Kevin's Life

Today (Feb. 27 2007) I got up bright and early to catch my 9:00 tour to Chichen Itza.

My hotel was the last one on the pickup, and was the first one to drop off on the return. Bonus!

From the hotel we drove for about two hours, then stopped for 30 minutes at a souvenier shop. A big note for people who are going on this Sunquest sponsored tour. Don't buy any of the souveniers at this shop. You wil be able to get the same things at Chichen Itza for a lot cheaper. They do have free tequila samples though. Here's some pictures from the shop.

After our "rest stop", we continued on to Chichen Itza. We got there about 12:00 noon.

Normally the tour goes for lunch first, then heads to Chichen Itza. However, today was a special event. Chichen Itza is being considered as a site for the new seven wonders of the world (see http://www.new7wonders.com/). Today, the New Seven Wonders organizing committee was visiting the site. There was a big press event that evening with a lot of important political dignitaries, so they were closing the partk at 4:00 instead of the normal 5:00. So we got to go to Chichen Itza first.

Once at the park, they gave us our obligatory bottle of water, then let us off the bus. We had three hours there. The first two were spent with the guide, who did an excellent job of leading us from one shady spot to another while explaining all about the site. (It was HOT today).

Below are a few pictures. For a bonus, click on the pictures to see the same images full size in 3D. You will need some of those red/cyan 3D glasses to see them.

Chichen Itza Observatory:

Chichen Itza Pyramid:

Chichen Itza Pyramid from the Plaza:

Inside the pak there are a lot of vendors selling their wares, but extremely cheap. I bought a coral necklace for $10 and a hammock for $17.50. The other place was asking for easily two or three times those prices. What was more important to me is that many of the people selling the stuff were the same people who built the stuff. You could see them working on the items right in the park. Here's a picture of some vendors.

The site itself was amazing. The guide showed us pictures of the site from then and twenty years ago, along with the original pictures from the turn of the last century when the site was discovered. The change is phenomenal. We get a much better idea now of what the site must have been like back when this was an active community.

Some of the sites we saw were the main pyramid, the ball game court, the observatory, and the "Nunnery" (named because the original spanish invadors thought the inside looked like a spanish nunnery). Below is a picture of the ball court.

After two hours with the guide, we had another hour to explore the place on our own. That's when I did my purchases, and took a few more pictures.

After getting back to the bus, we went to a local Hacienda that has been converted to an "Agricultural Tourism" centre. Here we had a buffet lunch for about an hour. Then, about 4:00 we got back on the bus and headed for home.

On the way back, we crossed the border between the state of Yukatan and Quantanis Roo (where our hotel was). Just inside the Yukatan side of the border is what our tour guide called another "All Inclusive Resort". It was a state prison.

Below are a few examples of buildings we passed on the way back. This one is a store that apparantly sells blankets and hammocks.

This one is interesting. It shows a "corner store". Note the car in the carport beside it. Many of the places had small homes, then beside it another carport for their new cars.

Another interesting thing was that every tiny village we went through, we saw workmen building a basketball court. Apparantly there was an election recently and one of the election promises was every pueblo would get a basketball court. The funny thing is the kids use it to play soccer, not basketball.

On the way to Chichen Itza, we had watched a video about the Russian who broke the code to decoding the Mayan Hieroglyphs. On the way back, we saw a DVD on the show at Xcaret that I saw with Mom and Anette last week. Was like I got to re-live the show all over again. Later I managed to find the DVD and bought it.

I got back to the hotel about 6:00.

The towel buddy I found when I returned to my room was an octopus.

For more information on Chichen Itza see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichen_itza.