Blogs from Yucatán, Mexico, North America - page 68

After having our free coffee and toast breakfast, we boarded the tour bus for Chichen-Itza. The trip took a bit more than 1 1/2 hours. We all bought our 95 Pesos entrance tickets and wristbands and again I paid for a video pass (35 Pesos this time). Our first stop was the Temple El Castillo. This is the temple where the stairs look like a serpent on each side during the vernal equinox. Very cool, even without the serpent shadows. The guide gave very good explanations (ours was in Spanish for Manoli, but they also provided an English guide) as we wandered thru the many well-restored buildings. Besides the numerous temples, they also had some ruling-class residences, a walkway of columns, a large cenote and the observatory. Again, we found a number of iguanas and ... read more

Day 35, Thursday 28 June 2007 - Palenque to Merida, travel day. Not a whole lot to report today. We had a 9 hour bus trip from Palenque to Merida. Should have only been 8 hours, but the heavy rain and lightening delayed us by an hour. Also made it a bit uncomfortable for some people on the bus, as the bus leaked badly!!! Still, we managed ok. The only excitement on the trip was being stopped on the boarder by the army. They stop all travellers and take you and all your stuff off the bus and search your bags. You´re not allowed to take photos of them, so the only ones I´ve got were snuck through the windows of the bus! They are looking for any artefacts and luckily didn´t find any on ... read more

Playa del Carmen was our first stop when we arrived at the Yucatan on Monday 4 July by bus from Belize. It’s by far the most touristy place we went on our trip, full of American tourists, American chains and americanised restaurants, although it does have a really nice beach where we spent a very relaxing Tuesday. We had a great time, eating amazing fish, watching a brilliant fire show at the Blue Parrot and we were unpleasantly surprised to find that Americans actually dance in real life like they’re on MTV. It’s quite um…graphic. Our next stop was the island of Cozumel, to meet up with Kerry’s best friend Linda and go diving on the famous reefs there. We hadn’t seen Linds for a year so it was very exciting to see her. She ... read more

Hey up once again! I'm not gonna be writing much this time as I've written plenty over the last few blogs. Basically we headed from Tulum to Valladolid which is a small town in the central Yucatan so I was striking distance from my main Mexico "must see" of Chichen Itza and also the local Ek Balam Maya Ruins. We stayed at a great hotel on the zocalo called Hotel Maria De Luz which had its own swimming pool and a great little restaurant that served regional and generic Mexican dishes at real decent prices - beats Tulum's inflated beach prices hand down for quality & quantity. Valladolid is pretty scruffy and still very Mexican and as such affords plenty of on street vendors plying there wares and has many places to eat at very economical ... read more

Ok, I know I said in my last blog that I wasn't going to write much here.... Well looks like I've gone on a bit again... Sorry.... Please excuse my rantings..... I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of all the fabulous ruins at Chichen Itza, instead I've tried to give an insight into the Maya and how they saw the world and what they believed in. Chichen Itza is a truly impressive site. When planning our trip to Mexico it was always at the top of my list of places to see. So with real anticipation, I left our hotel early and was on-site by about 9.45am, avoiding all the tourist hoardes yet again and started running around like a loon snapping away at all those lovely ruins.... For those of ... read more