Big tour day! The ruins of Chichen Itza are not “close” to Akumal – travelling with a tour company will take up most of your day. So we got up before 7am this morning to be packed and fed before our anticipated departure time of 8:10.

We met up with our kids and with Scott and Lynn and had another wonderful breakfast at the buffet, then it was out to the lobby to find our tour group.

We traveled with Xpedition Tours for the day. From Akumal you first bus over to Xel-ha where you find what amounts to a bus terminal for all the tours in the area, including other ruins sites, theme parks, and other towns. We were directed to bay 7 where we were greeted by Luis, who promptly put “Xichen” stickers on our shirts, ticked our names of a list, and invited us to have a coffee while we waited for everyone to arrive.

Tours of the feathered snake, or something…

We were underway again sometime after 9am. Luis was an excellent tour guide and gave us a running narrative (in both English and Spanish) for almost the next two hours. In addition to the historical and cultural contexts of the Maya of the area, we also learned about the Maya today, and even learned how to do Mayan multiplication as an introduction to their complex understanding of math and the calendar.

Cathedral of San Gervaso

Our first stop was in Valladolid where we learned some of the colonial context for the Spanish conquest of the area. Of particular interest was the narrative of the Mayan struggle with the Fransiscans, and the subversive feathered snake symbols which persist on the Cathedral of San Gervaso. The Spanish are reported to have wiped out up to 80% of the Mayan population at the time.

We next stopped at a very small roadside community where a hand made paper and printing industry is a chief attraction. We were greeted by the members of the community and toasted with shots of something with anisette and then invited to peruse the variety of souvenirs on display. You also had option of leaving your name and an order for a “Mayan horoscope” print.

By this time it’s just past noon and a lunch stop is well-timed. For this we stop at Sacred Blue Cenote (see-NO-tay) in Ik Kil where we also had the option to go for a dip. THAT was refreshing! And pretty, too. The depth is apparently close to 50m, and several people jumped in from higher ledges to make a splash.

Wanna play ball?

There’s so much very good information online about Chichen Itza that I won’t mangle the tour guide’s presentation for you here. He did a wonderful job and clearly enjoys what he is doing. We started with the main castillo which is almost overwhelming both because of its size and the way it creates a focal point for a the ancient city-scape all around you. Two sides of the pyramid are restored and give you a sense of how it appeared in its own time; and two sides have been left alone to show you how they were rediscovered in modern time.

One of the most interesting things about the pyramid is its function as a calendar (which didn’t actually “run out” in 2012). This pyramid in particular has the spectacular feature of lighting up a facet of the structure to create the impression that a snake is moving down the side of the building and touching the earth – this happens at the equinox each year and marks the beginning (or end) of the rain. The high priests, who were very good at counting to 180, magically revealed this to the people twice a year.

Another fascinating part of the site was the ball court. Having done a project on this decades ago at school, I was quite interested to see this one, and was happily impressed. The court is much larger than I anticipated, being on par with a football or soccer field. I also had not realized the acoustics of the court were so well engineered; the sound travels extremely well. Of course the gory stories of the after-game festivities also capture everyone’s imagination as well.

Although officially there aren’t to be any vendors on the site, in actuality the paths are cluttered with them – mostly selling a variety of masks, Mayan calendars, fridge magnets (got one for work), t-shirts, etc. The vendors are very friendly, and their merchendise is “almost free” starting around 10-20 pesos ($1-2). They can also be haggled with as Ross found out.

After we’d had about an hour and a half of tour with our guide we had about 45 minutes to visit the remaining grounds on our own. We saw several more structures from different periods. Having so many structures around you amongst so many people you can imagine what it might have felt like to walk through the city a thousand years ago. We walked slowly back through the site to the entrance and tried to soak in as much as we could.

We took a direct route back to Xel-ha, which took us a little over two hours. Along the way Luis played us a National Geographic documentary about how the world would end in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar (!) which was funny for that, but also full of interesting archeological information. We transferred back to Akumal without a wait and were back to our rooms shortly after 8pm.

By this time it was too late to get into any of the specialty restaurants, so we headed back to the never-ending buffet for dinner. From there we moved to the lobby bar and listened to some local talent revive hits from the 70s for awhile, and tried some of the drinks on the menu that sounded Mexican themed. Not surprisingly, the day’s events overtook us even more quickly now, and it wasn’t long before we decided that a good night’s sleep was in order.