Chichen Itza / Valladolid

With Shona feeling a little better and the 4 walls slowly driving her mad I bade farewell to the chemist and we moved on out of Tulum and headed inland to the town of Valladolid, hoping to dodge Alex in the process…no such luck, we arrived in the pouring rain and it never really gave up for the rest of the day. The following morning, with no sign of rain (other than yesterday’s puddles) we headed out to the site of Chichen Itza, an ancient mayan ruin and now one of the new seven wonders of the world. The site itself is not huge and we thankfully got here early enough to miss the onslaught of Cancun day trippers (impressed they managed to get away from McDonalds and free tequila shots in bad bars though!). As you walk down the main path through a primitive jungle, lined with hawkers selling stuff you finally get to a big clearing where El Castillo (or Pyramid of Kukulcan) sits impressively, a 25m high pyramid come Mayan calendar. Problem is, a little like Teotihuacan as well, its been a little bit too restored, I’m not sure ancient ruins should look like they have just been repointed! The rest of the site is actually ruins but probably mid restoration, there was also a cenote on site – which basically is a big hole filled with water!! Ok, so its a bit more technical than that, they are underground rivers and cave systems and this area of Mexico is full of them. As for the rest of Chichen Itza, I was a little underwhelmed to be honest – not sure on the voting system for the new seven wonders (probably involved online voting system that was as rigged as a Richard and Judy phone competition!) but this one really did sneak in, its nice but really…!!!!