Chichen Itza - a 7 wonder of the world!

In front of the castle
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Thursday 18th October – Isla de Mujeres – Chichen Itza

Today we decided to head to a hotel just out of Chichen Itza as it was in a good location to explore the ruins the next day and it had a pool. So we boarded an early boat back to Cancun, where both of us bought more havianas at the same port shop Leigh got his at before crossing to the Island. Riff and Alex wanted to buy a camera, so we headed back to the shopping mall. We also made a very embarrassing purchase of a cheap film camera that looked like a brick - in fact so embarrassing we don't want people to see us taking photos with it! After buying a few things we caught another taxi to the bus station and caught the bus from Cancun to our hotel.

The cenote at Chichen Itza
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The beauty of second class buses is wherever you want to get dropped off they will stop, so although it takes longer to get to your destination it's like door to door service. We arrived at the hotel late in the afternoon and decided to head across the road to a famous cenote, which is a big water hole, deep below the ground in a cave. It was really quite beautiful as roots from up above hung down into it and there were fish swimming around which kind of grossed Jo out as they kept banging into her legs. Cenotes were sacred places used for making sacrifices and offerings to the gods as well as for drinking water. Leigh managed to impress everyone with some massive bombs after climbing up quite high above the waterhole.

Beautiful ruins
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We then headed back to the pool and had throws with an orange in the pool before a nice relaxing dinner.

Friday 19th October – Chichen Itza

We all rose early and decided to have breakfast at the hotel which wasn't the best, but with no cafe's around it was the only choice. The hotel offered a free shuttle to the ruins so we we caught the 8.30am service to ensure we arrived at Chichen Itza well before the crowds of arranged tours arrived mainly from Cancun on day trips. We looked at getting a guide for our group but Chichen Itza now being among the 7 wonders of the world the prices were extortionate. We laughed at the gentleman trying to make the sale and reminded him of the guides prices at other ruins. He was not too bothered and turned his attention elsewhere. We ended up buying guide books for a fraction of the price, decided on a route to take and headed off.

The 4 of us...
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The heat was almost unbearable even so early on in the day and we were all darting off to the shade whenever possible. We arrived first at the amazing Central Plaza and took lots of picture postcard photos before the crowds arrived. We navigated ourselves around with Riff enjoying having purchased a camera, so was not missing a shot. We spent a lot of the morning getting perfect pictures courtesy of Riff.

The main problem we had was having merchandise sellers annoying us, with there sales pitch of “1$” for a hand carved statue which turns out being the discount they are offering, not the price. They will try anything to get your attention! The only thing Leigh bargained for in the morning was a few bottles of drink and managed a reasonable deal of 3 bottles for 30 pesos – not a bad price for a major tourist attraction. We explored the “old section” of the sight which included the largest football court in the Mayan kingdom, the palace, a very deep looking cenote and a room covered in skulls.

At the observatory
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We then headed off for a light lunch at the site and discussed what we had seen so far, while watching a show with traditional costumes and the dancers skillfully balancing plates on their heads. We were all a little disappointed with the sight so far, as we all had been to Macchu Picchu which is also a modern wonder and much more amazing. During lunch we realised that we had missed an entire section of the sight – the “New Section”. So we headed back in and thank goodness we located it as it was the best part of the entire sight. The ruins were more to do with daily life than religious worship and the highlight definitely was the Observatory. It demonstrated that the Mayians were such an advanced civilisation with relation to astronomy, that even their calendars were more accurate than what we have today. The shape of the observatory building was no different than any you would see today.

With the temperature rising and the crowds increasing we decided to head off after exploring the whole site and coming across various wildlife along the way such as iguanas. We got our bus tickets and headed for the nearest small town to stock up on a few cold beers and pool side snacks. We spent over ½ hour in the local 7/11 mostly to enjoy the freezing air conditioning before finally heading back to the hotel and spending the afternoon in the pool having a few drinks and chatting to a couple from Florida. Being rather isolated we ate at the hotel restaurant again and played 500 before heading off to bed.