Las Ruinas en Tabasco

I spent the weekend with my friends Juan and Yeysi in a small town on the border of Chiapas and Tabasco. Juan's parent's town is called Herradura. As you may have guessed, we also visited some ruins. The ruins at Malpasito belonged to the Olmec civilization.

Although the ruins were not extensive, they included two stadiums (one of which I am about to land in - Juan's idea). Clearly sports were important to the Olmecs. Not much has changed.

The following photo shows the first stadium and the stairs/seats overlooking it. The hut in the background is actually a bath house or steam room, presumably for the athletes.

The bath house has two rooms, but the far wall has a chamber behind it in which a fire would be lit. This would make the wall very hot and water could be thrown onto the wall to produce steam. I assume that the bath house had some form of cover. the present cover is probably just to keep rain from filling the bath house.




The last picture is one of Juan and Yeysi. Her name is actually pronounced 'Jaysee' but that spelling would produce a strange name in Spanish. They also have a restaurant a few blocks from my place in Teran. I am a regular customer. Like myself, they are passionate about food and we are always discussing (and often consuming) our favorite foods.