38. Solar Observatory?

38.

Solar Observatory?

It’s my birthday.

My present from The Flow is a perfect day.

A gentle, warm rain keeps us three travelers on the wide porch of our pension all morning engaged in contented talk. We lunch together at noon and, since the rain has stopped, take a walk in the archaeological park. Pooly and I exchange views while Polly sketches the monuments. I suggest that one of the large tomb complexes is designed to be a “solar observatory” like the pyramids in Guatemala. Centerlines carved on an enormous triangular stone head seem to be in a direct line with the center of a stone creature “guarding” the entrance to the tomb. The “tomb” is a circular mound of earth surrounded by stone monoliths. I decide to stay until March 21 to test my theory.

March 21 dawns cloudy and rainy. I have been hit by a severe case of “Montezuma’s Revenge”, as they call diarrhea down here, but with Polly’s encouragement I manage to stagger down to the interesting tomb and take some time-lapse photographs of the sun setting behind the stones—the clouds breaking up just for me!

But, alas, the sun sets few degrees off center, which may show that the earth has shifted its axis slightly since the monument was built or that the restorers of the park monuments were careless or that the constant movement of these mountains shifted the stones or, most likely, that my theory is wrong. Well, at least the exercise took my mind off Montezuma for a while.

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