

Surreal cenote San Antonio

Cenote swimmers

Eric descending

In any case, our driver, Benito conducts us through changing into bathing suits, obtaining lifejackets, and carrying us to the cenotes. From there, we are directed to climb down a rickety stairway inside a manhole-sized opening in the rocks. 
This, we are thinking, is just getting better and better. We begin to wonder when the flint knife will come out as we are slaughtered and cast into the underworld. But no, not even close. Instead, at the bottom, there is a huge room and a clear, beautiful pool of comfortable water lapping at the bottom of stalagtites, while overhead is a blast of sunlight shining down through the hole we just entered illuminating the pool with an eerie, alien, and astonishingly beautiful light. We swim, we climb out, eat with our driver Benito and, after practicing still more Mayan, part company and catch a collectivo back to our welcome hotel room and its A/C.

Benito stays cool

Merida Dias y Noches

Merida, the swirling, hot, friendly corazon of the Yucatan Peninsula invited us to dance and eat and converse with a blat of mambo trombone, a scuff of tapping shoes on limestone and a rhythmic wiggle of hips. We, once again, mastered the art of dodging traffic, negotiating taxis, collectivos, buses, reading maps on the fly, and a host of other sundry skills essential to Mexican city survival.

Our guard dog Lily at Hotel Mucuy

Our tiny, but dignified, Hotel Mucuy, overseen by a retired Flamenco instructor and her extended family, gave us a strategically located platform from which to plunge into this nonstop, 24/7 fiesta. A typical Merida day and night, if there was such a thing might include: a morning breakfast with the wise old men of Merida at Pop – a restaurant just down the road, then a visit to a museum to escape the midday heat, then a lunch at the central Mercado – another wise old men hangout - with (very good) roving musicians and outstanding street food  (good grief, there’s a taco truck on every corner), a paseo in one of the many parks, a return to the hotel for a siesta and swim.

Once refreshed, a second lap in the cooling evening air, dinner at the old hotel with stained glass entry way, a mambo or a folklorico concert to check out, a “walking”dessert, such as a marquesita – a delicious, baked-on-the-spot crepe-like waffle, with a filling of your choice, rolled and served “to go” (we developed a weakness for marquesitas filled with Nuttella and fresh strawberries, go figure).

We realized we could easily float on the surface of this joyous madness by following this routine for our entire time in this city, but that just isn’t our style. We sought out the deeper water.

To get the lay of the land, we first hopped on the Gua, Gua (pronounced Wah, Wah, after the sound its horn used to make that indicated a passenger stop). This was a “no frills” bus tour of the central portion of Merida that told the story of the city’s history through the commentary of the bilingual guide. It also provided valuable information as to where the important museos and art galleries were located and their hours of operation. From that trip, we worked out a plan of attack for the city.

Hot days were for museums, more temperate ones were for excursions to sites further away. And as always, no matter the plan for the day, we wanted contact with the natives. We wanted to practice our slowly expanding Spanish language skills and to hear, as much as possible, stories.

Stories like the one we encountered in a restaurant one afternoon. Eric has developed an interest in the Mayan language and has managed to eke out a few elementary phrases that he decided to try out on our waiter. The momentary look of astonishment to “bash-kawa-leh” (phonetically spelled greeting similar to “hello”) was hilarious and priceless. Upon hearing Eric speak those words, a workman who had been cleaning the restaurant windows magically appeared beside us. He responded to the greeting and Eric responded to that – exhausting his vast reservoir of phrases. As it happened, Eric had a copy of the Popul Wuj, a compendium of Mayan creation myths in his daypack. By now, yet another waiter had joined us. Eric thumbed through the book to an illustrated section that showed some of the fearsome “lords” or god-like creatures that populated the Mayan pantheon. The window cleaner jabbed his finger at one image in particular and explained, with the help of one of the waiters, that, apparently, this creature is often seen at the entrance to Mayan villages in the area. Only the village sorcerer, the brujo could manage these beings by pinning their arms to their sides and casting them out. Apparently, as best as we could decipher, it didn’t hurt the situation if the brujo happened to be a little drunk during the struggle. We continued talking for a few minutes more and were given a few more Mayan phrases to practice. Then, just as quickly as they had gathered, everyone dispersed and returned to the businesses at hand: washing windows, clearing tables, totaling the lunch check.  As we were leaving, the window washer wished us “yu’um bootik” (God go with you) and Eric tried out a newly learned “ni bo olal” (thank you), and received a smile as reward.

Beginning at the End

Dreams are another way of perceiving. Like pictures, they have no start or finish. You have of a vision and then find yourself in another reality. The chronology of events that occur is less important than the colors, sounds, or feelings the event inspires.

We are stretched out on a dreamy white beach in Progresso, Yucatan with palapas dotting the sand. A cruise ship sits at the end of El Muelle, a mile-long pier. Next to you us is laughter from a group of New Orleanians who are throwing back shots of tequila as their women’s Rubenesque bodies are being pummeled by Mexican masseuses whose tables nestle under the nearby shade of a large open cabana. Two children are digging away throwing up geysers of sand, now and then stopping to examine blackened fossils of charcoal from someone’s long ago beach fire.

If they could dig far enough down, down, down, they would eventually discover similar black material, only this would not be the remnants of someone’s campfire. It would be the skin of a monster: Chicxulub.

We are lounging on the exact spot where part of the earth was torn asunder by the impact of the Chicxulub meteor. It slammed into the earth’s mantle, blowing trillions of tons of vaporized planet into the atmosphere and beyond, while igniting worldwide conflagrations. The meteor’s punch reset the earth’s clock, annihilating seventy percent of all terrestrial life and branding the entire earth with a black stripe, the fragmentary codex of the disaster, that you can still see today. The shocked crystals from the blast, compressed into the limestone bedrock here, permeated all things Mayan – the crops, the people, and the stunning ancient cities - with stardust.

The Snail observatory

Deer sacrifice

Of the three spectacular ruins close to the Chicxulub impact site, Chichen Itza is the best known. Chichen is, in a way, two cities, or better, two iterations of one city. The first Mayans built the foundations of the empire with mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, and engineering. They created a religion from dreams and myths that required obedience and ritual sacrifice, usually a deer, to unpredictable but generally benign gods. At its peak, 600 years of Mayan culture collided with the Toltec “crusaders”. The Toltecs usurped Mayan culture and welded a terrifying and bloody cosmology to a ferocious appetite for conquest and war. They demanded human sacrifices and imposed a strict caste system, somewhat like the samurai culture in Japan that carried Chichen-Itza to the pinnacle of power on the Yucatan peninsula. Yet the very moment of supremacy was, ironically, an exclamation point, an extinction of a 600-year cultural experiment and the opening paragraph of a catastrophic decline that lasted for another two to three centuries, hastened by natural and cultural upheavals. By the time the Spanish conquistadors arrived, Chichen Itza was already overgrown and partly obscured by the surrounding jungle. There was only a tattered written codex left of a cultural treasure.  Even that was lost when a priest, at the behest of the Spanish Catholic Church, burned all of the long-calendar records he found. Those historical records would have been the key to understanding the wonders of this culture.

El Castillo

The buildings and surviving structures that marked the genius of the Mayans are spectacular as we see them today. The centerpiece of the current site is El Castillo, a huge pyramid in the center of the city. It played some part in virtually every important ritual throughout the city’s history and was a throne of the all-important feathered serpent Quetzacoatl, whose image adorns virtually every part of the old city. Some years ago Eric was able to climb down inside the pyramid to see a jaguar throne buried deep within, a representation of an important deity mentioned in Mayan creation myths. Nowadays, in part because one unfortunate tourist became an offering to the Mayan gods by plunging down the 91 steps of one side of the structure, and, in part, because of the deterioration of the temple as a consequence of human foot traffic, all other interior spaces are closed.

Pelota or ball field was almost too big to photograph

One structure, equally awesome, that is not closed is the ball field, the pelota, where a life or death game that seemed to be a cross between rugby and basketball took place. The game was steeped in religious significance and was centered on negotiating a very heavy, bowling ball-sized, rubber puck through stone rings placed nearly 24 feet up the side of opposing walls. Standing in the field and trying to imagine what it must have taken to “score” is an exercise in magical physics, since the ball apparently had to be knocked through the ring using protected parts of the hips and arms. There is much discussion as to when the game was played, how it was played, how long it took to complete, who the losers were, and what the consequences of losing (or winning) might have been. What is very clear is that one team captain, depicted in a frieze along the side of one of the walls, literally “took one for the team” by giving up his head.

Sacred Cenote

On and on we walked, to the Temple of the Jaguars, the Temple of a Thousand Columns (which seemed more Grecian than Mayan), the Monastery, the Nunnery, and the Snail. All of the modern day names are the work of the Spaniards who tended to lean towards Catholic references – not towards accuracy of the functions of these buildings. The one exception, the Snail, was clearly understood to be exactly what it was: An elegantly designed and incredibly precise astronomical observatory that represented the crux of the priesthood’s power of prediction for when to plant, sow, and prepare fields for the harvest cycle. Our last stop was the Sacred Cenote, that was at the end of a long straight road out of the main square. Based upon archeological excavation, this was a place of offerings and sacrifices (sometimes human) to please the gods. We knew it was time to leave when one of the Johnny-come-lately tourists (American, of course) said, “Oh yeah, this is where they threw in their disabled children.”

By the time we worked our way back to the entrance of the city, huge tour buses had arrived, disgorging thousands upon thousands of sightseers. At first, it was disconcerting, but then, on reflection, we reminded ourselves that this was what Chichen-Itza had always been: a concentration of peoples from all over Mesoamerica and beyond. It had probably always been noisy, always filled with gaping, awestruck spectators wondering at the power and majesty of their god-like hosts.