The Joy of watching my Maya co-workers learn a new skill in Yucatan Mexico building rock walls

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In the Yucatan for hundreds of years, the Maya have made walls and fences out of rocks.  They call them Cotes.   It's just a lot of big rocks, and a few small rocks stacked on top of each other.  The weight of the rocks makes it strong.  Periodically some of the top rocks get knocked off and you just walk along and ut them back in place.

There are men in the pueblos who build these walls for a living.  I had them build some for me.  But I decided I needed about 300 more meters and would prefer to pay that money to my co-workers rather than hire others.

I asked my men if they could do it, and they said they didn't know.  They had never tried, because that is what the Cote builders do.  I told them one day, I thought they could do and we'd give it a try.

For the first couple of days they were not as fast as the "pros".  But by the 3rd day that had picked up the rhythm and were going just as fast.   They beamed with joy to discover that they could do this.  I beamed with joy to see they could do what they put their mind to do.

Click here for video of the entire job, start to finish

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