At the top of a pyramid, swarming with tourists, I slipped through time. We were there on holiday, drawn to the majesty and mystery of this ancient culture so unique and inspired. In the Gregorian moment of April 6th, 3:30 eastern standard time my wife and I swayed on the 356th step of the great pyramid of the feathered serpent, Kukulkan, dizzy and winded from the climb, mind's reeling at this point of contact. We'd finally made it to Chichen Itza. Among the many exemplary Mayan & Toltec ruins, the central timepiece of Kukulkan was the reason for our journey and the immediate point of our first visit. We each, in turn, approached the great base and laid hands on it's ancient stones, gazing up along it's ridges at the whisping cloudlets passing in the wind. Around to the other side and up the steep slope of 91 steps, calves burning moving past numerous apes, some too unfit to make the journey. Inertia doesn't stop up on the top in the temple, milling through the thickened crowd, looking, seeking, tuning...

But it's painfully frustratingly difficult to stop and silently open yourself to the intimacy and power of such a site when there are people everywhere around you. The ambience is just all wrong. And such wonders - power spots, vortices, monuments - really cry out to the sympathetic for an urgent communion. I tried not to think about the empty water bottles piling up under the capstone, then stepped through time.