Mayan Adventures

A slightly different format to this weeks blog, as we have spent a few days chilling out, relaxing and not doing anything ‘bloggable”.

So these are the highlights, when we did do something interesting:

Tuesday, Visited the Tulum Mayan ruins, they are unusual as they are right on the coast. We got up early to avoid the busier times and the height of the sun.

In true Mexican style first you have to run the Gauntlet of parking, as we were early that was not too bad, there were no guys on the main road trying to flag you in to their ‘official’ parking, according to Google there are about 4 parking lots called ‘official’, we are not sure any of them are actually official.

Ok so we paid our 100 pesos and parked up, now we have to get into the National park, that the ruins are in, a wrist band to buy, but that doesn’t get you in to the actual ruins. Then a 10 minute walk to a dodgy looking portacabin to buy a ticket for the ruins, then another 100 yards and a man checking that ticket!

As we wandered around we noticed that there was lots of building work going on, new paths being laid, new entrances being built. It was nice to see the ticket money being spent.

The ruins themselves are not that big, but interesting all the same, a main temple right on cliff top, a building over the top of a cenote (you couldn’t get in to the cenote, they were rebuilding the path). We did some iguana spotting, as there were plenty of them catching the early sun on top of the ruins.

We were glad that we made an early start, as on our way out of the site there was now a long queue, and loads more people making their way from the parking areas.

Thursday, a day for Chechin Itza, the most famous and most visited Mayan ruins in Mexico. So after doing lots of online research, we decide that we needed to get there early before all the tour buses arrived, it opens at 8am and it’s 2 1/2 hrs drive, so we were planning a 5:30 start☹️, however an almost throw away comment online mentioned the 1hour time difference between the state of Quintana Roo (Tulum) and Yucatán (Chechin Itzá), Strange but great, an extra hour in bed, so we left at 6:30am and no driving in the dark!

Again the parking, we had vowed to use the actual official parking, however when we got there there was a queue for the official parking, so we parked with some trepidation at an unofficial parking lot, saving the grand total of 20 pesos (£1), and hoped the car would be there when we returned! (Spoiler : it was).

Chechin Itza is an expensive archaeological site in Mexico. The site itself costs 95 pesos (£4.25) however the State Authorities in Yucatan also charge 468 pesos (£21.75) so you need two different tickets, but just for further confusion the 95pesos ticket you can only buy with cash but the 468 pesos ticket you can use a card! but only at different ticket booths!

We were there nice and early, all the stall holders were queuing up to get in with all their wares.

The first thing you get to as you walk into the site is “El Castillo” the largest pyramid, worth the entrance fee, it is an amazing sight.

So, using a lesser known fact, that, in general, the majority of people will always turn right we turned left and managed to get to a number of the other sites with nobody else around! We’ll include more photos than usual and put the details in the captions

All the stallholders were still setting up their stalls, as we wandered around, so they were focused on that rather than trying to encourage us to buy! After 3 hours there, it was starting to get busier, but not too crazy as the size of the site can absorb a lot of people.

Then for the long drive home, Rog is the only named driver on this hire car, as they wanted more than the cost of the original hire car to add an additional driver.

On the return journey we did drive through (rather than around) the town of Valladolid, a nice looking town, we didn’t stop, just drove slowly down the main street.

Got back to the apartment mid afternoon for a well deserved beer!

Saturday, we moved to Rubi Tulum Hotel, the original hotel we’d booked for our 22 day stay in Tulum, but you’ll remember from last weeks blog that there was a mix up with the booking and we were put in an apartment, which actually worked better for us. So we have 3 nights here before returning the hire car to Cancun and joining a 44 day Central American trip through all 8 countries Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama

So stay tuned for hopefully much more “bloggable” adventures