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Published: April 17th 2007
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We had a very relaxing and chilled out Easter weekend in Cancún. Unfortunately we missed out on the Easter eggs but we didn’t mind too much as thanks to mama and papa Sweet we stayed in a very swish hotel instead. We stayed at the InterContinental in the hotel zone and had a very fancy room with an awesome seaview, bathroom, hot water, cable t.v., a well stocked mini-bar (not so well stocked when we left!) and A/C. The hotel also had a couple of pools, a gorgeous beach, a few restaurants and a gym. What more could you ask for?!? We used the gym a couple of times and visited the Italian restaurant one night (which was very good!) but we spent most of our time relaxed in front of the t.v. (we hadn´t seen a t.v. since we left Thailand!). So as you can see, we didn’t do all that much in Cancun, though we did take a tour on the Saturday to Chichen Itza, which was well worth it.
We were picked up from our hotel just before 8am (they’d said between 7-7.30 but this was Mexico!) and were taken 2 minutes down the road where
we had to then wait for another bus! When we finally got underway it took us a good couple of hours at least before we made our first stop, which was (as they called it) ´the REAL Mexico´, actually just a large Mexican souvenir shop. We stopped here for half an hour and ended up buying a wooden man before we headed on to Chichen Itza itself. We arrived there about 12pm and our guide led us around the site for the first hour and a half.
The site wasn’t as picturesque as Palenque as it was set in the open not the jungle nor does it have the beautiful view that Tulum does but the ruins themselves are some of the best we’ve seen. They’re not as large as Teotihuacan but they are really well preserved (or reconstructed!) and better decorated. There are also a lot more of the ruins to walk around, such as the ball court (much larger than the one at Mont Alban). Unfortunately after a tourist fell from the top of the main pyramid (as seen in Apocolypto) last year, you can no longer climb up it, or any of the other ruins. A
lot more of the carvings have survived here than elsewhere, which made it really interesting. In the ball court you could see images of the players and their opponents who were possible captives (we’ve been told a few different versions of what happens at the end of the games and it seems that no one knows whether it’s the winners or losers who are sacrificed) as they had different outfits and jewelry. On one building there were images repeated all the way around it of four skulls on a stick, so it’s thought that the building was used to display the sacrifices. Another building even has some of the colorful paint still left on the pictures, which we haven’t seen as clearly anywhere else. It was really interesting having a guide and we learnt a lot about the ruins. These are definitely some of the best that we’ve seen and we would highly recommend them.
After a bit of a scare that we’d been left behind we had a late lunch then headed back to Cancun and arrived about 7.30pm.
This was the only tour that we did while in Cancun. We ventured out of our hotel a
few times to update the blog and eat but that was about it. Cancun town didn’t really seem to have much to it except what you’d expect to find in any other Mexican town. The hotel zone was definitely the place for tourists though it is just hotel after hotel with some shopping malls and restaurants grouped together at intervals down the strip. There weren’t too many traditional restaurants around so we ended up eating at the Hard Rock Café one evening and a very good pasta place right on the water front another night, though we did visit a ´Mexican´ restaurant (themed rather than actually Mexican) the first night but the food wasn’t so good. This restaurant was actually used in the film ´Cocktail´ staring Tom Cruise. The shopping was pretty awesome but (to Dani´s despair) our funds wouldn’t stretch that far.
We flew out of Mexico on the 9th. It was extremely difficult tearing ourselves away from our room but we didn’t have much choice. We’d hoped to buy an ipod charger at the airport (we lost ours somewhere around Tulum) but surprisingly there weren´t too many useful shops at the airport so we had to wait
(luckily we managed to find one in the Panama airport!). The flight to Panama only took a couple of hours and wasn´t bad at all. We then had only an hour or so to wait there before our flight to Costa Rica. This flight only took just over an hour and we arrived about 7.30pm. Getting through customs in Costa Rica was fine and we were soon on our way to San Jose.
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Tom
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Nice work Dani. What does the lazy bastard do while you're writing all these essays, apart from growing a gay beard?