VINTAGE VENTURES: I write my travel journals to look back and remember our ventures. A secondary reason is to allow me to organize all my trip photos. I have thousands of photos. Organizing them into a cohesive story makes sense.

The patio at our Airbnb. This turned out to be a wonderful lodging.

DAY 9 – Sunday, February 11, 2018

CHICHEN ITZA

We had heard that the famous Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, about 25 miles away from Valladolid, become crowded around noon when the Cancun tour buses arrive. The trick is to get there right when it opens at 8 am giving you two or three hours of uncrowded viewing. Therefore, we were up and out of the Airbnb to find a colectivo to take us to Chichen Itza by 6:45 am.

It took about 15 minutes to find a colectivo (actually, the colectivo more or less found us gringos walking around downtown with a camera and a map), but it took another 30 minutes before the colectivo filled up. The driver, a friendly guy that spoke decent English, bought us a wedge of cream cheese cake from a pastry truck.

The trip cost 40 pesos each and took about 40 minutes to deliver us to Chichen Itza’s front gate exactly 5 minutes before opening. The strategy worked out great, as we enjoyed a nice tour of the ruins without throngs of people. We did notice that as we were finishing up around noon, the crowd was picking up dramatically.

Chichen Itza rose to prominence around 600 AD, and became a major regional capital by 900 AD when it reached its completed form. Chichen Itza is one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, and rightly so. Sadly, Chichen Itza's slow decline began around 1100 AD.

The primary pyramid, Temple Kukulcán, is a well-preserved iconic beauty. It is a huge four-sided structure that takes your breath away. Nearby are long rows of Romanesque columns, the Temple of Warriors, planted on tall stone platforms. At one time, the columns held up roofs made of wood or thatch, according to an info plaque. This long narrow building lined a gigantic ancient plaza in the middle of the city. It was thought that it was some kind of marketplace. 

The great ball game court is the largest ball game stadium in the Mayan empire and was indeed impressive. The ball game courts at Coba were cool but small and intimate. This was a stadium with a field the size of a football field. It had been believed that the captain of the losing team was sacrificed after the games. However, this has been recently rethought. The gods didn’t want losers – the current thought is that only a winning captain would be worthy of sacrifice. If that is true, I bet those games lasted for a long time, with each team captain desperately sabotaging their team’s efforts.

By the time we were ready to leave, about 20,000 vendors had set up tables along every sacbe, trail, and narrow passageway. It was like walking a gauntlet to get to various areas of the site, with every vendor clambering for your attention and dollar.

The Temple of Kukulcán, the iconic Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza.

Snakes guard the Temple stairs.

Above and below: The Temple of Warriors.

The amazing reliefs at Chichen Itza. Some reliefs are scary and gruesome, like the skulls at the Temple of the Skulls. Gruesome or not, the reliefs are spectacular.

If you look hard, you can see that the bird is holding a human heart in its claw.

Chichen Itza's immense ball court.

The ball court is the size of a football field.

The ball game stadium, the largest in the Mayan empire.

Columns that once held up roofs of wood and thatch.

Many vendors set up shop at Chichen Itza.

A cenote at Chichen Itza. We weren't allowed to swim in it.

At noon we went out to the parking lot and soon caught a colectivo back to Valladolid – this time, it was only 35 pesos each but no cream cheese pastry. We next had our sights set on snorkeling two cenotes just on the outskirts of town but first, a little nourishment.

We went back to the roofed restaurant stands. Wanda ordered the Poc Chuc, and I ordered Huevos de Muleneos, another Yucatán staple. Sadly, we were completely spoiled by last night’s top-notch cuisine, and this little stand just couldn’t match the high bar set by Taberna de los Frailes. This surprised me because when we were in Puerto Vallarta last April, these little food stands were terrific. Oh well, time to snorkel.

We found a colectivo to the twin cenotes, Samula and Xkeken, just a few kilometers from town for 35 pesos each. The three cenotes that we have experienced so far were all mostly open-air. These two cenotes were completely underground, involving creeping down a narrow cave shaft to reach them. Both were really cool, but Cenotes Xkeken was the best, with big fat stalactites reaching down into the clear water.

It was a wilting 92 degrees outside, and the cenotes reinvigorated us. We couldn’t find a colectivo back to town, so we settled on a taxi costing 60 pesos each. Taxi cabs in Valladolid are far cheaper than in Tulum. They charge a flat rate of only 20 pesos anywhere within Valladolid. Colectivos for short trips to nearby towns and villages are still the way to go. They are plentiful and dirt-cheap.

Cenotes Xkeken.

Cenotes Samula.

When we returned to Valladolid after our snorkeling, we went to our Airbnb neighborhood plaza to check out the Carnival festival being held there – more DJing and dance troupes showing off their costumes and choreography, including a male dance troupe in drag all decked out in fancy women’s festival wear.

Again, walking down Calle 41A

Mexican foliage, flowers, and trees fascinated me.

The couple from Rhode Island had told us about a tiny restaurant down a residential street where they ate a complete taco meal for 47 pesos. We thought we’d check it out. I don’t know if we found the same place, but we stumbled on a house that had a couple of tables set out on the front porch and a list of dishes posted on the front siding.

We stopped, and a teenage kid about 15 greeted us. He didn’t know any English, but Wanda, using Google Translator on her phone and my piss-poor Spanglish, was able to order a sample platter of nearly everything. We got an empanada, sope, chalupa, panucho, and another kind of tamale; all washed down with a bottle of horchata, a terrific cinnamon-rice drink. The sope was my favorite. It all cost 90 pesos. The kid was so nice. We took pictures of him and the food, and he seemed to get a big kick out of that.

Above: In the evening, we stumbled across this makeshift restaurant in a home nestled in a dark residential neighborhood. Wanda is studying the menu.

Below: This kid, the only person home, whipped us up a supper of sopes, empanadas, tortas, etc.

Tomorrow we are off to Merida, so we packed it in around 10 pm. The Carnival party was going full swing in the nearby plaza. It pretty well continued full swing until 2 am, but the traditional Mexican music was pleasant, and we both drifted in and out of sleep until the party broke up.

Dave and Wanda

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